feeling Japanese

The second day of Golden week!! I watched many people were in airport to fly overseas on TV news. I have to work tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I went to one temple which my friend recommended before.

The name of temple I went to is "Rakanji" . It was originally founded more than 300 years ago, had more than 500 arhat statuesm although now they have about 300 statues. The expression of each statue differs one by one. Looking their various face, it was interesting.

When I was a child , I didn't care for temples, syrines and so on very much. I prefer something european. But now when I feel very calm in those place.



Next to Ralanji , there is a Japanese style tea house, I ate Japanese sweets called "Cream Anmitsu", whichi is made with sweet bean paste, jelly by seaweed,and so on.

I felt very very Japanese today!

Roll cake

Among young women the cake called "Roll cake" ihave been popular since a few years before. As you can see it is rolled by sponge cake with cream. This photo of the cake I ate today was put fruits inside with pretty much cream. I ate it in "Satsuki " ,famous cake shop in Tokyo. It looks delicious , isn't it? Yes it is so delicious!!! The moment I feel happy :)

++Golden week++

In Japan Golden week is starting from tomorrow. Hav you ever heard that word? It means consecutive holidays from the end of April to the first week of May. Aactually it depends on the calender of the year and companies that how many days we can get holodays.

For example , about this year
4/29...saturday, but it is also national holiday which called "Midori no hi (green day)"
4/30...sunday
5/1...May day, many companies decide the day off , even though it is not national holoday
5/2
5/3...national holiday (Constitution Day)
5/4...national holiday (holiday for the nation)
5/5...national holiday (Children's Day)
5/6...saturday
5/7...sunday

As it is difficult to take long holidays, many people go overseas.In Amusement park like Tokyo Disney resort ,Events and Festivals, it is gonnna be one of the clouded time!!!

As for me, I am flying to my hometown Fukuoka, Kyushu. I will definitly eat Ramen tonkotsu style(Japanese noodle pork bones bloth style.) Actually my hometown is famous for it! I will post it !

won-ton noodle soup

Yesterday I ate won-ton noodle soup . It is originally from China, but as you may know , we can eat anything in Tokyo!!!
Won-ton is a kind of Chinise dumpling, which minched meat by wrapped a lye-water pastry, tasted with soup. I orderd with noodle, it was going to be a big portion. It was a good plain taste, but have substantial broth. Anyway I enjoyed it!!

Street performance

I went to see the street performance event a few days ago. I watch a commedy, and juggling, and chinise acrobatics. It was an event which they started about
20 years ago for one of the projects to economically develop the area called "Noge" near Yokohama central. It was bigger than I thought, being closed to cars. They had to performance in the gentle sloped street, said more difficult than usual. We had to sit on the asphaltic street, my feet went to sleep. I saw some people who brought their own chair!!! Oh it is good idea.

commedy
He acted commedy by hisself, his gesture made people laugh.









Juggling
Juggler was an American man who can speak Japanese so well that people was so attracted.He juggled taking a big unicycle, and using with chain saw and fire.



Chinise acrobatics
Their body is amazing. So flexible. The girl is just 13 years old. Unbelivable.

the traveling dinner

I was invited "the traveling dinner." When I heard the word for the first time. I didn't have no idea. It is a kind of fun game, eating different stuff(appeteizer,salad, smain, desert )at a different home. Have you ever heard that???

Thank you for great organising of my friend Aime, everything was perfect!! Everytthing I ate was so tasty. oishi-:) I guess she had prepared it for a long time.

appetizer at Rey's house
chicken and pistachio roll slice
Smorked salmon Mousse
Cheese and Crackers
Appetizer looked so gorgeous, and beautiful. Needless to say, they were so delisious. I also liked the drink which mixed with absolute vodka ,chanpagne ,and peach juice. For me , salmon mousse was best.

salad at Katrina's house
Waldorf Sald with Lentils and pine Nuts
Mediterranean Salad with Albacore Tuna
Those tho kinds of salad are good ,too. The flovour of green apple matched dressing well. I usually don't eat salad so much, but at that time I ate a lot. The one of the dressing was so creamy and rich that I could'nt stop eating.

