Soba at Okuizumo

I drove to Okuizumo City with my wife yesterday. We visited an old temple to watch an old ginkgo tree in the morning. After that, we had lunch at a soba restaurant. The city has lots of good soba restaurants and at that time, they held Soba Festival there. 

The first Sobaya we visited was so crowded. They said that we had to wait two hours, so we moved to another sobaya. When we arrived the next one, there was about ten people waiting for a table. That was not so bad. 

We had nice soba there. I think we should go other sobayas another day. 

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                        にほんブログ村

At a Lawyer's Office

I went to a lawyer's office today. I've been involved someone's financial problem, but I might be ok. 

After the interview, the lawyer and I talked about sea food. We were agreed that sea food in ryokans are not good. They usually use farmed fish for their dishes. They might look nice, but do not taste good. 

If you want to have a good sea food dish, you should go to local private-run restaurants. That's for sure. 

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                        にほんブログ村

Eel, Unagi

It's been hot recently. On a days like this hot, Japanese people including me often want to eat unagi or eel. On 24th July and 5th August this year are called "Ushi no hi" or the day eating eel. 

I really want to have una-don now. But the cost is quite expensive recently because the resource of eels have been reducing these days. To protect the resource, should we stop to eat eel?

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Bakeries

Bakeries are everywhere in my town. It looks like between every corner has a bakery. Some popular bread shops are really crowded even right after its opening. 

When I was a kid, there were few bakeries here. They would make only simple and old Japanese style breads, like Shoku-pan, An-pan or cream-pan. I liked An-doughnuts the best. 

Now there are so many kinds of breads in the shops and they are very beautiful and delicious. 

I sometimes enjoy buying breads in bakeries and eat for coffee break. It adds some fat on my belly recently. That's a problem. 

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Ramen

The temperature is getting lower and lower today. It will snow tonight.  

To get warm ourself, I made ramen for my family at lunchtime. The ramen I made was lots of vegetables and pork on it. Sliced pork and onion, cabbage, carrot and bean sprouts played a great role for the better taste of the ramen. 

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Boycott Campaign on Winter Olympics

I happen to read an article about dog meat. An animal protection group is against the Winter Olympics in Korea and has held a boycott campaign because Korean people eat dog meat.

They said an estimated 2.5 million dogs are slaughtered and eaten as health food each year in Korea. In addition they import millions of dog meat from China. This kind of anti campaigns were held some times before, 1988 Olympics and 2002 FIFA World Cup. 

I really like dogs as pets, so the article is disgusting to me. It's easy to criticize the custom, but come to think of it, we couldn't. 

You might eat beef, pork, chicken and even some Japane eat whale meat. What's the difference? Even abandoned pets are killed in many advanced countries. 

You cannot live on without taking in living things. You mustn't forget the fact. 

But dogs....

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Takenoko, Bamboo Shoots

My mother gave me some boiled bamboo shoots, or takenoko in Japanese, today. It was the first takenoko this year.

My mother lives in a rural area that has bamboo forests. Many residents go into bamboo forests and get bamboo shoots for their meal or gift for neighbors. When my mother comes home, she often finds abandoned bamboo shoots in the entrance during this season. It's a gift from nature and neighbors.

Cow Brains

I talked with an American friend today. When we taked about food, he said that his parents used to eta cow brains but they stopped to eat that because of BSE issue. My friend haven't eaten cow brains but he said it was popular in these days.

I posted that on Twitter and an American Twitter friend replayed he's never seen anyone eat cow brains. He said eating cow brains is a kind of regional dish. 

Atsukan

The cold weather is getting back. It was warm a few days ago. On a day like this I'd like to have at sultan, hot sake, with oden. Oden is a kind of Japanese stew.

Fortunately, today's dinner is oden. Sorry, I'll give up to studying English tonight and drink atsukan. It'll be great! See you!

KFC for Christmas in Japan

Perhaps many Americans would be surprised at a Japanese tradition at Christmas. Eating KFC at Christmas is popular among Japanese. KFC, of course, is the American fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC started the tradition in 1974 with a successfuladvertising campaign.
The catchphrase of the marketing campaign was ‘Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!’ (Kentucky for Christmas!) The copy hit with Japanese people and many people thought eating KFC or chicken was an American custom and seemed ultra cool.
Another tradition is eating a cake decorated with strawberries at Christmas. I'm not sure when it started but maybe because of a Christmas campain that some sweets shop did.

Celebrate my son

My family had yakitori for dinner to selebrate my older son's acceptance for prefectural government employment tonight. He is a high school student but he doesn't want to go to college. He likes studying but doesn't like study for school. In fact, he has poor school record. Actually his record was second to the last. He studied only for the employment test since he was freshman at high school. That was all his decision. I really proud of him and my family had a wonderful time together.

How to buy fish at fish markets

I’ll tell you about the auctions at local fish markets.
Only people who has the rights to buy at the fish market can take part in the fish auction. Fifty to 100 buyers from places like local fish shops or super markets come to buy fish at the markets every morning.
When you find some fish worth buying, you have to show the price you decided to the auctioneer with the secret hand sign and the person who offers the highest price can buy the fish.

A little about my city

I live in Matsue, Shimane prefecuture. The population here is 150,000 so Matsue is not a big city. You can easily find convinience stores but we have NO starbucks here until this year. Because of the few population we don't have good pubric transportation. Many adults own a car even very old person.
 Here, we have the sixth largest lake in Japan, called Lake Shinji. The lake is famous for beautiful sunsets and yamato shijimi, a kind of clam, and its water is brackish.
Matsue also faces the Japanese sea. Many kinds of fresh fish are sold at local fish markets. You can eat tasty sashimi or other sea products here.
Our city has a 400-year-old Japanese style castle called Matsue-jo. This castle is the second largest, the third tallest (30m) and the sixth oldest one in Japan. You can tour the inside of the castle and see the whole city from the top floor. In Spring, you can see beautiful cheree blossoms there.
If you like tasty sea food and are interested in old Japanese castles, why don't you come here!