Tasting The Bitterness Of Life...

Hassaku Marmalade One of the students of the language school I work for gave me a few hassaku oranges the other day. Now, I hate to say this but I'm not too crazy about hassaku. It's not easy to peel it like tangerine, and the white part can be quite bitter. Unless the fruit is very ripe and sweet, the bitterness from the pulp can really ruin the overall taste, and I often get disappointed. So, instead of eating them right away, I decided to make marmalade with them. That way I would be able to do something about the bitterness, I thought. It was not my first time making marmalade out of citrus fruit with bitter rind and pulp, such as konatsu. I had a great success before, and the key was rubbing the shredded rind with salt thoroughly before boiling and soaking it in water. That should work for hassaku oranges, too, I thought. How naive of me. I spent so much time doing this: ... and this: I rubbed these rind strips with salt, then boiled them, drained them, boiled again, drained again and repeated that for a couple more times. After that, I soaked them in water for at least three hours. Then added the flesh to the rind and cooked with a good amount of sugar. The result was... Gosh it was DARN B-I-T-T-E-R!! :O WHY???? I didn't get it. The rind didn't taste bitter very much when I tasted it before cooking. But for some reason, the marmalade turned out VERY bitter. Now how can you save bitter marmalade? I know something fatty can make bitterness milder, but I don't want any fatty stuff in my marmalade. Maybe more sugar and ... alcohol? Because in my hometown we use distilled spirit to remove astringent taste from persimmons... Finally I ended up cooking the marmalade again with more sugar and generous amount of leftover Myers's Rum. You know what? It helped!! The rum really added pleasant flavor and the bitterness became tolerable. But still it takes some courage to eat this hassaku marmalade on toasted bread or with yogurt. And I even tried combining it with something fatty, i.e. butter. I baked some into buttery pound cake. This cake certainly smelled heavenly with the butter and the rum. If the aftertaste of the hassaku rind did not ruin the harmony at the end, I could have called this cake a great success. - Sigh - So what did I learn from this experience? Often hard work does not get rewarded? That's Life? Or it is always sugar and booze that reduces the bitterness of life? :P Categories: Sweets

Garden Report - March 2009 -

Mizuna, blooming I didn't know what mizuna flowers look like, because my mizuna didn't survive the winter last year. I wonder if these leaves are too strong or too bitter to eat now... I enjoyed mizuna in various hotpot dishes and stir-fries several times last winter. It's such a shame that I was too lazy to post about them. Haha... :P Blueberry (Sunshine Blue) I'm taking my sunshine blue with me to my parents' house. Now, what do you think? Would it damage this plant if I transplant it somewhere in mom's garden sometime in May, after these flowers are gone? If I want to harvest some berries this summer, would it be safer to keep it in the planter as it is now? Parsley Rosemary I don't know if this rosemary is dying or recovering. During winter, almost all leaves looked brown, except the bottom part of each leaf. Now I think I see more green leaves than I did in winter, so maybe it's recovering...??? It's already March. Gosh... Feels like it was only yesterday that I posted about my New Year's Day feast. It's really nice to see my little plants and feel the breath of spring, because I'm not feeling very well recently. About a week ago, I started hearing my heartbeat pretty loudly in my left ear -- not all the time, but when I was sitting quietly or lying in bed. It was as if my heart moved up to my left ear and was pounding right there. (Well, I'm exaggerating. A little.) Then it got worse every day. Yeah, it was kind of nice to be re-confirmed that my heart was diligently working, but it didn't have to be THAT often, and THAT noisy. LOL Finally one day when I was washing dishes in my kitchen, I felt as if my left ear was totally stuffed up, with terrible buzz in the ear, and I felt a little dizzy. So the next day I went to see the doctor, and there I was diagnosed with mild Meniere's syndrome. So I guess it was the right choice, after all, to quit my current jobs and move to a country to live a "slow" life. Maybe something told me to make a change even before my body gave me this warning sign. It was good that I made the decision earlier, because now I only have a few more weeks left to work and my successor is already picked and started receiving training. I think I'm lucky, after all. ;) Categories: Garden

New Owner Has Been Chosen!

