What is the most popular way of cooking eggs in your country? Scrambled? Sunny-side
up? Omelet? In Japan,
it is tamagoyaki, which is an egg rolled like this. I guess you must’ve eaten or seen such
egg rolls at sushi or soba restaurants. To make egg rolls, you need a square omelet
pan. Here is a recipe and below is a video of how to make it. You can
change the flavor if you want, I like sweet ones so I add a lot of sugar.
By
the way, Nifty Portal Z had a post about cooking a big egg
roll that looks like Baumkuchen. Looks yummy! Baumkuchen is very popular in
Japan
and Nifty Portal Z also had this post: homemade
Baumkuchen cooked using bamboo!
BaselWorldis a watch and jewelry trade show already. This video was made by Japanese watch maker CITIZEN and played in their booth last year. The video's name is "Infinity", it's an image of growing and changing Tokyo.
As a Tokyo and Japan video, this was an interesting one, "This is Japan", that was made by Canadian tourist. The video tells well which parts of Japan are interesting, beautiful, exotic for foreign people.
I didn't know Dekotora (decorated truck) and Dekochari (decorated bike) are in Wikipedia for English as they are in Japanese. Satoshi Minawaka is a photographer and here are his photos of Dekotora and Decochari. And you can find more on google image, there are Dekotora of India or Pakistan. They will have such a culture too.
Did I wrote about "Okosama Lunch" before? If you are a big anime fan, you know the word as Lupin the third's anemy, but originally okosama lunch meant the kid's menu in a restaurant that Mitsukoshi department store added to their restaurant menu as a "western food plate for children" in 1930s, then it spread out to other restaurants with common features later that kids will love it! I checked foreign restaurant menus but I can't find any common parts of them. So I guess okosama lunch is a unique food custom of Japan.
Generally okosama lunch is a one plate dish on a compartment plate. As the main dish, there is hamburg or fried chicken or such things kids like. Rice is served like a mountain, and on top of the mountain is a national flag (it's not always a Japanese one). Here are image results of Google. You can see those features. In Japan Denny's has such a type of kids plate too. By the way, usually restaurants set an age limit for okosama lunch ( I read okosama lunch has thin margins because it requires more time to cook) but in okay places, women who can't eat a lot or people on a diet eat okosama lunch. If you come to Japan with kids, please try it, I guess they will like it! By the way, Is this okosama lunch. No they are USB hub and USB memories Cute, aren't they?
At the nifty Z, one guy who loves that meat and cup noodles, went to the museum and made his dream-come-true before that meat was gone. He chose meat, meat and meat as topping and ate meat cup noodles, and also he made a lunch box with that meat. Ha ha ha, I don't need it, but I want to make my original cup noodles! It'll be fun.
When you visit Japan, unfortunately you can get tired of Japanese food during a long stay. Saizeriya will help you, it's an Italian TYEP japanese restaurant. You can eat pasta, pizza, and other foods of Italian taste at a very cheap price. Pizza is $4, Pasta is $5. I won't say they are Italian, I will say they are Japanese food with an Italian taste, but at least you can enjoy something else but Japanese :-) Since they are a chain shop, you can find it when you need non-Japanese food.
"Modern Samurai" Iso Machii cut through a pellet fired from a gun
at 70 mph using only his samurai sword. Look at this video, it's great! He’s like
Goemon
Ishikawa.
Last weekend, I read the news that Food & Wine magazine picked Tokyo as its top city for
cutting edge cuisine.I am happy that I am living
in the best gourmet city in the world. If you want to try a luxury restaurant, please
check out Michelin Tokyo 2009. I will pick some of my suggestions for
Japanese restaurants. This
site helps me a lot.
Sushi: "Bikkuri
zushi." Bikkuri zushi is a chain sushi restaurant and they have two
types of places. Kaiten zushi type and counter type. I recommend the counter
type place.
Okinawan food: Churari. Here is the review for the Harajuku shop, but I
like to go to the Ebisu one.
Tempura: It's a chain restaurant, but I think that Tsuna hachi is good place
to eat real tempura.
Shabu Shabu: Shabu Shabu is usually expensive so it’s hard to get full, so maybe
this isn’t the best choice, but at least you can eat as much as you want so I
will pick this place: mo-mo-paradise
I read this last year's article "Go Go Curry Brings Japan's Authentic Comfort Food to NYC". Have you ever been to Go Go curry? (Now I remember I picked "Go Go curry goes NY" in my blog too.) He loves Japanese curry so much! He will go crazy if Coco Ichban or C&C Curry Shop go to the U.S too. However it is very easy to cook Japanese curry, like this recipe, what you need it Japanese curry paste. And you will get it at a Japanese shop or Asian super market easily. There are no rules and you can arrange it by yourself. You can add some tofu, green onion, mushroom, apple or pine apple (such fruits can match too). However, because of that, the curry can be deep and different in each shop and home. For example, here are two videos, one is an American guy cooking Japanese curry and another is Japanese lady. Both look pretty good to me. How about my curry? I add chopped and well-cooked brown onion, I prefer chicken without skin as meat, I choose the hottest paste. The point is, curry gets more tasty the next day after cooking.
I watched the Japanese TV drama "The Quiz Show" this weekend. It is a low cost, late night program, but it was good to kill my time. There are some episodes with English subtitles in that site. If you have time, check it out.
