helenjp

Nuka-zuke Ricebran pickles Bags of dry seasoned nuka-doko (ricebran pickling bed) mix are available, and vary in quality. Boxes of ready matured wet mixes are usually better quality. It isn't hard to make your own, but it takes a week or two (depending on temperature/season) to mature. It's easiest to start in spring, when temperatures are warm but not hot, and the pickle bed matures just as the first summer vegetables become available. Pickling bed 2 kg rice bran 300 g coarse natural salt (15% of weight of ricebran) 2 l water, boiled and cooled (roughly equal weight with ricebran) Additives strip of dried kelp, wiped clean 10 dried chile peppers (adjust to taste) 3 pickled sansho berries Japanese type not Chinese Dry ground mustard, a handful, slows fermentation Vegetables to pickle eggplants, halved or quarted whole cucumbers bell peppers chunks of cabbage daikon (Japanese radish) in quarters carrot sticks Boil water and allow to cool. You can boil the salt with the water if you like. Use fresh ricebran, and use as soon as possible after purchase so that the oils do not become rancid. Some people like to dry-roast the ricebran over a gentle heat in a wok, stirring constantly. Allow to cool to room temperature. Mix water, salt, and rice bran. Add enough water so that the mixture forms a ball when squeezed, but remains loose and crumbly in the bowl. Additives can be added now or after maturing for a couple of weeks. Transfer bran mixture to a lidded container, and press some vegetables into the pickle bed. As long as they are clean, almost anything will do at this stage -- the first round or two of pickles are normally thrown out. Set container aside in a fairly dark, cool, place. You MUST mix thoroughly every day, up to 3 times daily in hot weather. If this is impossible, move the pickle bed to a plastic bag and "hibernate" it in the fridge. I suspect it would freeze OK, but have not tried it. Vegetables are ready when soft (or for carrot, when somewhat soft). Always take pickled veg out, wash or wipe clean, and store in the refrigerator if not wanted immediately - old pickles will quickly invite bad bacteria or excessive sourness. If you pickle a lot of watery vegetables such as cucumbers, remember that the pickle bed is losing salt, and as salt levels drop, fermentation and lactic acids will increase. Add a sprinkle of salt and dry mustard every time you remove vegetables in this case, and add more rice bran (and proportional amount of salt) if the bed becomes sloppy. You can drain off excess liquid, but this tends to affect the flavor of the pickle bed. Don't overdo the mustard - pickles should not taste bitter or hot. Keywords: Japanese ( RG1089 )

Sorry forgot to say, the teabags in the photo are roasted green tea, green tea, and English tea.

Found a few of those single-use coffee filters! The ground coffee is in the filter, set inside a little cardboard holder. You pull the filter apart at the top, set the lugs of the holder over your cup, and pour in the hot water... Son2 just had some nori (seaweed) tempura snacks and a glass of barley tea...plus a cob of sweetcorn. The nori snacks were left over after a boy stayed with us at the weekend. I teach at the horticultural department of a university on Wednesdays...the part-time staffroom never has any chalk or photocopy paper, but always at least 3 types of tea, coffee, and often little dishes of candy with notices on them saying "Please eat the candy"! Gotta rush DS1 to cram school, DS2 to violin. See you guys in about 2-3 hours..

Pork Liver Panfried with Chinese Chives Serves 2 as Main Dish. This recipe is from Yahoo Japan's Gourmet site...it outranks any of the other recipes for this dish that I have tried. It uses oyster sauce, which suits this dish perfectly. This dish is originally Chinese, and can be cooked with almost any type of onion, but in Japan is always cooked with nira (Chinese chives)and sometimes other vegetables such as wedges of onion or beansprouts. 1 tsp cornstarch in a little water Sauce 1 T sake 1-1/2 T soy sauce 1 T oyster sauce 2 T Japanese toasted sesame oil 1/2 packet (roughly 1 cup) beansprouts 1/2 bunch Chinese chives (nira) Marinade 3 T soy sauce 1 T Chinese shaohsing rice wine or sake 1 tsp finely grated fresh ginger 1 tsp finely grated garlic milk 200 g sliced pork liver (roughly 1/2lb) Put sliced liver to soak in milk for up to 30 minutes, drain and pat dry. Don't soak too long in milk - milk and meat together seem to go off very quickly! Put Chinese rice wine, soy sauce, ginger, garlic for marinade in a bag with the sliced liver, and allow to marinate up to half a day. Cut Chinese chives into 5cm (2") lengths, remove rootlets from beansprouts. Remove liver from marinade and pat dry. Put sesame oil in a heated frypan, add liver, brown both sides. Add sauce ingredients, and stir-fry. Sprinkle over Chinese chives and other vegetables (large amounts added at once will release too much steam) and stir-fry. Turn heat off, move ingredients to one side, and add water/cornflour in the empty space, while mixing through other ingredients. As soon as cornflour is clear and glossy, remove from heat and serve, spooning sauce over and adding a dash of red pepper or a few shreds of dried chile if desired. Keywords: Main Dish, Intermediate, Pork, Japanese ( RG1088 )

