Strolling through the neighborhood recently, I came across this beauty:
I was able to ask the store clerk for the plant’s name, and let me tell you, it’s awesome. Anyone else know it?
Let’s make it interesting — if you think you know the name of this plant, leave your guess in the comments. If anyone comes up with the right answer, I’ll send you a little something crazy from Tokyo. Sorry, it won’t be this plant, because it was expensive. Consider that your first hint.
If a whole few of you get it right, I’ll come up with some sort of random drawing to select a winner. Let’s say you have until Thursday morning-ish, USA time (that’s Thursday evening-ish Japan time). Good luck!
Yesterday I attended my second sashiko class at Blue & White (you can read about my first class here and more about sashiko here). I was a little hesitant to go — though I had a lovely time last month, the class is a bit expensive and the question-and-answer format is not ideal, considering I can’t ask a question in Japanese, let alone understand the response. But I went, figuring it would be my last for a while.
When I arrived three other women were already at the table, and another followed me into the shop. All of them seemed to know each other, and were quite lively with their greetings. I was able to contribute a little はじめまして (nice to meet you), and we all sat down.
The class quickly devolved into a series of show-and-tells, each woman showing off her sashiko to the others. It was fun to see all their different projects — two were working on table coverings, one was free-hand stitching a Christmas tree, and another pulled about 10 (yes, 10!) projects out of her bag. Fortunately, complete awe is a universal language, and we all nodded in admiration as each project came to the table. Later, the shop’s owner joined us. She translated for me a bit, and explained the ladies were joking about some of their uneven sashiko lines — some done before nap time and others after.
As I went to leave, I gave each woman a bow and a thank you. I’d had a lovely time yet again, and decided perhaps the class was worth the price of admission, if only to spend a few hours giggling with other 主婦 (housewives). Then they sent me on my way — with lunch! That’s right, one of ladies actually gave me her homemade rice and sweet potato lunch. Perhaps she was trying to entice me back, or more likely she felt sorry for me and thought I needed a home-cooked meal. There may have been something lost in translation, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t steal her lunch. She gave it to me! Whatever the case, I was completely touched, and went home feeling a little choked up. Maybe I’ll have to check out the November class after all.
A Tokyo local and interested in the sashiko class? They’re held monthly at Blue & White, 2-9-2 Azabu juban, Minato-ku, tel. 03 3451 0537
Kare raisu カレーライス is Japanese style curry rice, and my new favorite make-at-home meal.
Though somewhat unknown outside of Japan, curry rice is a common dish in these parts. Introduced by the British during the Meiji era (1869–1913), Japanese style curry rice is like Indian curry, though a few steps (colonizations?) removed. It has a rich curry flavor, though is not spicy and usually includes a hint of sweetness. Curry rice can be made with any sort of meat and vegetable combo, though beef or pork with a hearty stock of potatoes and carrots is most common.
I love kare raisu, and eat it more than I’d like to admit. It’s a sort of comfort food, like mac and cheese in the United States: it’s warm, filling, and something you can count on to taste good (enough). It has become my go-to when I encounter a menu I can’t fully read, never mind the fact that I usually end up with a giant plate of fried pork in brown sauce, and look around to discover it is the man’s meal of choice. All the other women (and Dan) have beautiful plates of fish, while me and the boys go for the put-some-meat-on-those-bones meat… but I digress.
Curry rice is actually quite simple to make, so I decided it was time to try it out for myself — cook up some meat and vegetables and add my choice of curry roux, which come in blocks and can be picked up at the local grocery store. Easy, right?
Uh, right. That’s an entire aisle at the supermarket dedicated to curry roux (a comparison of some of them here). After a little more research, I discovered that most of those packages contain a lot of stuff I’m not so interested in ingesting, such as sodium and MSG. It was time to learn how to make my own curry roux, from scratch.
Because the Internet is amazing, I found this video which made the entire process a breeze. (Thanks, Matsumoto-san!)
First step, gather the ingredients. Don’t you love it when vegetables play together so nicely?
Those of you with a keen eye will notice that yes, I bought discounted meat. What can I say? It had カレー (curry) written right on the package, and I was pretty sure it was pork, so the deal was done. I picked up S&B brand curry powder and tonkatsu とんかつ sauce (a brown sauce sort of like Worcestershire, you may remember it from here) because I have no brand loyalty and I like their logo (I guess now I have brand loyalty), and eventually the flour was identified by the flowers on the package — not to be confused with the flowers on the sunflower oil, please!