A new owner of my small donabe has been chosen! :D Thank you for your interest and sorry to those who emailed me but did not get this donabe. I felt so happy to hear from you. I might do something like this again before I move out this apartment, so stay tuned! ;)

Savory Waffles...?

I tried out Mora's wine cream sauce recipe and used it on my savory waffles today. (Yeah, my waffle maker has been abused lately, hasn't it?) On the waffles, I put some slices of lemon-herb chicken with sauteed zucchini and mushrooms, then poured the sauce over them. I guess I made the sauce a little too thick. Honestly, the sauce was great with the chicken and vegetables. But I just thought... they didn't really have to be on these waffles... Then I realized that I forgot to leave out the sugar in the waffle recipe. Yeah, they were a bit too sweet for the toppings. Maybe it's better to use "savory waffles" recipe when I make something like this, and also flavor them with things like cheese or cornmeal? Oh well, there will always be the next time. ;) One progress: I managed to make the both sides of my waffles equally browned. :) Categories: Western-inspired

Look! More Moffles! -1-

Moffles with Matcha Ice Cream and Azuki An (Sweetened Azuki Bean Paste) Mentaiko (Spicy Pollock Roe) and Shiso(Green Perilla) Moffles Just a couple more experimental batches to follow my previous moffle post. To make these two types of moffles, I used thin mochi (rice cakes) and VERY thin ones. Thin rice cakes (back) and Very Thin rice cakes (front) The dessert moffle in the first photo was made by making plain moffles with the thin rice cakes and topping them with the sweets. The savory variety in the second photo was made with the very thin rice cakes called shabu-shabu mochi, with the filling being sandwiched between them. FYI, the shabu-shabu mochi is very thinly sliced and named so because it is used for a Japanese hot-pot dish called shabu-shabu. When you eat shabu-shabu, you swish thinly sliced meat or cut vegetables in boiling dashi broth a few times and dip in dipping sauce and eat immediately. To be eaten that way, the rice cake needs to be very thin so that it softens quickly. (This shows you what it looks like when eaten in shabu-shabu.) Now, here's how I made the savory, sandwich-like moffles. It's recommended to place one edge of the rice cake on that of the other one. That way, you can prevent the filling oozing out from the gap between the two rice cakes before they become soft and stick to each other. To be honest, I wasn't too impressed with the dessert moffle above. The cheap matcha ice cream didn't have a good flavor in the first place, and the moffles tasted rather bland. Besides, the moffles turned rather soggy than soft while I was taking the photos. Maybe I should have made them with the shabu-shabu mochi with the azuki an as a filling, then topped them with azuki an and ice cream. The savory version was pretty good. :D And it looked so cute with the colors of mentaiko and shiso showing through the moffle crust, like this: I have a couple more ideas of savory versions, hence more moffle posts to come. (Don't know how soon, though.) Oh I wish shabu-shabu mochi was not that expensive! *** WARNING!! *** To make moffles, here in Japan we use mochi (rice cake) made by pounding steamed glutinous rice. There is a softer type of rice cake made from mochiko (rice flour) -- the mochi used as daifuku skin. Now, I have never ever seen, heard or read about anyone in Japan making moffles using that softer mochi, and I DO NOT recommend anyone to do so because it may stick to the waffle maker and make a mess. Well, it may not -- but we don't know until someone actually gives it a try. ********************* P.S. Great news!! I finally managed to open the jars of my two-year-old cucumber pickles! Of course I'm not gonna eat 'em but so happy to have more space in the fridge and more empty jars in the cupboard... Yay!! :D Categories: Japanese

One Step At A Time

French Baguettes (My Second Try) My second time making French Baguettes based on this recipe. My twist this time was some black sesame seeds sprinkled on top. The bread tasted much better than the last time, because I had enough time to leaven the dough. But I couldn't slash the top deep enough and I was not satisfied with the way the bread looked. OK. Deeper slashing next time. ;) (I ate half of the loaf today. The rest was sliced, wrapped and put in the freezer.) Categories: Western-inspired