Pork Liver Panfried with Chinese Chives Serves 2 as Main Dish. This recipe is from Yahoo Japan's Gourmet site...it outranks any of the other recipes for this dish that I have tried. It uses oyster sauce, which suits this dish perfectly. This dish is originally Chinese, and can be cooked with almost any type of onion, but in Japan is always cooked with nira (Chinese chives)and sometimes other vegetables such as wedges of onion or beansprouts. 1 tsp cornstarch in a little water Sauce 1 T sake 1-1/2 T soy sauce 1 T oyster sauce 2 T Japanese toasted sesame oil 1/2 packet (roughly 1 cup) beansprouts 1/2 bunch Chinese chives (nira) Marinade 3 T soy sauce 1 T Chinese shaohsing rice wine or sake 1 tsp finely grated fresh ginger 1 tsp finely grated garlic milk 200 g sliced pork liver (roughly 1/2lb) Put sliced liver to soak in milk for up to 30 minutes, drain and pat dry. Don't soak too long in milk - milk and meat together seem to go off very quickly! Put Chinese rice wine, soy sauce, ginger, garlic for marinade in a bag with the sliced liver, and allow to marinate up to half a day. Cut Chinese chives into 5cm (2") lengths, remove rootlets from beansprouts. Remove liver from marinade and pat dry. Put sesame oil in a heated frypan, add liver, brown both sides. Add sauce ingredients, and stir-fry. Sprinkle over Chinese chives and other vegetables (large amounts added at once will release too much steam) and stir-fry. Turn heat off, move ingredients to one side, and add water/cornflour in the empty space, while mixing through other ingredients. As soon as cornflour is clear and glossy, remove from heat and serve, spooning sauce over and adding a dash of red pepper or a few shreds of dried chile if desired. Keywords: Main Dish, Intermediate, Pork, Japanese ( RG1088 )

Chicken Simmered in Vinegar and Soy Serves 4 as Main Dishor 20 as Appetizer. I had this recipe from a Japanese magazine cutting ("Croissant"?) in the early 1990s. It has been a favorite for dinners, beer snacks, and picnic lunches ever since. It seems to be related to Filipino adobo dishes. 1 dried chiles slices ginger 1 cloves of garlic 2 T Chinese shaohsing rice wine or sake 1/3 c soy sauce 1/2 c rice vinegar or mild vinegar 1 kg chicken wings or wing drumlets Douse chicken in boiling water and drain. Lay neatly in pan in a single layer. Pour over about 1/2 cup mild vinegar, 1/3 cup soy sauce, 2 tsp of Chinese wine or sake, and a few spoonsful of water so that liquid comes at least halfway up chicken pieces. Sprinkle liberally with paprika (improves color, don't worry about flavor of paprika for this recipe). Add 1-3 garlic cloves. I usually add the green leaves from Japanese dividing onions (naga-negi) in a layer on top, but this is not absolutely essential. Add several slices of fresh ginger. Spices...you can stick with a dried chile pepper or two and a bayleaf, or add one star anise, as you like. Use a drop-lid or cover roughly with silicon paper, and simmer for 1-2 hours (good crockpot dish if you are willing to move to a pan and reduce the liquid for about 30 minutes at the end. This is pleasant warm, but also great cold - the lack of oil means that it is not greasy, and the vinegar cooks to a slight but uncloying sweetness. I had this recipe from a Japanese magazine cutting ("Croissant"?) in the early 1990s. It has been a favorite for dinners, beer snacks, and picnic lunches ever since. Keywords: Appetizer, Main Dish, Easy, Chicken, Japanese ( RG1087 )