Next, I’d like you to observe how this simple little dish completely maxed out my kitchen space. One burner for meat, one burner for roux, one hand for mixing, one hand for photo-ing…
After achieving a golden roux, I added the curry powder, tonkatsu sauce and cayenne (I like a little spicy) to the mix and set it aside. I have to say, at this point I was questioning the deliciousness of my made-from-scratch meal:
In the one other pot I own, I simultaneously sauteed onions, browned the meat, added carrots and water, and brought it all to a boil. After a while, in went the potatoes, an apple, and more curry powder. The apartment finally started to smell like the kare raisu I know and love:
After about 30 minutes, in went the roux and some frozen peas, and voila! My homemade curry:
My curry rice was thicker than some, but I didn’t mind. And though it didn’t photograph well, I thought the comforting effect was spot-on.
Again, a big thanks to Matsumoto-san at No Recipes for his handiwork. Check out the link if you are interested in making your own curry rice. いただきます!
In the wake of my tiradepie-rade the other day, I couldn’t resist a little of this:
While wandering through my friendly neighborhood craft store Yuzawaya, I came across the make-cute-things-out-of-felt aisle. Usually able to resist its powerful magnetic pull, this time I fell victim and I came home with a sweet little kit of my very own. I blame the pie.
I haven’t yet delved into too many Japanese craft kits (and there are many! glass, wood, felt, wool, paper, plastic… hobbies are serious business) but figured I could handle this one — just cut the felt into shapes and stitch it together like in the photograph. Right,piece of cake, er, I mean easy as pie.
I should know better than to trust my own clichés! As anyone who has made a pie knows, pate brisee is not easy (damn you, ice cold butter chunks that make it impossible to roll you into a flat pie crust shaped circle!). I opened the kit this morning, and the pieces are teeeny. I don’t think I can cut them that small, let alone stitch them into something smaller. Apparently my big Norwegian hands are not well-suited for cute felt things.
Also, I forgot that there might be directions to follow, and that they would be in Japanese. What can I say, pie + crafts make me crazy.
A few weeks ago I gushed about my new favorite form of needlework, sashiko. Since then, my stabby little fingers have been busy: I finished up one project, started two more, and attended my first sashiko class. Whew, what a busy Stab-tember!
Thanks for all the great suggestions on what to do with my finished shippo tsunagi 七宝つなぎ. I think it’s destined to become part of a bigger whole, but I don’t have the heart to hide it in a closet until then. And so, a quick stitch into a pillow case seemed like a good interim solution.
Careful there, clothes can make things difficult for a hen.
With one finished piece under my belt, I felt pretty good about going into my first sashiko class. And it was great! Conducted entirely in Japanese, it was just a few women sitting around a table, with the sensei directing us individually whenever we needed help. I spent most of my class time listening to the other women in the room chatter, and surprisingly picked up more of their conversations than I thought I could. I guess my limited vocabulary of mostly craft terms helped me, for once.
I came home with a new project in hand, a small table covering decorated with teacups. The biggest difference about my new project is that it is not printed directly onto the fabric, but is instead traced on using white carbon paper. The indigo fabric and thread were also much better quality, and when I got home I discovered my fingers were a wonderful shade of blue from the dyes.
The needle is also much smaller than the one I picked up at the craft store during my first week here, though much sharper and I think perhaps I prefer it. I signed up for the October class, so I’ll be sure to keep you up-to-stab!
A Tokyo local and interested in the sashiko class? They’re held monthly at Blue & White, 2-9-2 Azabu juban, Minato-ku, tel. 03 3451 0537
A few people have commented that our new lives seem totally hunky dory, filled with nothing but fantastic foods and twinkling LEDs. Well, those are just the parts that are fun to share. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about my new state of non-employment. But moving to a new place is hard, especially when you suddenly find yourself in the grocery store and completely illiterate.
While making my to-do list this morning, it occurred to me that perhaps some of you would be interested to hear how I spend my time. So, with a bit of commentary, here is my list for today:
Laundry – check!
This entails a bike ride, with laundry bag strapped to my back, to a nearby laundromat. I have no idea what cycle, water temperature, speed the machine is using, I just plop in my coins and push the big orange button. Most of the clothes then hang dry in our bathroom, where there is a special wet t-shirt button on the exhaust fan.
Buy weird spray deodorant – check!
I snapped a photo so you can see what I’m working with. It is really hard to find deodorant, I’ve been to 5 places already (I found Dan some imported Speed Stick and it cost me $8). Finally, I discover these spray cans. I have no idea what they mean, so I pick blue hoping it is the least fruity/flowery. Hopefully it’s not blueberry.
