Hiroyuki

The standard Japanese name for ama ebi is "hokkoku aka ebi". Both ama ebi and nanban ebi are local names. As for your white fish comment, you are absolutely correct. I'm a Kanto man and yes, I AM guilty. I've always loved ruby-red maguro akami (lean tuna) since childhood. (Toro wasn't so popular when I was a child as it is today.) That's why I hope I can learn more about shiromi (white-fleshed fish) from the sushi chef. The chef said the hobo was caught in the Sea of Japan.

DG, yours looks good too, but quite frankly, I must add that I get the impression from the photo that the neta (toppings) are simply placed on the shari (vinegared rice). Am I correct? Also, what is the top left one, which looks like abura age (inari), i.e., fried bean curd? All the pickles in the photo are just amazing. We should eat more pickles with sushi, not just gari (pickled ginger)! I really think so.

On Sushi Day, November 1, (that is, today! ), I went to this sushi shop, a 30-minute ride from my house, to have lunch. I ordered "chirashi zushi". Closeup: 1,050 yen, including miso soup, chawan mushi (Japanese egg custard), salad, and a coffee. This is just incredible! Very fresh and tasty. I wouldn't complain at all if it were 1,500 or even 2,000 yen. Now you have seen all the items on the lunch menu, except "kaisen bara chirashi" (840 yen), which is "kani kaisen bara chirashi", shown upthread, minus the crab meat. The chef kindly showed me some ama ebi (sweet shrimp). Ama ebi are called nanban ebi here in Niigata because of their resemblance in color to togarashi (red peppers). Nanban ebi caught in the Sea of Japan are sweet and delicious! The chef said that the long whiskers proved that they were fresh, not frozen ones. Closeup: The chef said that it was hard to take photos of nanban ebi in a way to justify their transparency. The miso soup shown above contained three ama ebi heads. Okamisan (chef's wife) says you can get good dashi from shrimp heads. Usually, the items on the lunch menu are the only ones they offer at lunchtime, but I asked the chef to make some nigiri. He complied with my request, thought for some time, opened the styrofoam box in the kichen, and said, "How about ara then?" Ara (sawedged perch, Niphon spinosus Cuvier) The chef said that a big good ara could cost 10,000 yen per kg (2.2 pounds). Note: The word ara has another meaning: fish waste. Look at the knife on the cutting board. He said he bought it when he started training as a sushi chef. It was much bigger and longer, but has gotten this small due to years of sharpening. He uses this knife to fillet almost any fish, even big ones like buri (adult yellowtails). A good chef takes good care of his knives. Fish showcase: The chef does not pre-slice fish fillets. He slices a fillet only after he receives an order. A very good practice. Right: Ara, 300 yen Left: Hobo (gurnard, red Gurnard, searobin, etc. Chelidonichthys spinosus), 200 yen The chef says, "Shiromi zakana wa oku ga fukai" (white-fleshed fish are more profound than they appear). I want to learn more about white-fleshed fish, especially those caught off Sado Island! I'm going to this sushi shop to have dinner tomorrow evening!!

I learned only today that tommorow, November 1, is Sushi Day!!! Got to go to that sushi shop for lunch!! I also want to tell you that the date is set: Friday, November 2. I'm going to go there again to have dinner! Probably with my children...

Thanks for the warning! I usually pack a small cold pack in my lunch bag, but I have to be careful with food safety, since my lunch travels with me on the train for an hour in the morning, and sits in my class until I eat it at about 1 pm. I've read Helenjp's tips, and I'm adding a little vinegar and sake to my rice. But my gut is pretty hardened now, especially after Vietnam. What's atsuyaki tamago? It must be some kind of fried egg? Ce'nedra - they are store-bought gyoza - just pork, green onion and ginger filling. My students laughed when they saw gyoza in my bento. I guess they're not a standard bento filling. ← I keep mentioning atsuyaki tamago here in the Japan Forum and elsewhere (in my foodblog, for example), and you still don't remember it? Atsuyaki tamago I like mine unsweetened. Other bento fillings include nori, umeboshi (of course!), chicken kara age, yakitori, spaghetti, cherry tomato, canned mikan, simmered kabocha, curry, furikake, sausage, etc., etc., in no particular order.

Congratulations on your new endeavour! Standard? Atsuyaki tamago, meat balls, hamburgers, stir-fried vegetables, boiled spinach, shumai, grilled fish, just to name a few. One word of caution: Takikomi gohan can go bad very fast. I know that, but I let my takikomi gohan go bad twice this hot summer.