Soy Milk Mayonnaise

Soy Milk Mayonnaise Maybe some of you have heard of macrobiotic diet or macrobiotics? It's becoming more and more popular here in Japan. I don't know much about it at the moment, and probably would not go too deeply into it in the future, either. But macrobiotics seems to suggest many healthier substitution ideas, which I welcome very, very much. Recently I have been doing a net search on such ideas not only for myself but also for my parents who I will be cooking for in the near future. I didn't know this before, but a good number of people here in Japan are on this macrobiotic diet now and trying those substitution ideas. I bet some of the ideas make you go "Yuuuuck! But I should put up with it because it's supposed to be healthy..." and others make you give thumbs-up. It looks like yogurt in these photos, but the real color is more yellowish. Now here is this idea of using soy milk in place of egg yolks to make mayonnaise. Almost all Japanese posts about this mayonnaise I read praised it, except the ones who used olive oil. So I thought it was a right bandwagon to jump on ;) This morning, as soon as I finished breakfast, I made an experimental batch based on a recipe (Japanese) I found last night. Mmmmm.... I give a thumb up to this idea. The taste and the texture are pretty close to real mayonnaise, I think. (I used food processor to whip it up well.) When I first licked it, I thought the salt and vinegar tasted too sharp for me. But it was alright when I tried it on sliced tomatoes. Then later I found out that the idea was already popular outside Japan among vegan people, and hundreds of English recipes of "vegan mayonnaise" are out there on the net. How nice. It seems that vegetarian or vegan diet did not make a great breakthrough in Japan right after it became popular abroad, though Japanese people have been crazy about losing weight for decades. Then now, the needs of young moms with atopic kids, as well as the growing interest in the prevention of cancer or metabolic syndrome, brought macrobiotics into the spotlight, which lead to the introduction of many vegan recipes in Japan. Macrobiotics and veganism are not exactly the same, but they seem to suggest many similar recipes. I could be wrong, but to me it seems that way. And some say that the vegan diet is actually close to the common Japanese diet before the period of rapid economic growth. So now the macrobiotic chefs must be combining Western knowledge with the good traditional Japanese diet. How nice it is to be able to share the benefit through books and the Internet. :) Anyway, the experiment today was a success. The only thing was that I got so carried away that I forgot to reduce the recipe to half, and ended up with plenty of mayo. AHHHH...!!! The soy milk mayonnaise is said to keep for about two weeks in the fridge, but I don't know if I can use this up in two weeks... When I make the next batch, I might try coloring it to make it look more yellowish. No, not by using termeric. I'm thinking something less expensive... IIRC, Laura Ingalls's Ma would color her homemade butter by using grated carrots, right? I think I read that in Little House on the Prairie... or was it in Little House in the Big Woods? Anyway, I may give it a try next time. ;) P.S. * This does not sound very healthy, but I always drink or use the soy milk with additives. I don't like the taste of pure soy milk... Categories: Western-inspired

More Than Words

From Obachan to You All on Feb. 14, 2009 Often photos can say much more than words ever will. And what these photos are saying to you on this Valentine's Day is... ... that obachan failed to bake heart-shaped chocolate cupcakes and made a heart with ribbon instead. LOL Yeah, right. Those paper cups did not look firm enough at the store, but I was optimistic. Unfortunately the optimism didn't pay off, and after my cupcakes swelled up, they looked more like amoeba. :O This one in the photos was the best one (as long as you don't see the other side of it). Well, but that's not the only thing that these photos are telling you, dear readers. They have a more important message, and that is... " Have a special and romantic day with your sweetheart :) " Categories: Sweets