Chicken Simmered in Vinegar and Soy Serves 4 as Main Dishor 20 as Appetizer. I had this recipe from a Japanese magazine cutting ("Croissant"?) in the early 1990s. It has been a favorite for dinners, beer snacks, and picnic lunches ever since. It seems to be related to Filipino adobo dishes. 1 dried chiles slices ginger 1 cloves of garlic 2 T Chinese shaohsing rice wine or sake 1/3 c soy sauce 1/2 c rice vinegar or mild vinegar 1 kg chicken wings or wing drumlets Douse chicken in boiling water and drain. Lay neatly in pan in a single layer. Pour over about 1/2 cup mild vinegar, 1/3 cup soy sauce, 2 tsp of Chinese wine or sake, and a few spoonsful of water so that liquid comes at least halfway up chicken pieces. Sprinkle liberally with paprika (improves color, don't worry about flavor of paprika for this recipe). Add 1-3 garlic cloves. I usually add the green leaves from Japanese dividing onions (naga-negi) in a layer on top, but this is not absolutely essential. Add several slices of fresh ginger. Spices...you can stick with a dried chile pepper or two and a bayleaf, or add one star anise, as you like. Use a drop-lid or cover roughly with silicon paper, and simmer for 1-2 hours (good crockpot dish if you are willing to move to a pan and reduce the liquid for about 30 minutes at the end. This is pleasant warm, but also great cold - the lack of oil means that it is not greasy, and the vinegar cooks to a slight but uncloying sweetness. I had this recipe from a Japanese magazine cutting ("Croissant"?) in the early 1990s. It has been a favorite for dinners, beer snacks, and picnic lunches ever since. Keywords: Appetizer, Main Dish, Easy, Chicken, Japanese ( RG1087 )

Thanks Hiroyuki and Torakris! There was time this morning to cook breakfast, make two bento lunches, and finish reducing the stock for a chicken dish for dinner, and time to photograph it... but NOT time to upload photos! Self intro and talk of pickles later today...about 6 hours' time? Breakfast is our big family meal of the day, and I try to keep that in mind when the alarm goes at 6am... This morning we had our usual home-made yogurt with kiwifruit and banana. This is a routine, and my husband Keiji usually does that. I split some bread rolls and filled them with lettuce, seasoned and drained tomato cubes, and scrambled egg, and son1 fished around in the nuka-zuke (rice bran pickles, of which more later) for cucumber and eggplant, washed them and sliced them, and added another couple of cucumbers to the pickle bed. We always have English tea with breakfast...Keiji spent most of the '80s in New Zealand, and somehow we both like English tea in the morning and green tea at night. At this time of year, roasted tea (houjicha) is refreshing at night too. Barley tea seems to be popular in Korea too, but I think it must be Japan's major contribution to human comfort! Plain and simple, but indispensible. Hiroyuki, the fish sausage in the soup is definitely Tuesday-itis - out of the freezer and into the pan is the way I cook on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We would normally have more veg in the soup, but needed to showcase the two school-grown green beans! Must go...tells self, must not forget lunch on table. Today's lunch is quickly fried tempeh (a firm cultured soybean product from Indonesia) with chilisauce, lemon, and fish sauce; half a boiled egg dipped in salt, pepper and cornflour and quickly browned on the cut surface only, Chinese chives (nira) blanched, squeezed and dressed with karashi-su-miro (mustard/vinegar/miso), and left-over deepfried eggplant. Rice and pickles for husband, whole wheat flatbread for me (I'm slightly allergic to rice).

Melon pan - is a sweetish plain dough bun, baked with a cake-batter topping, usually colored slightly green and crosshatched to (faintly) resemble the netting on a melon. One of Japan's oldest novelty breads. Simple but sophisticated? That may be beyond me, but how about simple but different? Actually, although it is practically invisible in the photo, the deepfried eggplant is a simple but perfect taste! The rounds of eggplant are dropped straight into hot oil, and fried, nothing else. Then you can quickly pat or wash off the oil and steep it in a seasoned stock, or just chill it and have it with a good soy sauce and some sharp condiment. Better luck with photos tomorrow. I discovered that some small boy had altered the settings on the camera... In any case, tomorrow! Nearly 1am in Japan, so I shall return the mugicha (summer staple drink made by boiling teabags of roasted barley kernels) to the fridge and head for my futon.

