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Hiroyuki

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Everything posted by Hiroyuki

  1. Of course, we do! We put up a shimenawa (but no kadomatsu) on the front door and placed a kagami mochi in the dining room on the 28th. (We have a tokonoma and a kamidana in our new house, but we were tempted to put the kagami mochi in the dining room... Well, we had lived in a cramped resort condo unit for too long.) We had toshikoshi soba on New Year's Eve. And, on Gantan (New Year's Day), we all had a morning bath (a tradition that I have inherited from my father) and then had a late breakfast consisting of ozoni (of course!) and several osechi ryori (all store-bought). On the 2nd, we all visit the local shrine. I have to admit that we are a nuclear family and do not celebrate as much as big families do. Oh, one more thing. I'm not a regular drinker of sake (Japanese rice wine); I usually drink shochu because it's much cheaper. But shogatsu (New Year's holidays) always makes me want to drink sake!
  2. The kagami mochi is an offering to the toshigami (god of the year). Here are two webpages that may be of interest to you: http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/bts/b....html#toshigami http://haradakun.cool.ne.jp/nihonbunka/newyear_special.html In Japan, the kagami mochi is placed in the tokonoma (alcove), kamidana (altar), or any other place that you consider important, usually on the 28th or 30th of December. It's considered a bad practice to place it on the 29th because nine (ku) is associated with hardship (ku) or on the 31th because this is 'ichiya kazari' (lit. one-night decoration) and is considered disrespectful to the god. We eat the kagami mochi on the day of kagami biraki, which is usually January 11.
  3. あけましておめでとうございます (Happy new year) Some comments and questions from a native Japanese: I think you know it's not a Japanese tradition! I'm not familiar with green tea mochi. Do you add green tea instead of yomogi (mugwart)? How much mochi gome did you actually use (in go, sho, pounds, or kilograms)? Do you ever eat mochi with kinako (soybean flour) and sugar? Help you out? Kagami simply means mirror. Kagami mochi is so named because each mochi is shaped like a mirror (round and flat), although it's not as flat as a mirror, of course.
  4. Great thread. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. But, you were in Japan in fall, right? Chestnuts were in season then. No wonder you saw a lot of chestnut items. Didn't you notice other seasonal items while you were in Japan, like regular (yellowish) and purple satsumaimo (sweet potato) cakes?
  5. I forgot to mention toshitori zakana (年取り魚; lit. 'getting old' fish), which refers to the fish that you eat on New Year's Eve. The fish is sake (salmon) in Eastern Japan and buri (yellowtail) in Western Japan. I hadn't been familiar with toshitori zakana until my wife mentioned it after we got married. She says that when she was small, she always ate grilled salmon on New Year's Eve and that she wasn't familiar with toshikoshi soba then.
  6. Let me wrap this thread up with toshikoshi soba. I did some googling to find that an astonishing percentage of Japanese still eat toshikoshi soba on New Year's New: According to this questionnaire survey (Japanese only), 76 % of the respondents replied that they eat toshikoshi soba on New Year's Eve to the question, "What are annual events essential to New Year's Eve?". Three possible reasons why Japanese eat toshikoshi soba on this particular day are described here. Of course, my family are going to have toshikoshi soba and some tempura for tonight's supper.
  7. Sorry to drop in like this, but could someone make the correction to the title of this thread? Not Omikase but Omakase.
  8. Thanks for a detailed description of your fruitcake. I'll ask my wife if she's interested. As for a combination of sweets and sake..., I think it's hard for you to find someone who agrees with you in a country where there are such silly notions as amatou and karatou. I can eat Christmas cake with shouchu, though.
  9. I'm interested in your fruitcake. Tell me a little bit more about it. As for Ebisu black, did your husband agree with your opinion??
  10. In Japan, you can buy cups of mozuku (not mozoku, right?) with tosazu, sanbaizu, yuzu-flavored, and kurozu sauces. Mozuku is considered a healthy food because it contains fucoidan.
  11. Did anyone eat kabocha on the winter solstice, which fell on December 22 this year? I didn't. You don't want to go out to buy some kabocha on a stormy, snowy day, do you?
  12. I think this has been discussed before. I use salad oil (sarada yu (サラダ油) in Japanese) to make tempura, karaage, tonkatsu, and so on. So do most Japanese. Some people add some sesame oil to salad oil, but sesame oil is too expensive for this purpose.
  13. Where do you see this written? ← I bought some mikan today. Today's suger content is 13! That's not bad, I mean, not too sweet.
  14. According to the webpage you provided a link to, it's a combination of "an chocolat", leaf-shaped, madder red chocolate, and small leaf pie containing kurozato. It says that "an chocolat" is a perfect blend of azuki an and white chocolate with a subtle touch of yuzu peelings.
  15. I made 'satoimo no nikkorogashi' (or nikorogashi) for last night's supper, using 30+ taro potatoes. Nikkorogashi in the making: If you ever fall in love with a Japanese man and you want to impress him with your cooking skills, DO make niku jaga and satoimo no nikkorogashi. He will love you for them.
  16. Sorry, I didn't make takikomi gohan that week. We had a record level of snow for December in our area (171 cm as of yesterday); I had to devote all my spare time to snow clearance, melting, removal, and so on and I was in no mood for making any decent dish. Maybe some other time...
  17. Itamae-san sounds perfect, and teacher is sensei in Japanese.
  18. This is the Christmas cake that my son (9) made last Saturday at a cooking class designed for elementary pupils. He did all the decoration. The fee was 800 yen per person.
  19. It's that time of year again. What is your Christmas cake this year? I have already ordered a chocolate cake from Seven-Eleven. My son still insists that we make a Christmas cake at home, so I'm thinking of making a chestnut cake.
  20. If you ever decide to make ponzu yourself, please keep this in mind: The longer you keep it (in the fridge in the summertime), the mellower it gets. This site (sorry, Japanese only) says that the average number of days it is kept before use is 110.
  21. No, it's not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzu
  22. I would suggest that this thread be moved to the General Food Topics Forum to get more response. I'd like to hear what other members have to say about this book.
  23. Sounds good to me!! Anyone else? That is interesting about the soy sauce and maitake, what if you were making a kinoko (mushroom) takikomi where maitake was just one ingredient, would this still apply? Kinoko takikomi is sounding quite good right now! ← Sounds good to me too, but like someone has already suggested elsewhere, why not turn it into a weeklong event so more people feel inclined to participate?
  24. This page (Japanese only) says to squeeze whipped cream into dome shapes and then freeze them. (Scroll down and view the photo under "1".)
  25. While googling, I found this cute robot.
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