Daikon and Hakusai Gyoza

Daikon & Hakusai Gyoza (a recipe from "Lettuce Club" ) Another recipe from the Jan. 25, 2009 issue of Lettuce Club. It's a low-cal dish that uses thinly sliced daikon radish as gyoza (potstickers) skin and more minced hakusai (Chinese cabbage) than ground meat for the filling. Good recipe for those who can slice daikon in 3 mm thick disks or who have a vegetable slicer like this one. I loved this gyoza wrapper! :D It was crispier and probably healthier than regular dumpling skin. The only problem with this dish was having to use salt to soften the daikon wrappers and minced Chinese cabbage. I should have used less salt when seasoned the filling... My gyoza tasted just a little too salty, and probably the salt wasn't very good for my relatively high blood pressure. ------- (Added Feb. 14) Wow! I didn't think this many people would be attracted to this dish. OK. Let me add a little more information here. About daikon wrapper: You don't need to peel the daikon. Wash it well and slice it with the skin on. Spread the thin daikon disks on a flat surface and sprinkle both sides with a little salt. Sorry, I don't remember how long I waited and the recipe doesn't say anything about this... Just try folding one of them. If it folds as much as the wrappers in these photos do without breaking, it's ready. (Now the original recipe didn't say anything about this but I washed off the salt with running water when the daikon wrappers became soft enough.) Pat-dry them with paper towel. Then spread them on a flat surface and sprinkle one side with potato or corn starch using a tea strainer or something just to thinly cover the surface. This should keep the filling in the wrapper. ;) Put the filling on each wrapper and fold it. About the filling: The ingredients are ground pork, minced veggies (hakusai cabbage, green onion, ginger and garlic), salt, pepper, potato (or corn) starch, sesame oil, sake and soy sauce. The minced hakusai needs to be softened beforehand and you do this by mixing in a little salt and leaving it for a while (again, the recipe doesn't say how much salt or leave it how long). While waiting, you can mix other ingredients and seasonings in a bowl, and when the minced hakusai is soft enough, squeeze the water off it and mix in. I didn’t wash off the salt from the hakusai there and that’s why I wrote “I should have used less salt when seasoned the filling” above. Frying: And when you fry the gyoza with a little vegetable oil in a frying pan, fry both sides of the gyoza first to slightly brown them, then put a lid on the pan to sort of “steam-fry” them over low heat until the filling is done. I didn't need to add water because enough water came out from the veggies. And the best tip I can give you here is: If the filling comes out, just put it back in the wrapper! Yep, THIS is the secret. LOL ** One question. What do you call these in English? Sorry. Maybe I should give more explanation. They are not used for baking (though I assume that they could stand the heat of the oven.) They are usually used for keeping prepared food or ingredients like chopped vegetables or filleted fish or wrapped gyoza that are ready to be fried, etc. Most often we put food in them, cover with plastic food wrap and keep in the fridge. They are called "stainless vat (pronounced 'batto')" or "kitchen vat" here, but I've been wondering if the word "vat" came from English. Categories: Asian-inspired

Pickled Cherry Tomatoes

Pickled Cherry Tomatoes Some of you might remember what I wrote about my experience with cucumber pickles before. It was a little -- well, VERY -- disappointing experience. Actually it was almost traumatic, considering the amount of time I spent on the conversion. (It was an American recipe I found on the net.) Since then, I had avoided thinking about pickling again, until I saw a real tempting photo of pickled cherry tomatoes with a recipe in an old issue of a cooking magazine the other day. Isn't it amazing how photos can influence or motivate people to do something? Or maybe it's just me? I get tempted so easily... SOMETIMES (not always, I guess). Well, this time I'm really happy that I got tempted. The recipe required no conversion, the instruction was very simple and the pickles turned out oh so good, though I needed to add much more sugar than the recipe called for to suit my taste. And these pickles in the jar are so photogenic! That really counts. And you see the jar I chose this time? Hey, I'm learning... ;) Categories: Western-inspired

Tea Break

Black Sesame Seed Cookies with Green Tea The fact that I'm posting this at this time of the day means that I'm not at work this morning. Yep, I only need to work at night today, and as you can probably figure out from these photos, it's a nice, sunny day. I finished doing my laundry and now I'm going to spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon posting this and responding to the comments to my blog. And these cookies are the munchies to accompany the green tea while I'm sitting in front of my laptop. These are supposed to be healthy, guilt-free, low-cal cookies with no eggs or dairy products used. The recipe is here (Japanese) if you're interested, and all the ingredients are just flour, sugar, black sesame seeds, salt and canola oil. Healthy, isn't it? But when I first tried out this recipe, I thought these cookies were a little too crumbly. And though I liked the simple taste of sugar and sesame seeds with the salt as an accent, I couldn't help feeling that I'd rather add one more ingredient -- something to harmonize the sweetness, saltiness and sesame flavor. So what I chose as a relatively healthy solution was adding a little soy milk. I think it was not a bad idea, though not the best. Next time I might add less amount of soy milk and substitute the sugar with maple syrup. Oh, BTW, this mat in these photos is the one I made myself at the weaving workshop years ago. (Actually, 2005.) Categories: Sweets

Whole Wheat Waffles With Beer!