By "sauce", you mean Worcester, chuunou, or konkatsu sauce?? If so, that's very unlikely. But, come to think of it, people in Osaka may be capable of doing so, since they can eat tempura with these sauces.

← Now I'm very interested to know what Hideo-san is going to do with violation 9.

I think this is due to the popularity of konbini. Konbini are everywhere in Japan, even in my rural city, offering everything from onigiri to ramen. I wonder if yonaki soba (= ramen) stands still survive in Tokyo.

I think they are more often eaten as snacks, but you can eat them for a quick, lazy meal (not just for a lunch meal).

I can't answer your butter question. As for potatoes, Danshaku and May Queen are two major varieties in Japan.

The kanji read Hiroshima yaki. I've never seen Hiroshima yaki of that shape, though. Images of Hiroshima yaki Butter potatoes: Was it really butter? It looks like margrine to me.

Unlike the American Rainbow Roll, that one looks very beautiful. Is it called 虹巻き (niji-maki)? I'm hungry now...I can't wait to go back to Japan in April ← No, レインボーロール (rainbow roll in katakana)!

The sushi shop has one incredible item on the menu: Rainbow Roll It's very appetizing, and I wanted to show it to you. I got permission from the okamisan (chef's wife) to copy some of the photos from her blog. Here they are: Avocado uramaki (nori inside) rolls with seven different toppings. 893 yen. She says it's popular among young people. Delivery version. 3 servings Closeup: Isn't it beautiful? Edited to add: Corrected the price from 850 yen (two years ago) to the current price, 893 yen.

First of all, thanks kbjesq for providing nice contrasts to my traditional Japanese sushi meals. I do like comparing things, just like everyone. Did you actually like your meal? Did you want to have more fish than other ingredients? I'm sure the chef of the mom-and-pop sushi shop will be very interested in American versions of sushi. Peter Green, yes, it's thousand island dressing. It's quite popular here in Japan, along with French dressing and mayonnaise. Personally, I'd like to put dressing by myself, but the dressing was already there when the meal was served. And, I prefer non- or low-fat Japanese-style dressings like aojiso (green perilla leaf) dressing. rykomatsu, I understand that by teriyaki, American mean a different thing. Here is an explanation of teriyaki in Wikipedia, in which it says: In Japan, teriyaki is so simple, just add one part soy sauce and one part mirin together. For more on teriyaki, click here, where nakji talks about her experience.

Shiratama (lit. white balls) are sweets made from shiratama-ko (refined mochi rice flour). Shiratama Shiratama-ko I would recommend one part kinako (roasted soy bean flour) and one part sugar plus a pinch of salt to make kinako mochi. Put the mochi in a container, add some water, wrap in plastic wrap, and heat it up!

Seems to be getting worse over the past 2-3 years - I turned over a packet of particularly strange looking "negi toro" maki at a supermarket once, and the list of ingredients included gelatin and beef fat. ← OK, thanks. I wish I could replace the smilie with a . I previously posted two photos of sushi meals that I had in a local kaiten zushi restaurant here. Note that I made a mistake there. The sushi and ramen set is 840 yen, not 830 yen. In general, in a traditional sushi shop, you need to pay about twice as much as you would in a kaiten zushi restaurant, for the same amount of sushi. For example, if you order the akami (lean tuna), chu-toro, and o-toro in this mom-and-pop sushi shop, you have to pay 250 + 400 + 600 = 1,250 yen, as opposed to 520 yen in that kaiten zushi restaurant. But I'm sure the difference in quality is noticeable. Edited to add: I had o-toro and maguro (lean tuna) on my first visit to that sushi shop), besides the "nigiri zushi" set.

John, it must be Shodo Island (小豆島), not Sado Island (佐渡島). kbjesq, is your converter correct? In this mom-and-pop sushi shop, they offer a lunch menu at those low prices to attract customers, hoping that they will come back some day at dinnertime, when they can serve sushi and other dishes at profitable prices. In Japan, this strategy is not unique to this shop. They don't serve those lunch meals at dinnertime, but if they did, they would have to charge one and a half to twice as much for each to make them profitable. Again, it's not meaningless to compare sushi served in traditional sushi shops with that served in kaiten zushi (conveyor sushi) restaurants. milgwimper, aren't there any eGullet members you can rely on?