Update – consider this a victory! Though my armpits are tingling, is that bad?
Clean apartment – check!
I do this often, perhaps because our apartment is teeeeny and stuff accumulates. Luckily the process takes me approximately 3 minutes. This includes sweeping up the small animal hair I shed everyday. Yeah, gross, but it’s hot and I’m a mammal, dammit.
Pick up groceries for dinner – check!
In an effort to save some yen, I make dinner at home most nights and we save eating-out for the weekends. I have become an expert at wandering the aisles of the 6 groceries stores and 2 produce stands within biking distance of our neighborhood. I usually avoid the “international” grocery store, though it does have a basket of dented produce in the back for cheap. Yep, I’m that girl buying the ugly peppers. The time of day I go out affects my grocery store choice, since some have better lunch bentos than others. I also now avoid the one where the cranky cashier yelled at me for not understanding the word “chopsticks.” Her loss, because now I don’t know what she is going do with those ugly tomatoes.
Study Japanese – hmm, working on it…
On a normal day I spend my entire morning going back and forth between Rosetta Stone and my list of 2,000 kanji to memorize. I can now read the sign for “fire extinguisher” and tell you that no, I do not speak Japanese. I’m on kanji #250 and feel that the road ahead is very long.
I’ve been moving a bit slow this week due to a doozy of a summer cold. As I’ve mentioned to anyone that will listen to me whine (in English), snot and sweat should never mingle. I’ve had a few Japanese folks tell me that my cold is certainly due to the heat. I’m sort of curious to see if that has any scientific backing, but don’t have the energy to move from the couch to the desk to look it up. And, because I desperately want them to be my friends, I will nod and smile at just about anything they say.
Today my to-do list also includes packing, since Dan and I are heading to South Korea tomorrow morning. A work trip for him, I’m riding out the free stay at a hotel in downtown Seoul, and in a very uncharacteristic move am rather unprepared for the week in a new place (though, it was on the plane to Tokyo that I first realized I didn’t know any words in Japanese). So forgive me if the blogosphere is a little quiet next week – I’ll be sure to file my report when I get back.
What’s your million dollar idea? You know the one. The thing that occupies your mind when you’re scraping mangled receipts and Post-it note reminders out of a washing machine lint trap. (By the way, the inventors of Post-it notes worked at 3M until retirement…I find something awfully depressing about that).
Anyway, what I was getting at was this:
I can barely wrap my head around this. I can definitely wrap my stomach around it, but my head, not so much. That beauty is a Ramen Burger, and I call dibs. I’m bringing this back to the States, and I’m going to make a sensible, not-outlandish living as a Carnie, hopping from town to town, county fair to farm show, introducing America to something they didn’t know they loved. I’ll make enough money to throw slices of fresh bread to the ducks, not that week-old stuff. That stuff is for the birds.
This past weekend our neighborhood was overtaken by food vendors, a lot of them, for the Azabu-Juban Noryo Festival. The streets filled up with Tokyo folk (Tokyoites? Tokyojin? Tolkeins?), creating a thick wall of people on every street, and picking up groceries meant redefining my personal comfort zone. But on the positive side, picking up groceries also meant stopping for grill pit fish, giant scallops swimming in a shell full of butter (or mayo, it’s hard to say, my eyeballs were salivating), potato chips on a stick (dibs again), and draft beer. Lovely stuff.
The Ramen burger can’t be that hard to make. It’s cooked ramen noodles, griddled into the shape of a bun. Then you throw in some roast pork, spring onion, bamboo shoots, cabbage, and a broth-inspired sauce (soy, miso, or tonkotsu – heavenly pork bone). Brilliant.
Oh, and that thing on the right is just some delicious potato topped with butter, mayo, salt, kimchi and corn. Whatever.
In preparation for the Azabu Juban Noryo festival happening in our neighborhood this weekend, where I plan to eat my way from street-to-street for 3 straight days, I thought I’d clear some space on my camera and share a few food pics I’ve had in the vault. I’m not sure our hurry-and-take-the-photo-so-I-can-shove-this-in-my-mouth photography really deserves the label “food porn,” but in any case, I thought these few photos were worth sharing. Itadakimasu! *
A few weeks back, I was wandering the streets of Kappabashi (the kitchenware district, this site does a great job of describing it) and it was sooo hot and I was sooo hungry. I stepped into the only restaurant I could find, where, alas, there was no English to be had, so I ordered the daily special, which was a gigantic plate oftempura. Luck be a fried shrimp! (Two actually, along with mushrooms, okra, eggplant, and shiso. This meal was also served with rice, soup, pickles and tea. Oofdah.)