Whole Wheat Waffles with Beer Added Yep, I tried Mora's advice of adding some beer to the waffle batter. Unfortunately I didn't have enough beer to substitute half of the liquid with it -- because I bought only one can yesterday and drank most of it with the meal last night :P -- but the small amount I used today did make a difference. I didn't smell much of the beer while baking, but it made the texture fluffier (airier?) and flavor richier to make my waffles special this morning. Mmmmm..... Thanks, Mora! My next step seems to be improving my waffle-baking skill so that both sides turn out equally brown. This waffle maker is the kind that you place on gas stove and turn over when one side is done. I LOVE it because it bakes waffles much faster than electric ones, but I guess I should bake one side a little longer than the other, and need some practice to find the perfect timing. Categories: Sweets

... And Look, Moffles!!

Moffles made with mochi (rice cakes) from an outdoor event in my hometown Gosh I really want to thank the person who invented this stuff! Moffle is a word made by combining mochi (rice cakes) and waffle, and what it is is rice cakes baked in a waffle maker. I had herad a lot about it, and been curious about it. Now today, after making the waffles in the above post, I decided to go for this moffle thing, too, to satisfy my curiosity. Luckily, I didn't have to go out and buy some mochi; I had two of them from the outdoor tea ceremony event in my hometown last Sunday. In Japanese rural areas, people still keep the traditional custom of throwing rice cakes to celebrate happy occasions, and they did that at the event. (Atually in my hometown, it's becoming popular to throw things like packed sweets and instant ramen noodles in addition to mochi. Is it the same in other areas in Japan?) Anyway, I had these two rice cakes on hand: The Chinese characters mean "Celebration." I was a bit worried that these may be too thick, and thought about microwaving them beforehand. But I thought, "Oh, what the heck," and put them on the bottom of the waffle maker and closed it. Of course, it didn't close. But as the rice cakes softened, the top iron of the waffle maker gradually came down and finally completely closed. I didn't know exactly how long I was supposed to bake and was worried about burning them, so I lifted up the top several times to check on them. First, the rice cakes were flat disks and the center looked still raw. But after I turned over the waffle maker and baked some more, they started making noise. (It was the sound of heated air inside the mochi coming out.) Then they started spreading out, filling out the iron and then -- believe it or not -- started pushing up the top! And finally, I got these two square-shaped, airy moffles!! :D I found some leftover anko (sweetened azuki bean paste) in the freezer, microwaved it to make it a little runny and topped my first moffles with it. Boy, the moffles were crispy on the outside, airy but chewy and sticky rice-cake texture still remaining on the inside. And unlike baked rice cakes, moffles didn't turn hard after they were cooled. Well, they did turn a little hard, but not as much as regular rice cakes, so grandpas and grandmas with bad teeth wouldn't have a problem. They didn't stick to the iron at all, and looked like it was very hard to burn them. I thought I baked them quite a while, but they didn't even turn brown. Next time I'm going to buy some thin rice cakes for mochi-shabu and make moffle sandwich with mentaiko(pollock roe) and shiso (green perilla) inside. Or cheese, pizza sauce and sausage version? Yum!! *** WARNING!! (added Feb. 11, 2009) *** The rice cakes we usually use here in Japan to make moffles are the ones made by pounding steamed glutinous rice. There is a softer type of rice cake made from mochiko (rice flour) -- you know, the mochi used as daifuku skin. I have never ever seen, heard or read about anyone in Japan making moffles using that softer mochi, and I DO NOT recommend anyone to do so because it may stick to the waffle maker real badly and make a mess. Well, it may not -- but we don't know until someone actually gives it a try. ********************* Categories: Japanese

Testing, Testing!!