Thanks again everyone for their respective comments. I'd like to make one very important clarification before I go to bed: While it's very easy for a kaiten zushi (convenyor belt sushi) restaurant to offer similar lunch meals in similar price ranges, it's probably insulting to the chef of the traditional sushi shop to make any comparison between his creations and those offered by a kaiten zushi restaurant. For example, I was amazed at the size and quality of the asari (a type of clam) in the miso soup, and remarked, "They are domestic ones, aren't they?" The chelf replied immediately, "Yes, they are from Aichi (in Japan)." In many, if not all, kaiten zushi restaurants, they serve imitation ikura, imitation negi toro (made of low-quality lean tuna (akami) and vegetable oil), and other imitations called daiyo gyo (lit. substitute fish). I hope I can make another trip to that sushi shop some day next week and report back, hopefully with lots of photos!

Oh, is it? I will ask the chef the next time I visit there.

Thanks everyone for their replies. My son finished off his meal with no problem, except the ikura nigiri, which he doesn't like and gave to his sister. He got some crab meat from hers, and I did, too! My son still cannot stand wasabi, so I asked the chef to make his wasabi-free (sabi-nuki in Japanese). As for my daughter's, I asked the chef to reduce the amount of vinegared rice (shari). I didn't specify how much, though. She couldn't finish it off, so I had the rest. Her dish is also wasabi-free. No one seemed to have noticed the shape of the wasabi in my maguro don. It's leaf-shaped. Isn't it cool? I don't think coffee at the end of a lunch meal is anything special, even in a traditional sushi shop. My daughter had cola and my son orange juice because they still cannot drink coffee. Can't wait to try all the fish and other seafood sent from Sado Island, especially awabi and all sorts of white fish that the chef boasts of. For those of you who are not familiar with Sado Island, click here. milgwimper: So, you are in Germany! I didn't know that!

I recently got to know a local, traditional (i.e., non-conveyor belt) sushi shop run by an owner-and-chef, his wife, and his mother. I made a second trip to it with my children to have lunch today. From the lunch menu, my son selected "nigiri zushi": 7 pieces (maguro (tuna), shiromi (white fish), ika (squid), tamago (Japanese rolled omelet), ebi (shrimp), tobikko aka tobiko (flying fish roe), and inari (fried bean curd)) plus 1 roll 1,050 yen (Note that in the photo, ikura (salmon roe) is used instead of tobikko.) My daughter selected "kani kaisen bara chirashi": A bowl of vinegard rice with assorted fish and seafood including crab meat. 1,050 yen I selected "maguro sanmi don": A bowl of vinegard rice with three different types of maguro (tuna): zuke maguro (marinated tuna), chu-toro (medium fatty tuna), and negi toro (fatty tuna with chopped green onion) 1,380 yen All set meals include miso soup, salad, chawan-mushi (Japanese egg custard) and coffee (served after the end of the meals) All I can say at this point is that all the lunch meals are very reasonable and the "maguro sanmi don" and the "nigiri zushi" (which I had on my first visit there) were fresh and tasty. I will definitely go back to that shop some day, at night, take photos of all the nigiri I will order, and post them here, along with comments. In fact, I'm very excited to do so. I'm especially eager to have all the fish and seafood sent directly from Sado Island.

I'm not familiar with the dumping method. The thing is that the slimy starch on the surface of the noodles must be removed by rinsing them under running water, rubbing them against each other with your hands, with several changes of water, so that the starch does not turn to glue when the noodles are cooled. This goes for all other types of Japanese noodles, hiyamugi (thicker than somen), udon (thickest of the three), and soba and ramen noodles (when making hiyashi chuka). As I said upthread, when you put the noodles in hot soup, you usually don't have to do the rinsing. Anyway, that's how noodles are handled in Japan.

I know, you are talking about bikkuri mizu (surprise water), right? Like I said elsewhere, this water is a remnant of the days when a kamado was used and heat control was difficult. I don't put surprise water any longer. Just lower the heat, that's all. You are talking about nyumen (にゅう麺) (somen in hot soup), right? I browsed through proper recipes for making nyumen, and I found somen needs to be boiled hard and then rinsed before being added to soup. But I know some lazy cooks (not me) simply boil somen in soup. Finally, when did you become a host, Helen? Was there an official announcement? Let me say, "Congratulations!"

Whether to rinse somen under running water after cooking depends on the use. If you use somen in a cold dish, rinsing is mandatory. Rinse well with several changes of water until the somen is cooled. If you put somen in hot soup, however, you don't have to rinse it.