In the Kyushu area, Cherry blossoms have started to bloom. Maybe in Tokyo, people will have Ohanami next weekend. Here are crazy Ohanami costume items....orz
Japanese cosmetic company Kanebo had an old compact collection and they showed their collection in this site. Old compacts are beautiful and have a good mood.
Telegraph UK picked "Top 10 'inventions' that changed the world". They picked Sony walkman and Sony Play Station, but I think Nintendo Family computer had much more impact than Play Station. Why did they choose two Sony products instead of picking Nintendo? Hmm, suspicious.
Have you ever seen a wasabi plant? I mean real wasabi, not the tube type. In expensive Soba places they serve small wasabi plants and we grate them before we eat. Wasabi's acridity is changed by way of grating, nifty portal Z had such a topic today. She got a wasabi plant and cut, chopped and grated by shark skin and regular grater, and compared to regular tube type wasabi. She said cut and chopped wasabi is really fresh and it's not too acrid, very nice. And it differs from tuna's part too, fatty tuna (we say Toro) reduces the acridity. She realized tube wasabi is the most acrid and it doesn't have any freshness.
I read a "Neko Manma for adults recipe book" is quite a popular now. Neko Manma(web translated) means cat's meal basically. Now pet lovers will give pet food to their lovely cat, though before we gave just the rest of our meal or made very simple food from our cooking ingredients. However, such simple foods are very delicious, right? So we call such foods Neko Manma (image of Google search by Neko manma) and eat at home sometimes.
But now people will look for variations of Neko manma recipes or at least they have interest in that. Maybe people are trying to save food money by Neko Manma. Putting Katsuobushi and soy sauce (or mayo) as a topping on rice is basic Neko manma. But we don't have any standard, actually my family called rice mixed with miso soup Neko manma. In that book, there are various Neko manma recipes, some look very good, some look weird to me. Neko manma for adult recipe book Half boiled egg, green onion and mayo with soy sauce :It looks pretty good. It will be delicious. Tuna and mayo : This can't be bad at any rate. I will add some cucumbers too. Miso soup with salmon : This is close to my family Neko manma. :-) I love the potato and onion miso soup one. Sticky food with raw egg with soy sauce : I would love this, natto, okura (gumbo), such sticky foods are perfect combinations to me. Potato chips with mayo on rice : Hmmm, I may try but I can't imagine how it is. Rice with cup noodle soup: Hmmmmmm. I don't need this. I guess you can try and make your original Neko manma. Simple is best and it can work for your saving money.
When you eat sushi, which one do
you like most? Nigiri? Chirashi? Roll? Inari? I like Nigiri most but I like Oshizushi very much too. Oshizushi means push sushi. You
put some sushi rice and usually add pickled fish on the top in the mold and
push them together. The rice has to be a little bit harder though I feel more umami of fish
than regular nigiri. The most popular oshizushi is this masuno suhi
（pickled salmon). It has to be sold out soon when Ekiben event is held at department stores.
Since we need the mold and it's
troublesome to cook pickled fish, usually we don't cook oshizushi at home. But
I realized that a mold will be useful because of this nifty portal Z
post. She cooked oshizushi with regular fish, not pickled one. Like she
said, I think it would be good and actually it is easy to cook more than nigiri
or roll and you can enjoy sushi without nori easily. And I
like her other idea, cooked meat, tuna flake and mayo, anything you can push
with rice so that they are the same as square onigiri and it can be a good
lunch.
This is the movie of employees of Sony making a message with "Post-Its" on their head office window to support the Japan soccer team in the World Cup Asian Qualifying.
Tomorrow is Valentine day. Like I wrote before I really hate the Japanese Giri choco habit on Valentine day. I won't say I don't like to send gifts to somebody who I like. I don't want to send any gift without my heart. By the way, what chocolate is the most familiar one to you since you were kid? Here is a ranking of "what is your familiar chocolate" in Japan.
You will know that Meiji and Morinaga are the biggest chocolate makers in Japan from the ranking. Meiji has a real chocolate shop 100% chocolate cafe in Ginza and sells their special chocolate there. This is a monthly pack so that you can enjoy different tastes of chocolate every day in a month. They set a theme of the month, like February was strawberry and March is fruits. So you can enjoy differences on days in a year. I want one but March chocolate was sold out already. This is 56 chocolates you can buy on online. They say the best selling one is number 26 wasanbon that is rich sugar used for Japanese sweets. Anyway my best chocolate is 99% of cacao. I really love bitter chocolate.
Wow, I didn't know that this is a unique item of Japan. "The so called "Braille Block" (Tenji Block), invented in Japan, designed to guide the blind people in the streets and public facilities."
Do you order foods from online shops often? I order sometimes, I did motsunabe last week, I order Shochu often too. In Japan, buying foods from online shops is so popular, I guess it will be related to varieties of local foods too. Ordering foods from online shops is called "Otori yose". Otoriyose net is a well known site where people can exchange information about the food they order and ate. You can see what foods Japanese order and eat at home. This is sweets page, I was attracted to this cheese cake.>Ah, it looks so soft. This is the page of Japanese sweets. This is warabi mochi and one of my favorite sweets, it looks so good to me, but maybe not to you :-)(what is warabi mochi?). They pick the most popular foods in 2008 in this page. This one is Ichigo Daifuku (strawberry coverd by mochi). This one is nikumaki onigiri (meat wrapped rice ball), it's Miyazaki pref special. This is Tiramisu roll cake, etc. etc.