Photo from summer, 2007 Hey, I'm at my parents' house now, testing the Internet connection with the data card! Good news! The connection is slower than ADSL but faster than ISDN, and seems pretty stable in this countryside where there's no railroad, no construction works and no tall buildings. :D So far I've tried browsing some websites with many photos, downloading Java (for checking the transmission speed), watching Obama's inauguration speech on ABC news online, ordering some books on Amazon, and watching Youtube. All went OK except Youtube, and the speed was not as slow as I had expected. The Youtube movie I tried to see completely froze, though the connection itself didn't die. ABC news was much better, though it did pause from time to time... But it came back after 20 to 30 seconds and reached the end, so I should be happy. Now the last thing to try today is uploading a photo to my blog. If you see this post with a photo on, you know that I'm going to go for the data card. ;) Oh, BTW, I took this photo when I made cucumber pickles in 2007. The reason why I didn't post about them was... uh... after canning, I closed the screw-top lid too tight and couldn't open the jar when I wanted to eat the pickles... So the jar is still in my fridge, unopened. :P OK. Let's see if the photo would be posted alright. Categories: Miscellaneous

Hakusai (Chinese Cabbage) Soup

Hakusai (Chinese Cabbage) Soup Inspired by a cooking magazine, "Lettuce Club" I seldom buy cooking magazines, because they are rather expensive but usually all I want is just one (or two at the most) recipe(s) per magazine. But when I visited my parents' house the other day, I got to the train station too early in the morning and I needed something to kill time. So I chose this latest issue (Jan. 25, 2009) of "Lettuce Club," hoping to find some good ideas to use up hakusai (Chinese cabbage) which I often end up wasting some. What caught my eyes in this soup recipe was the interesting combination of soup seasonings: instant Chinese chicken soup stock, miso (fermented soybean paste), soy milk, grated garlic, sesame seeds and red pepper. But when I actually tasted the soup, I found it a little too much for me... I'd like it much lighter. Maybe less garlic or less soy milk next time? The idea of putting meat between the layers of the cabbage was really nice, I would say. (Too bad, the above photo doesn't show much of the meat. I used ground pork.) I ate up a quater of hakusai at once and wanted more, even though the soup was not my favorite. Tomorrow night I'm going to visit my hometown again to try the data card there and to help mom with another tea ceremony event. Wish me luck.

Yeah, Adventures!

Obachan's First Homemade Waffles! (with homemade strawberry jam) Too bad it's raining today and I couldn't get lovely morning sunshine for this waffle photo. But it was real fun to make waffles! Yeah, I just bought what they call "Belgian waffle maker" here the other day and used it for the first time this morning. See? I have started preparing for my move already. I'm doing as much online shopping as possible while I'm here in Kochi city. I know. You want to say, "Wait a minute. You can do online shopping in your hometown, too, can't you?" One thing is that the delivery guy there is, IIRC, my younger sister's ex classmate in elementary school or something, and I don't want him to think that I'm addicted to online shopping. :P But more serious reason is that I may not have a very comfortable Internet access in my hometown. When I made the decision to move to my hometown, I naively assumed that I would be able to have the same broad-band service there. I checked the area-coverage of the service on their website, and found that my hometown was the area for an even faster Internet connection. Yay! But just to be safe, I checked it with the local phone company that actually takes care of the phone lines. Then they told me that I couldn't have that service because of some problem with the line. A substitute line could solve the problem, they said, but there's no vacancy. AHHHHHH!!! Other broad-band services do not cover my hometown, and seems like the obsolete (I would say) connection called ISDN is the only choice! AHHHHHH!!! Give me a break. What can I do with only 64Kbps?! So, frantically I did some net search, only to find that this is a common problem in most countryside in Japan. If it's a REAL small village in the middle of mountains, the situation is better because they have cable TV network which also provides Internet service. But there are countless young or middle-aged Japanese who have moved (or are going to move) to rural areas with no cable service, and totally stressed out with ISDN and crying out for a broad-band service. It's so stupid. The government encourages young people to move into the country so that the areas won't be depopulated and elderly folks there won't be abandoned, but is so reluctant to provide them with decent Internet environment! It's crucial! Actually some people are gathering petition signatures to make the situation better. Anyway, knowing that other people also have cold doesn't cure your cold, and I have to find a possible alternative -- something faster than ISDN. After some more frantic net search, I learned that now I can insert some data card(?) from a cell phone company into my PC and use the Internet with a flat-rate plan. I know the real speed I would get in my hometown would be FAR less than the "best-effort" speed they advertise. But anything faster than ISDN would do! So this morning, after enjoying the waffles, I went to a cell phone shop and asked about the above mentioned service. There is no way to find out beforehand how it would work in my hometown, but they said they would lend me the card and let me keep it for a week to bring it there and actually try it out. How nice. :D OK. I'm going to do it this coming Sunday. Coming back to the waffles. Oh, I really, really loved making waffles. The moment I opened the waffle maker and saw the golden brown waffles! And when they were easily removed from the iron without sticking to it at all! I almost jumped with joy. Life does give me challenges, but it doesn't forget to give me fun, too. :) Maybe buckwheat or whole wheat waffles next time. Categories: Sweets