Boris kindly told me on Sunday that he was tagging me. Gave me a day or two to panic. Boris showed us a lifestyle and an approach to food that's a hard act to follow. Living and eating gets the big Tokyo squeeeze some days, and Tuesdays are a prime example! Later I want to show you some summer pickles (which involves some time-travel, since I started pickles on Monday so that they would be ready before blog week was ovr), some other preserved foods we make, and also talk about family cooking in those years when the house has more hungry mouths than bulging purses, and family schedules are fuller than the fridge! Meanwhile, this is how my blog really started... I got home around 4pm, to find my office at blood heat, and son1 using a mood-altering substance - an ice cube on a saucer, which he hoping would make him feel cooler while he studied for a test tomorrow. He and son2 consumed a cob of sweetcorn each (from a bag bought off the back of a farm truck which often comes round selling veges at weekends). Son2 grabbed a bottle of cold barley tea and a stick of string cheese, and headed off for 2 hours at cram school. Son1 and I dismembered some of the green soybeans and whorled mallow I had bought at a vege stand on the way home, in the interests of his science test tomorrow. By that time, son1 was HUNGRY again, but we didn't eat till 7:30, when son2 came back from cram school. Husband ate when he returned home after 10pm...pretty normal hours for a Tokyo worker. The rice includes an umeboshi cooked in with it to keep it fresh in lunchboxes tomorrow (bad wife! bad mother! should be up at 5am to cook rice...). The soup bowl (before miso soup was added) contains a fish sausage with a stick of burdock in the middle, and HALF A GREEN BEAN harvested by son2 from "his" plant at school. Shallow dish is squash and green beans simmered in dashi stock with soy sauce and sweet sake (mirin). Actually cooked that yesterday and forgot to serve it! Normally I would add the green beans at the last minute to preserve the color, but the family are getting sick of beans (very cheap from the infamous vege shack over the road at the moment), so I simmered them till they had absorbed more flavor. This is not so much a rough construction as a loose collocation... On the small plate, pork slice panfried with ginger, deepfried eggplant with a dab of yuzu-koshou, and some boiled whorled mallow leaves. Whorled or "Chinese" mallow is slightly mucilaginous, like okra or melokhia. Naganasu photo at bottom of page (Japanese text) Shouga-yaki (pork slices with ginger) usually has the ginger mixed into it, but I often make it with the ginger and a tiny sprinkle of cornflour and soy sauce "sandwiched" in the middle. The eggplant was 50cms long, a "naga-nasu" from Kyushu. The whorled mallow leaves (oka-nori or "upland laverbread") After dessert, the boys heard the breadtruck which comes every Tuesday evening, and insisted that we had a moral duty to introduce it to you! The driver was quite shy at the thought of making her worldwide debut. Not so my son2... In the end, they had to admit that the chocolate-filled cornet and the melon-pan had better be saved until tomorrow. I will also save talk of pickles till tomorrow, because I have a video to transcribe for class tomorrow, a sample translation to do, a shirt to iron, and a dish of chicken simmered in soy sauce and vinegar to make ready for tomorrow's dinner...not to mention dishes and bath, and it's already 10:30pm Tuesday night Japan time.

A big favorite here too (with the cold-soup camp, that is). I usually make a batch of chicken broth and use it for chilled Japanese sumashi-style soup with pieces of small uri (gourd) and chicken pieces, and make the Korean soup the next day.

Yeah, this "feed the family" thing is alive and well in New Zealand, too! These days it seems to be casseroles (to be eaten or frozen) or pies (ditto). I think when I was younger, it would likely have been a Shepherd's Pie, also a good-tempered dish, but now people are probably too embarrassed to produce that for anybody but their own families. When my sister had twins, the community dinner network immediately swung into action, bringing dinners twice a week for quite a while. It seems to me that everybody has a "traveling freezer-to-table casserole dish" in their cupboard somewhere -- sturdy, but not so wonderful that you would cry if it weren't returned! When my mother died, my sister and I flew back to NZ, and were greeted by mountains of baking. All my mother's friends knew that we would have lots of visitors in a house where nobody had cooked for several months, so they went to work - fruit cake, gems (cooked in a thing called a gem iron), ginger crunch squares, chocolate cake, Anzac biscuits, etc. New Zealanders are not huge on cookies (compared to Americans, at least!). Then, of course, those who had done the baking and left it anonymously on the doorstep called around at a polite hour to drink tea and eat their own baking!