main at Aime's house
American BBQ hot dogs and hamburgers
Just like I was in the food court in WDW. We made own original burgurs and hotdogs. Me? I put plenty of the sliced avocado and very big humburger. It was too big to bite it actually, ummm yummy.

desert at Inge's house
Keylime cheeze cake
pinaple upside down cake
Apple nuts cake (To my pity, I don't remember exact name.)
biscotti
tea and coffee
After you feel full stomach, still if you can eat sweet deseet. In Japan we use the expression we have another stomach for something sweet. It was very such a time at Inge's house. I had had enough before desert, but I enjoy the Shelly's desert so much that I requested the her desert recipe. I wanna make it!!





Look at those wonderful pictures of food!!! It was great. They treated us generously. And it was soooo good experience to see many houses. Each home has good atomsphere, decolated so well. I want to imitate their good sense.
I really want to thank those who gave me such a wonderful time.
Arigato---- On the way to home, everybody looked soooooooo happy;)



p.s.
When I am writing in English, I always feel the short of my vocabraries. I want to express more detail, more complicated feeing, and so on. On this post, it is difficult to show how much I enjoyed, thank them, how tasty the food was .It is pity, isn't it?

the power of SNS

The other day I felt the power of SNS(Social Networking Site).

The biggest SNS in Japan is called "mixi", and the number of member is more than 3000000 , and still getting bigger. I am one of the member of mixi, joining many community which is the group the people have same hobby, same idea, or same character.

One of the communities I am joining is "the person who often lose something". There are more than 40000 members, and usually many people leave funny messeges or comments. For example, "I left my wallet in frige.", "I am always loosing a ticket in the train", and so on. Actually it is fun to read.

But about one week ago , a woman left serious message.
"I lost my doggie"
She wrote information of her dog, and detail of the situation.

After that many people left their comments to encotage, to help , or to be worrying. After a few days passed , one person point out another person's diary which said " we have a lost dog , we are looking for the owner otherwise....the dog might be taken to the public health center . "

Guess what?? The dog was the one a woman was lookinf for.
Now the owner took her dog to her house. She wrote her dog was fine at last, and thank you so much to everybody.

I was reading this whole story everyday , I was moved to tears.

Matcha

Matha means green powdered tea in Japanese. I like green tea stuff ,and I have introduced some green tea stuff so far on this blog. Yesterday I found a big ad of Matcha in the Starbucks. It said "REDISCOVER THE WORLD OF MATCHA". Now they are selling matcha tea latte and matcha cream feappuccino. Matcha make us feel spring!

In fact I found Matcha shake in McDonald, too. It is a seasonal!!


Starbucks Coffee Japan

Harumi Kurihara

Last night as there were avocado and chicken in my fridge, I decide to make Teriyaki Chicken with avocado sause. It was so tasty. I sometimes eat teriyaki chicken, and I like avocado. But I have never tried those two together.

That recipe I cooked was written by Harumi Kurihara. I can say she is one of the very famous and popular housewife in Japan, like Martha Stewart in U.S.A. Her recipe book have been sold a lot. Her dishes are very modan, but simple to cook. Like Teriyaki Chicken with avocado sause which I cooked last night, it is not typical traditional Japanese recipe. But she creates so many stylish Japanese dishes.

In 2004 she won the grand prize of the 2004 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards by her recipe book "Harumi's Japanese cooking" published in U.K. among more than 5000 books.

I sometimes am asked how to cook Japanese dishes. It is one good way to read her book:)

Harumi's Japanese Cooking

Doraemon

Do you know "Doraemon"? I can say he is one of the japanese national hero. He is a blue cat-typed robbot from the 22nd century. He is a character from the manga and animation by Fujiko Fujio. It has already 25 years passed since his very first movie shown. I think you can't find the people who doesn't know about him in Japan, especially under my generation. I heard the animation has been imported to the all over the world. So some of you know him.

Last spring they changed all main characters's dubbing artists, including Doraemon himself. It was a very big news and so shock for everyone. Since then I haven't watch any animation s of Doraemon. Before he had such a characteristic voice that we could figure out easily since the animation had started on the air.