Taking a New Step Forward

As many of you probably know, I didn't have a chance to visit my parents on New Year's day this year, because I had to work. To make up for that, and also to help mom with the first tea ceremony meeting of the year (and possibly help dad a little with picking oranges) I stayed at my parents' house for two days. For the tea ceremony event, looks like mom tried to do more than she could handle, as usual, and obviously got things done without getting any sleep the night before. I helped her with serving these kaiseki dishes to mom's students who showed up that day and dishwashing while they practiced tea ceremony after the kaiseki meal. Helping my parents with chores was not the only reason why I visited them. This time I wanted to talk more seriously about when would be the good time for me to move in with them. Now let me give you a little explanation on the situation around here. Perhaps you might have heard that Japan is "the most rapidly aging country" in the world? In this country where apx. one out of four people will be over 65 y.o. by 2015, putting parents in old people's homes is not a very practical choice any more. There is no way that enough number of facilities can be built and maintained to meet all the needs. Besides, it costs too much to use such a service, and even if you had money, there's a waiting list at every facility, and waiting time could get longer and longer because people live longer now and more so in the future. So, if you hear about/see young, healthy and totally physically capable Japanese adults living with their parents in this 21st century, please do not be judgemental. It's not that they're still bound by the old tradition of "children MUST take care of their parents" or too immature to be independent from their parents. A lot of times, it's the only practical choice -- especially when the economy is down like this. And the government is trying hard to come up with a decent system to support the home care for the elderly. A while ago, I had agreed to go back to my hometown to live with parents. The only question left was when. I used to think that it could wait until one of them gets really sick and needs nursing care, but recently I had a second thought. I asked myself, "What are the things that I would have to give up completely if I moved to my hometown?" And the answer was -- "Nothing." Really. I can continue almost everything I'm doing here now even after I move in with my parents, with some adjustments and modifications, of course. My hometown is in the middle of nowhere, but I can get any information or buy anything via the Internet. The job opportunity used to be better in a bigger city, but look at the jobs I have here now: dishwashing and part-time office work at a language school. Such jobs are available in my hometown, too. Then, if there's no reason why I've got to live in Kochi city definitely, my living here alone and paying my rent and utilities is just a waste, isn't it? If I live with my parents, such expenses will be saved. And actually there would be some advantages for me in my hometown as well as drawbacks. When I want leaves and berries to garnish my dishes, I won't have to steal them at night; in my hometown, they're available everywhere. When I want to go fishing, the ocean is right there -- only 2 minutes by walk! The sight of blue sky and blue ocean, the sound of waves ... those things I loved so much in childhood and have craved for so long ... they'll be there with me every single day. If there's no reason why I have to live away from them, why not go back to them. Yeah, why not? So, dear readers. I've decided to quit my current jobs in a few months and move back to my hometown sometime in 2009 (before summer, maybe?). I'm going to close this "Obachan's Kitchen and Balcony Garden" then, and start a new blog to let you know how I live my life in the real countryside. Oh, I'm so excited! :D Categories: Japanese