Hey, andiesenji, what are those peppers? They look very similar to a thing being sold in Japan as "Anastasia Russian sweet pepper", which seems to be unknown in any other part of the world!

I have seen myouga-take...I think they dry out very quickly, (like most san-sai). They taste like myouga, but milder (no bad thing!). By the way, does anybody go for chilled miso soup, or other cold soups at dinner time? My husband hates chilled miso soup, but a family vote revealed a majority preference for cold soups (I guess the kids and I eat earlier, when it is still hot). Any hot favorites for chilled soups with Japanese meals?

Thanks for the utilitarian wine-glass picture. It's a lovely picture of a meal that is totally impossible where I live -- the basic, everyday western "cultured" foods don't suit the average Japanese palate. Your wine/cheese/preserved meats reminds me of her comments - she says that elderly people seem to revert to those European basics, shopping entirely at the delicatessen, and living on bread with cheese or some kind of preserved meat. Sounds good to me! Old people's basics here in Japan...maybe miso soup and rice?! I guess those fermented, cultured foods are an unforgettable taste in every culture. As for the restaurant...one day, one day...

Boris, really! Trying to push your "I would love to translate this if somebody would just pay me for it" list onto innocent Gulleteers! I just discovered your blog - congratulations! It almost makes up for the fact that my husband missed the chance to meet you when in Europe this year - the translation software conference was moved to Germany from Zurich, so he just had a quick trip to Ramsen in the clutches of company men the whole way! He did bring me home a bottle of German wine, though...and a pewter wine cup with a design in heavy relief on the outside. The shop-owner told him they were traditionally used, but in Britain, pewter seems to have been used only for beer and similar drinks. What kinds of cups/glasses are traditionally used for wine in Switzerland? Your cooktop looks impressive, but I bet it's hot in summer??

I must really be too cheap... Sometimes the katsuo is "layered", with white sinewy layers throughout the meat. However, I was so inspired by the thread I bought some ready prepared seared katsuo today at the supermarket...wait to feel the archipelago shudder if the diners don't approve! There was a time when I would never have bought ready seared katsuo. I remember doing all kinds of strange routines that looked like Salvador Dali' paintings, with long skewers to hold the katsuo well above the flame. I'm glad I know how to do it, but also glad I don't feel driven enough to *actually* do it these days

My family don't much like katsuo - and while I like it, I often find the supermarket katsuo is stringy! Am I being too cheap? Or is it a matter of preparation technique?

Hmmm...I just don't feel like eating in this heat, let alone cooking. I'm going on a major asazuke kick, to at least reduce the heat and steam in the kitchen. Eggplants -- definitely nature's perfect summer food. I like them grilled till charred, then peeled and mixed with ginger, soy sauce, and mirin. Nuka-zuke. I started a nuka-zuke barrel again, now that our kids are old enough to help us get through the pickles (in fact, they hang over the barrel counting the hours till they can grab something out of it). Chirashi-zushi made with shiso leaves, sesame seeds, and chopped pickles, especially shiba-zuke. This is not only pleasant to eat in summer, it's great for those days when everybody is having dinner at different times. Cheaper fruit - the price of fruit in Japan is a constant affront to a Kiwi! At least I can now buy those tiny Delaware grapes, which are nice to freeze whole and then drop into yogurt. I also like the bright red, yellow-fleshed plums (sumomo) around at present - perfect for hot, humid days.

