torakris

matcha kit kat! These are really good. The availability of western food stuff really depends on where you live. I ive in Yokohama and am just about 20 minutes away from Tokyo so I can find most western foods somewhere. There are a couple International markets in Tokyo that cater to the ex-pat groups and we can find many things there from back home. Many larger Japanese supermarkets also stock quite a few foreign products.Though as with all imports they can get pricey... There are only a couple things here that I have yet to find, like buttermilk and Sour Patch kids...

breakfast just like my mom used to make them.... I the kids ate them with maple sryup and I ate them plain. I prefer pancakes with jam but we are out and I didn't want to use sryup becasue that means I would dirty a dish... did I ever say I was really lazy.... I am on my second glass of iced coffee and in th time since I last posted I have had an early morning meeting with all of the mother's for our local group of kids, gotten the kids off to school and been to 2 video stores. I had to return our videos before 10:00 and I pulled into the parking lot only to remember that I had rented them from a different store last week...... It is going to be one of those days. On Weds I normally babysit about 5 hours for a little 7 month old boy, but his mother just called and had to cancel for today because they were both sick, so I will probably get some errrands run today. I will try to do as much walking as possible since gas prices are at the highest I have ever seen since being in Japan. They have just jumped to 120 yen (about $1.10) a liter, so that is almost $4.50 a gallon....

Welcome Ben! It would be nice to get some more Cleveland talk going on around here!! Though I live in Japan, I try to get back home to Cleveland once a year and will be there for 5 weeks this summer and I can't wait to get out and eat. Just last week I received my new copy of Cleveland Ethnic Eats and have already dog-eared half the pages.... I would love to hear some of your favorite places...

I would buy that! I've never seen that in New York. Is it available in Japan? I guess it would be expensive there. Also, how much does maple syrup sell for in Japan and what are some popular toppings for sweet pancakes? ← I don't recall ever seeing a maple pretz here in Japan. Maple sryup is quite expensive here, 250ml (one cup) bottles sell for about $7 to $8, I buy a massive jug at Costco in the US and make it last for a year.... Pancakes are pretty popular here, they are called hottokekki (hotcake) and theya re eaten more as a snack than breakfast. Even McDonald's sells them. (look at teh 105 yen menu near the bottom) they are mini versions with cream and a fruit sauce, they sell regular American style ones for breakfast. A popular topping is chocolate sryup and whip cream, this is how they are often sold in restaurants as a child's meal (anytime of day).

Y'know, I was wondering that very same thing myself. I've even seen kid-characters in anime making that hand gesture, so I've got the drift that it's popular, but I still dunno what it means. Non-verbal stuff like this is a whole other layer of cultural communication that can be hard to track down (like, how does one go about googling "Japanese hand signal that looks like an American peace or victory sign"? ), but can be so fascinating to learn about. ← This was discussed a bit in my second blof and this is what Hiroyuki found: QUOTE(melonpan @ Oct 11 2004, 10:01 AM) in korea, all the kids do this too. you wont find any photos without them doing this! The peace sign seems to originate from Jun Inoue, a Japanese singer and actor, who did that sign in a TV commercial for Konika, a camera manufacturer in Japan. Two sources: http://www.elrosa.com/dia/2003/20031201.html http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~tokyo3/cheese.html (Sorry, Japanese only) But why do Koreans do this too? Is it contagious? biggrin.gif

My kid's are quite familiar with many of the US characters and probably know American ators/actresses than they do Jaapnese ones. We tend to watch more US television and movies because I don't care much for Japanese programming. They can point out Tom Hanks, Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy in a second. American characters are also quite popular here, Power Puff Girls were quite popular a while back and even sponge bob has been showing up recently. I do not own a kimono and have never worn one...

matcha is green tea

Beautiful kanji! Going way off topic (but I'll bring it back in a sec), does Hide have a Japanese first name because he's the eldest son? ← Hide's name... We had a really hard time with that. I wanted something a little bit easier to pronounce in the US, my dad still calls him Heidi, the name is pronounce hee-day. The character is from my husbands name. His name is Kosuke written 康介, if you look the character for ko and yasu are the same . This character is also in my FIL's nmae and his father's. So it it sort of similar to a jr. Unfortunately that character can only be read as ko or yasu and my husbands family think it is bad luck to use the same sound two generations in a row so we were stuck with yasu... and you can't do much with that. Since we used his family's name for the first name, my husband suggested using my father's name for a middle name. Even my dad thought it best not to toture he poor baby more with the name Harold so we took Robert from my dad's middle name.

