A Cup o' Tea

Today I'll put a more positive spin on Japanese taste buds---one really good thing you can find here is a large variety of fruit teas, juices and flavored water.  I enjoy peach tea, lemon tea, acerola juice, lemon honey water and lemon ginger water, among others.  One of my first delicious discoveries was milk tea, which is exactly like what it sounds, a combination of milk and tea.  On the other hand, one time I got what I thought was peach tea, only to get it home and discover that it was peach-flavored milk---not so good.

All of these are really popular here, you always see a large variety in convenience stores, supermarkets and vending machines.  I can get my milk tea hot or cold---the vending machines and convenience stores here have sections of the cases that are kept hot rather than cold.  I think, based on what is for sale, that these types of drinks are more popular than sodas. For the record there does also seem to be a large market for coffee and espresso drinks.

check out the "Juicy Banana Latte" on the second shelf down, far right--it's not ALL good

a random selection from our fridge

Somethin' Smells Fishy

So, I've posted a lot about the supermarket here and for the most part I've tried to illustrate how they are more or less like American supermarkets, especially in design and general atmosphere. 

However, the one really appreciable difference in a supermarket here is the seafood department.  The smell of a Japanese supermarket seafood section is really unique.  And not in a good way.  Most of the time all I can stand to do is take a deep breath, hold it, run in and grab some frozen shrimp, and run back out again.  I really have to concentrate on not making a nasty face when I'm in there.

The unusual smells, of course, come from the unusual items on display....

"What're you lookin' at?"
(these are whole squid, if you can't tell)

wonder if there are any pearls in there

"Let us ouuuuutttttt!"

This is just a sampling of what you might see on any given day.  I have seen many, many sea creatures laid out on slabs, heads still on, unwrapped, like they just flopped up out of the ocean.  And we're in a pretty land-locked part of the country, it's not like this is dockside or anything.  These photos were taken at Aeon, which is a really modern supermarket so you can find plenty of de-headed, filleted, shrink-wrapped fish that is more like what you see in the US.   At the small local supermarkets it's pretty much all this kind of stuff---I can't even imagine how you go about wrestling these things home.  I realize that to many people this is a positive indicator that this is really, really fresh seafood but, alas, I am not one of those people.

 I even hesitated in putting the label "food" on this post.  A bit of a stretch, if you ask me.  :)

Oink Oink

This weekend we took a trip into Tokyo to run some errands and we visited the newly reopened Wendy's in Omotesando.  There used to be about a hundred Wendy's in Japan but a few years ago the Japanese company who operated them closed them all down. 

But now they are back, and the new company who operates them is planning to open them all back up!  Woo-hoo!  In general, missing American restaurants that we used to frequent is one of the top three worst things about being here, in my opinion.  There are times when thinking about a particular item on a particular restaurant's menu can really get me down.  And we didn't even eat out all the time in the US---I cooked a good bit.  Something to think about if you are ever contemplating moving to a foreign country.  But now we can add Frostys to the list of things we can obtain here and boy, let me tell you, were they good.

When we were researching exactly where the new Wendy's was, Chad ran across this short video from some fellow expats, who, by their excellent choice of words, must also hail from the southern region of the US:



Yes, the foie gras burger is for real, it's a gimmick Wendy's has introduced here.  I think it may also have truffles on it.  Needless to say, we stuck to the standards.  And, at the end our our meal, I got my picture taken with.....Japanese Wendy!  :D

Sky High

Yesterday we took a day trip into Tokyo intending to go to the Studio Ghibli museum (the animation studio that made My Neighbor Totoro) but, not surprisingly, we got behind and didn't make it in time.  So we'll try that again another day.

We ended up wandering around the city not doing much other than eating Mexican food and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  We did go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building hoping to see Fuji-san (aka Mt. Fuji) since it was an exceptionally clear day.  It turned out to be too hazy to the southwest, but the open-to-the-public observatory at the top of the TMGB was good to know about if we ever want to try again.  TMGB was the tallest building in the city (45 floors) until 2006 and is so popular with tourists that there is a gift shop and cafe in the observatory.

some ladybugs out front

TMGB

somewhere out there way far over on the right is Fuji-san

a popular place for photogs

Neighborhood Shrines/Temples, Part II

(To read Part I, go here.)

I made my first shrine visit of the New Year today, although I don't think I did it in the appropriate Japanese style.  This shrine is on the main road between our house and the mall so we go past it all the time.  One time, at night, we even saw people singing and dancing by lantern light, but we don't know what was going on.  It is a Shinto Inari shrine which means it is a shrine to Inari, the god (kami, in Japanese) of agriculture, rice, worldly success and industry among other things.  Inari shrines are extremely popular---there are tens of thousands of them.  I can tell it is an Inari shrine because....there is a fox statue in front of it.  Foxes are believed to be Inari's messengers.

the little red collar and oranges are not usually there--
he has been spruced up for the New Year

Google Maps lists this shrine as 石原賀茂神社, or as best I can make out "stone plain celebrate grow thick shrine".  Since it's right on the main road I had to squeeze the car (no bike this time, it's freezing out) off the side of the road and run and take photos really quick.

As for the first shrine I investigated, I noticed a couple of guys cleaning up around it on New Year's Eve and from what I can tell (it is off the main road so I can't get a good view driving by) it looks like it got spruced up too.

Happy New Year!

So New Years Day kinda of snuck up on me this year.  I meant to post about some of the many, many Japanese traditions before now, but never managed to sit down and do it.  Better late than never....

First a little general information.....New Year's celebrations are a BIG DEAL here but not in the party hard way it is in the US.  There are certain decorations you put up, certain foods you eat, and most people travel home to spend the day with family and/or visit a shrine. It's also traditional to give one's house a good cleaning.  When I started seeing some of the stuff in the stores a couple of weeks ago I got some things, but not others (and asked a lot of questions and looked up a lot of things).  Many of the traditions come from the belief that a special New Year's spirit called the toshigami comes to visit and brings blessings.  And many of the decorations have dragons on them since 2012 is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.

a big kadomatsu, which welcomes the toshigami spirit,
in front of our hotel in Okinawa on the day after Christmas

a shimenawa, which wards off the bad spirits while the toshigami is visiting
(I did get us one of these for the door)

a singing, dancing dragon at Joyful Honda

kagami mochi, special New Year's rice cakes that are in
little domed, decorated packages.  they are offerings to
the toshigami spirit

I read somewhere that you don't eat the kagami mochi
until the 11th, so I'm waiting to grill ours (yes, I was told to grill it)

 I did go to the supermarket yesterday (which was New Year's Eve for us) and it was even more of a madhouse than it usually is on a Saturday.  A lot of people seemed to be buying premade food at the "bar" that is kind of like the bar at Whole Foods.  Tempura seemed popular, and since Chad had requested I try frying shrimp, I picked up some raw shrimp and made us some "tempura" (aka fried shrimp) for dinner.  I also bought edamame since everyone else was doing it (and I like it).  One thing I did not buy was one of the trays in the photo below, half of the contents of which I can't identify.

click the photo to enlarge

I did buy us a few of these cakes (also sold individually) which are really cute
but not so tasty--they are moist and dense, kind of like a strange cookie dough

If you want to know more, this is an interesting article that mentions some of the other New Year's traditions that I haven't seen or heard of personally.