Dan and I discovered this place while wandering the streets of Shimokitazawa, a hip neighborhood of Tokyo that has been compared to Williamsburg in NYC. May I present a ball of rice wrapped in bacon (!), sort of like a meat version of onigiri. I may have put mayonnaise on mine.
Last weekend we found the ramen shop Gogyo, where the ramen is served black! I had the kogashi shoyu, Dan went for the kogashi miso. Both were “burnt” ramen, and I’m not sure how they got it that way, but the open kitchen had big flames and the ramen had that delicious almost-burnt, grilled-meat flavor. We’re definitely going back for the black (alliteration is irresistible!).
Tokyo summers — the bad part is that it’s hot, the good part is that there is kakigori, a shaved-ice mound of sweet deliciousness much like the slushie I wrote about a few weeks ago. Kakigori is seasonal, so I plan to eat as much as I can in the next month.
I went for red bean and green tea, and Dan had fresh strawberry with a sweetened condensed milk glaze. These poor guys really didn’t stand a chance.
There you have it. Don’t get me wrong, we eat a lot of weird and perhaps not-so-good things too (including the random mystery vegetables I try to cook at home), but those aren’t as fun to share. Or are they?
* Your language lesson for the day: Itadakimasu いただきます roughly means “I humbly receive,” and is a traditional greeting before a meal.
It was a busy one for me here last week. Not only have I upped the ante on my Japanese study, I’m still trying to figure out how to do laundry/shop for groceries/live here, etc., but I also discovered two — yes, two! — new-to-me craft stores.
Now those of you who are new to the craft scene (aka, all of you who come to this blog for the food and are tricked into reading about fabric) may think all craft stores are the same. Not so, dear friends. Some are like warehouses where you have to dig through piles of musty fabric for a scrap of gold, and some are classy establishments, like La Droguerie. La Droguerie is beautiful. (No photos are allowed inside, so I snapped that shot on my way out.) It is probably the most beautiful craft shop I’ve ever seen, and I have seen many in my short craft life. Bobbles and buttons are kept in big glass jars on well-lit shelves, and colorful rows of ribbons hang amongst fabric and other notions.
La Droguerie is a French chain that sells mainly their own brand of yarns. I learned later that you are not supposed to rummage through the jars yourself, but rather wait for a salesperson to come over and do it for you. Whoops. I totally had my hands in some piles of felt. It just couldn’t be avoided. Also, everything was very expensive. I wanted a tiny bit of some trim that was unpriced, and thought, “How expensive can some trim be, anyway?” Well, expensive. Though, now I have a mighty fine improved-upon Ikea lamp to show for it:
La Droguerie was nice to look at, though I’m not sure I need to visit it too often. Especially because two days later, I found Yuzawaya ユザワヤ — eight buildings of crafts spread out along three city blocks. After the excited/frantic and perhaps unintelligible text message I sent to Dan, he reminded me to breathe and eat, advice I thankfully followed or I certainly would have passed out. In fact, as I inhaled some deep fried tofu skins (don’t cringe, it’s delicious!) while standing in an alley behind a 7-11, I realized I might indeed have a problem. But, more on that later.
I spent a lot of time at Yuzawaya that day and only made it through 1.5 of the 8 buildings before they closed their doors for the night. A felted wedding cake anyone? How about an adorable DIY stuffed mouse? Or a Hello Kitty kimono? It could all be mine!
It was while at Yuzawaya when I realized that making things is more than just a hobby for me. It doesn’t have to be a problem — why not embrace it?! (Cue light bulb.) Though this Declaration of Craft will not surprise many of my friends and family, I have somehow surprised myself. And so, I have a new focus for my time here in Tokyo — in addition to exploring a new city and learning a new language, I’ll be venturing on some other craft-related endeavors. Huzzah! I promise to share in due time.
For those of you interested in visiting these places yourselves:
La Droguerie Ometesando
Omotesando LH bldg 1F
4-13-9, Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Ometesando station – behind Ometesando Hills
Yuzawaya ユザワヤ
4-12, Nishikamata 8-chome, Ohta-ku, Tokyo
Kamata station – take a left from the West Exit, walk under the tracks, look for signs to your right
I’m currently compiling a Tokyo craft guide, so check back for that in a few weeks. Thanks!
Saké Puppets 