A kitchen where I only had to "chat" to ONE person while cooking??? Oh lead me to that idle, lotos-eating paradise! Try... "Muuuuuum, does the character "sou" have two horizontal lines or three, you know which "sou" I mean, Muuuum. Can you come and get the 5lb. dictionary down for me right nooooow?" "Muuuuuuum, I fell downstairs while practicing my violin and dancing on the landing, and there's a piece of wood fallen out of the violin and I broke the umbrella I fell on top of as well..." "Hello, quick question - do you have the file up on the screen in front of you? What do you mean, you're not in the office? You're nearly done editing it, but not actually finished?? This doesn't mean that you haven't started on it yet, by any chance?" Brrrriing! "Hello, I've come to pick up the annual neighborhood fund dues, I'll need exact change, that's 3,642 yen, we don't actually issue receipts, but could you get out your family seal and stamp it here where it says 'receipt received'?" As for sharing kitchen with husband....just how many inches of my 18" by 9" prep area am I supposed to hand over! And since I normally lean from the prep area to reach the cooktop which is jammed in the angle behind the microwave, it isn't possible for two people to prep and cook at the counter/stove/sink area. (At least, if one person is prepared to use the chopping board balanced over the sink, and put one leg on top of the garbage pail, it can be done, it can be done...). Anybody helping with prep is banished to the dining table with chopping board, knife, and strict instructions not to pick up the TV remote until the knife has been laid to rest. Chat is allowed, but no tickling while holding knives. On the other hand, the big pickling jobs of the year require husband to come home early, get a beer in one hand, and settle to the job of chatting and drinking while drying off plums to be salted for umeboshi, layering Chinese cabbage for hakusai-zuke, or hurling balls of mashed soybeans and rice culture into pots for miso.

My current favorite onigiri is...miso-flavored rice, with fukujin-zuke in the middle, rolled in sesame seeds (optional) and wrapped in nori (absolutely NOT optional - the miso makes the rice too soft to hold together well!). I've tried toasting the miso before adding it to the rice, and reducing the amount of miso, but either the fat or the moisture content (or both) of the miso, makes it impossible to get a really firm onigiri. But I can't give up, because it tastes so good! Next I'm going to cheat and try mixing a bit of powdered instant miso soup into the rice... Another recent favorite...finely chopped shiba-zuke in the rice, with chopped takuan in the middle, ribbon of nori to make it easier to hold. Can you tell that we've had sports day at son's middle school recently?!

Noticed the other day that there are several volumes on regional dishes in the well-known Oishinbo comics published by Shougakkan The volume I saw, on Shikoku, was around #82, so I expect others in the series will have similar volume numbers. The Japanese in these manga is moderately difficult. Hiroyuki, perhaps you could comment on Tohoku cooking on the Japan Sea coast - what little I know is from the north-eastern areas of the Tohoku region. I will get started on a new region soon...very soon...

Hiroyuki, Edomae-zushi and Edo-zushi are too broad to get anything useful (too often used in shop names or menus). I tried combining them with several other terms as well, like "su" (vinegar), "tsukeru", "tsuke" (for marinated toppings),"Morimoto", "haya-zushi" and so on...can't remember exactly now. I think the kanji 江戸鮨 may be the favorite with people who think that Edo-zushi is something special...but I also tried all three! Smallworld, I forget where I read it now, but I was interested to find that sushi was originally more like kaiten-zushi - the sushi cart man made a few types, cut them in half if they were too big (since the original concept was pretty much a whole fish wrapped round/over a hunk of rice) and stuck them on the counter...customers took whichever they fancied. The made-to-order thing came later, possibly as the variety of toppings increased and fresh toppings meant they couldn't be left sitting around very long.

I'm probably just confusing the issue, but it looks as if some people think that the type of sushi you are talking about is just a historical form of sushi, which all but disappeared with refrigeration. "Edo-zushi" refers to the technique - the replacement of salted fish fermented with rice by vinegared rice and fish. "Edo-mae-zushi" refers to the use of fresh, local ingredients. Both terms refer to nigiri-style sushi. The problem is, some people don't differentiate much between the two terms (except to say that the term Edo-zushi is older), while other people DO differentiate, and say that because Edo-mae refers to locally caught fish, only that term can be used for nigiri topped with raw, unseasoned fish (the normal style for nigiri today). Also, some people think that Edozushi deserves to be recognized as an independent style rather than an obsolete forerunner of Edomae-zushi, because the use of seasoned fish means that it really is finger food - you don't need a plate of shoyu to eat it with. They say that Edozushi refers not only to salt or vinegared fish, but to grilled fish and fish soaked in mirin/shoyu before use.

New Zealand persuaded Japan to relax laws restricting imports of pip and stone fruit, and began exporting apples to Japan a few years ago, and the US followed suit within 12 months. However the US has the disadvantage of having apples in season at the same time as Japan - add shipping time, and US apples are coming on market right at the peak supply period for Japan's main crop. However, I wonder if other factors such as the rather high US dollar in recent years has also made a difference? I do occasionally see NZ apples, but not that many. Hard to say if they are here or not, as my local supermarket seems to be stocking an increasingly restricted range of goods.