i LOVE the idea of a small walk-to-school group in charge of an adult. do the adults rotate this duty? ← The mother duty is a year long job that gets rotated among the mothers in the group every year, everyone will have to do it once per child. Though with 3 kids I may get by with only doing it twice. One of my jobs is to take them to the school the first couple days (we are only 5 minutes away) and then during the year I will be responsible for taking any kids that get left behind for some reason. There are also after school patrol duties that every mother in the school has to do 2 to 3 times a year. This consists of two mothers (from each of the 3 "neighborhoods") walking around the school area for about 30 minutes around the time the kids are going home just to keep an eye on things. All the schools are different though, ours is the only one in the area that the kids walk together everyday, other schools do it just the first two weeks and some don't do it all. We have a really wonderful principal...

How many Pocky flavors? I don't think anyone knows.... They have a lot of seasonal and local variations that come and go this is their current line up Sorry I keep tossing out Japanese words without properly explaining them... Hanami is written as 花見　in Japanese, the first character means flowers and the second one it to look or see, so basically it means flower watching and it most often referred to during cherry blossom (sakura) season. Hanami is essentially a gathering of people from a quiet group that honestly wants to look at the flowers to noisy drunken groups that are just there for the booze.... I prefer the first.

Good morning! It is almost 6:30 am on Weds morning. This is my typical computer time, my husband leaves at 6:00 (we all get up at 5:30, kids included) and my kids play and watch in the mornings. Currently they are watching the X-Files on FOX (we have cable) but will probably be switching it soon to Power Puff Girls on Cartoon Network..... I have my iced coffee and we be making breakfast soon, Hide asked for pancakes.. Let me answer some questions that were asked while I was sleeping.

fu and mizuna tamago-toji fu and mizuna cooked in dashi, soy, and mirin with two eggs poured on top and cooked just until set.

I was feeling the need for something sweet after dinner so I pulled out the two boxes of Fran that I got earlier today in my co-op order. Fran is a Pocky wannabe.... These two flavors, blueberry yogurt and matcha with chocolate, were ok but I wouldn't bother getting them again. It is 8:30pm and normally my children are asleep by now but they are still up and busy chattering about the new school year. Julia is very happy because the boy that she has been in love with since the age of 4 is in her class again. i was asking Mia if her new male teacher was young or old, her answer? I don't know Mom but he looks just like Austin Powers....in Goldmember..... Now you know what kind of tv my kids watch.....

On Tuesday evenings I teach an English class form 4:30 to 6:00, the class consists of three brothers (ages 7 to 11) who have an American father and a Japanese mother. I teach them along with my two girls reading and writing. Today we were discussing Ninjas.... Tuesday nights are always a simple dinner as I have no time to prepare. My husband arrives home most nights about 6:30 and we are eating by 7:00. Today was a pretty traditional meal prepared in the modern way, with lots of packaged foods. some prep the entire meal was thrown together in the time it took to grill the fish (about 15 minutes). the fish, In English it is called Atka Mackeral, in Japanese it is hokke and a speciality of Hokkaido. The fish is salted and then partly dried, I buy it in the frozen form so I can grill it at any time. I like it because it has a thick flesh that is quite sweet and very few small bones so it is easy for the children to eat. I cook it in the broiler like function on my oven. It is also one of the cheapest fish.... rest of dinner fu (wheat gluten) and mizuna tamago-toji tamago are eggs and tamago-toji is simply a dish that is bound together at the end by a very gentle cooking of eggs. The wheat gluten are rehydrated in water and then simmered in dashi, soy, and mirin for a couple minutes. Then the whisked egg is poured on top and then covered with a lid and cooked until your liking, I like them a bit on the runny side. hakusai (Chinese cabbage) pickles and a salad made with wakame (seaweed) lettuce and cherry tomato, the dressing is a prepared sesame and yuzu flavored one that I love. We also had the daikon pickles (yellow slivers in the prep picture), these were leftover from the futomaki I made for lunch. We also ate white rice, but that is sort of a given here......

well it is 6:30 pm and I should be making dinner..... We had a really great day today we had about 8 women and 20+ kids show to our gathering today, unfortunately the cherry blossoms weren't quite ready yet. Of course that didn' t stop us from enjoying ourselves. the view all the trees with a pink tinge are cherry blossoms and when in full bloom are just breathtaking. a zoom in on one of the trees you can see that just a small amount are in full bloom Hide with ice cream Julia rolling down a hill Mia with a friend For lunch we had the bento and snacks I had prepared as well as about 5 bought drinks and the kids all had ice cream cones. My belated breakfast was all the end pieces of the futo maki rolls. Dinner to come soon, my husband just walked in the door.....