The other day I went to the cinema to watch Doraemon's brandnew movie. Although I like Doraemon, I hadn't watched the movie for a many years. To be honest , I think those kinds of movies are for kids. The very first movie which is so touching was remade this year, and I really liked the ending song which was singed by Japanese pop duo "sukima switch". That's why I decided to go to the cinema.

In the theater there were so many kids ,because it was on spring vacation season. I was embattassment a little bit , feeling the difference of the voices and description, compared with before. No matter how I feel about those things, the movie was so nice. It might be for kids, but I saw many adult with tear, so was I.
It was a good time to feel like being a kid.

about Doraemon

baby in me

baby in me... but not myself ;) he he he
My co-worker is pregnant right now. She looks so hard to come to work every day.

The other day I heard from her about the badge which is designed for expectant woman. When you find a woman with the it in the train, it would be nice , if you can make room for her. To be honest , I never saw a woman with the badge. My co-worker said she feel ashemed a little bit to get it on.

It will take more time to be known about it ,even it is a nice idea...

IKEA

IKEA........they are famous furniture stores , aren't they?
Right now there are no IKEA in Japan, but it is coming soon on 24th of this month . Many people seem to be waiting so eargly . I heard about IKEA from some of my friends who love IKEA. I have been to many countries ,but I didn't know IKEA.

The other day I had a chance to talk with man who came from Denmark, he said to me he was so happy to coming IKEA to Japan ,and IKEA have a great deal with ther employee. It's a very nice comapany.

IKEA -such a nice place? I have just check their Japanese website. Much to my surprise, what a cool stuff they have! They look so simple , but cool , and reasonable price. Especially I am so interested in the food section. They will have a nice swedish restaurant and swedish food market. We can have mearballs, sermon filet, princess tart!

I am sure I am going definitely;)

[IKEA JAPAN Website in ENGLISH]

Tegami (letters)

Recently I rarely write letters , althouth I used to write letter often.

When I was a junior high school student, I had a penpal in U.K. Since I have just started learing English, it is difficult to write letters in English, so I was just trying to copy the same sentenses of the text. When I got the first letter , I was checking the stamps , envelope as well as letters. It was the first time to feel overseas. I had been to Korea before, but Korea is simlar to Japan. Whenever I found the letter from her in the mail box, -I could find out her letter soon , because she use the airmail envelopes with red and blue border -I was so excited!!!

As I entered the university in Tokyo, I wrote many letters to friends in my homtown. At first living in Tokyo by myself made me feel lonely. I made phone calls sometimes , but it was expensive. After I got used new life, I traveled many countries, I sent many postcards from outside Japan.

But nowdays email is much easier and faster to communicate. Always using computer, sometimes I can't remember the spell of chinise character. I can read it! but sometimes I can't write it .(In Japan we learned more than 2000 chinise characters at least , when we were kids!)

Yesterday I watchd one program about letters onTV. Some people think a great deal of writing letters. They choose very nice own stationeries like fountain pen and letter pad. There is a TEGAMI cafe( letter cafe ) in Kyoto , which you can spend whole day to write letters and get some nice stationeries.

I feel like writing letters to someone!

more sakura photos

I took many many pictures of Sakura (Cherry blossoms) this year. I just want to show some.

ruokala lokki

ruokala lokki- they are the words in Suomi which is sporken in Finland.If they are translated in English, they mean "Seagull diner".

Now the movie "Kamome syokudou(Seagull diner in Japanese)" is popular amoung young women. I have just watched it the other day. The story is not excited one, but make you feel better. Very heartwarming story.

One Japanese woman opened Kamome syokudou(Seagull diner)in Helsinki by herself. At first nobody came to her place to eat. But a Finnish young man who love Japanese cartoon came there as a first customer. After that two Japanese women, one came to Finland as a tourist and another had lost her lugguage, started to help Kamome syokudou. Those three women were having many experiences with locals. Those three Japanese actresses play the unique characters. To my happiness, I could see them in the theater, because that was the first day of show.

In the movie, Onigiri which Sachie wants to serve is introduced as Japanese soul food.It is interedting, too. You can see many Japanese food. If you are hungry, it might be heard to watch this movie.

I heard they are going to put the movie on the screen in Finland.

ruokala lokki official site in English