Mine has already solidified in the frypan... Can I just scoop it out maybe and put it in the fridge? What kind of stuff do you use it foe? Mine was a mixture of about 80% crisco and 20% canola.

I am about to run out the door to our hanami on this beautiful day but wnat to show our bento lunch before it gets eaten. on the top is a bag of frozen (pre-boiled and pre-salted edamame) I use this as an ice pack on the right is a pack of cookies made with adzuki beans and the bento futomaki (fat rolls) with sausages and cherry tomatoes (for color). This is a good example of modern Japan meeting traditional. The bento has been around for ages but the sausages, and you will be hard pressed to find too many homemade bentos with out them, are a very modern addition. the futomaki before rolling and just a bit ago my Tuesday co-op delivery arrived

Those are their names, there are written with kanji (Chinese characters) in Japan though Mia 未衣杏　Katherine Julia 珠理杏　Rose Hideyasu 秀康　Robert

Good questions. I have to admit when I bought that package of original Pocky yesterday it was probably the first time in over 10 years!! Most of the Pocky I buy nowadays is usually the different flavored one. It definitely has a girl image, can't explain how or why though.... I wonder if that is why they created the men's Pocky? For all of you who have never tried it, this is your chance!

4/5: ポッキー pokkii (poe-key) known in English as Pocky and it is the theme of the foodblog I am doing this week.

the kids on their way to school from the left: Hide (age 4), Julia (age 7) and Mia (age 9), on the right is is their friend Natsuki who lives upstairs. In our school district all children are assigned to a han (a small neighborhood group) of about 10 kids, these groups meet every morning at an assigned area and an assigned time and walk to school together. Our group consists of 11 kids this year and I am the chikurenraku-in, which is basically the mother leader of the group, this year. This job has various duties and you will here more about them as the week goes on as I have a couple meetings to be attending tis week. my washing machine just started singing, time to hang out the laundry.....

Every day I will discuss a different kind of Pocky. We will start with the original Pocky that started it all. This was breakfast, I had 6 sticks and a large glass of iced coffee. I am not a breakfast person. I start every day (no matter what time of year) with an iced coffee then I sort of pick at various foods until lunch. The kids all had toast. Mia with cinnamon-sugar and Julia and Hide had peanut butter. I make a breafast onigiri (rice ball) and a bento lunch for my husband 6 days a week, both of these are eaten at work. This morning's onigiri was made with wasabi furikake and lunch was fried rice made with leftover pork and bean sprouts from last night as well as eggs and scallions.

Why Pocky? First of all Pocky is pronounced poe-key (there is your daily nihongo for the day! ) There are a couple reasons why I picked Pocky to focus on: --This is probably one of the most well known foods to come of Japan in modern times. --It just tastes good. --I just recently learned that SobaAddict70 has never eaten it! So Soba this blog is for you! and why geisha? I just liked the sound of it...... and no, you will not see pictures of me in a kimono!

The trees in my area are about 20% in bloom as of yesterday. Today is going to be quite warm, 20 C ( almost 70 F) and tomorrow even warmer so they should be in full bloom in a couple days. Today I am going to a hanami (sakura blossom viewing) party with friends and a nearby park famous for their blossoms, unfortunately they aren't going to be at their best yet....

Now you are probably wondering about the title.... My past two blogs covered big events here in Japan New Year's blog Undokai (sports day festivities) blog Currently there is no major event going on in Japan so I have decided to focus this blog on modern and traditional Japan and how they are combined in daily life. There are a couple things going on this week. Today (April 5) is the first day of school, the Japanese school year runs April- March) so in about 15 minutes I will go outside with my daughters to send them off to school. (yeah ) Mia is going into the 4th grade and Julia the 2nd. My son Hide will go back to preschool on Thursday. This time of year is one of the most beautiful in Japan, it is cherry blossom (sakura) season and the trees will all be in bloom by the time my blog is over. I will take tons of pictures of these trees as the area I live in has them lining all of the streets. it is just gorgeous. oh yeah and we will talk about food too!