"Sharing" Dinner with Louis

Louis and I enjoy going out for dinner for many reasons.  Eating out makes me happy because I don't have to cook. Some nights I am sure Louis is happy about this as well, even if he won't admit it. However, I think the main reason we like going out to eat is because we live in Japan, and therefore never quite know what we are going to get. Half the fun is wandering around, looking at menu's and plastic food displays trying to decide where to eat! On Sunday night we decided on a little place near our house. The menu out front had large, appealing photographs. The restaurant looked like it might be for Korean food, although the elderly couple inside was definitely Japanese. Louis and I decided we would order two things and share them. I immediately chose a stir fry looking dish. Meanwhile, Louis couldn't make up his mind. Times up! The gentleman is standing at our table, waiting to take our order. Louis points to what I want on the menu. The man looks a little confused and says who knows what in Japanese. His wife joins him.

The next minute and a half consisted of Louis pointing to pictures and occasionally saying things to the couple, the couple talking to each other and then occasionally saying things to us with hoping looks on their faces that we might know what they were saying, and me speaking to Louis trying to tell him what I thought is going on. There was lots of pointing, and talking, and not understanding. Finally the couple seemed satisfied, and walked away.

After the confusion, Louis and I decided that we must have been pointing to something on what was the "lunch" portion of the menu. Also, I pointed out that the two pictures he had been pointing to were of the exact same thing. Great. So we might get two orders of the same entree? One lunch sized and one dinner sized? Who knows. Que sera sera. Next time, I am ordering for us. The first plate arrives. It is stir fried cabbage, green onions, with thin cut pork (we guess). They place it in front of Louis. It looks good, and similar to what we thought we ordered.

Then, they brought out the second plate. Similar looking to the one they put in front of Louis, but very different. 

I took one look at it and immediately knew what it was. And here I was worried about them bringing us two orders of the same thing. Ha! Here is how the conversation between Louis and I went moments after they put the plate down:

Caroline: You know what this is, right?

Louis: No.

Caroline: This is tripe.

*No reaction from Louis*

Caroline: You know what tripe is, don't you?

Louis: No.

Caroline: It is cow stomach.

Louis: Oh.

And it was in that moment that the whole sharing of our two dinners went out the window. Louis picked up his chopsticks, and started eating from the plate in front of him. I asked him, "so does this mean we aren't sharing anymore?" to which he answered (in the most innocent tone he could muster), "well they put this plate in front of me". 

Okay. Fine.

I told him that he just didn't want to eat tripe. He smiled. I just shook my head. In all honesty the whole meal was not terrible. We were both given a small bowl of white rice, along with a serving of pickled bean sprouts and kimchee to share. Also on the table was a dish filled with small seaweed rectangles. They were thinner than what sushi rolls are wrapped in and much saltier. A perfect snack to eat while waiting for your main meal to arrive. The tripe dish wasn't even that bad. The honeycomb pieces of tripe were much better than the round skin pieces coated with a THICK layer of fat inside. I only ate one of those weird fatty pieces... yuck. I am sure they would have tasted even worse if I knew exactly what part of the animal they came from. Intestine? Rectum? Who knows. There is a close up picture below for your viewing pleasure. 

Thank God Louis had ordered us beer. Beer can help wash down anything. 

Thank you Aunt MR for that priceless piece of wisdom!

So there you have it. When visiting us in Japan, don't make a deal with Louis to "share" food, because he will only share with you if what you get is normal. Looking back on the experience, I am happy that my dish was filled with tripe and NOT a million of those tiny embryonic fish that came in a pasta dish I ordered in Japan once. 

After dinner we crossed the street and walked into a Lawsons. There we picked up dessert! Strawberries are in season here so there are strawberry flavored deserts everywhere. This is what we got! The crepe was in the refrigerated section so I assumed it was filled with jam and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. I was wrong. It was filled with strawberries and whipped cream. We ate it anyways, melted cream and all. 

The second treat we got was a cake topped with whipped cream surrounding a strawberry, all wrapped up in what I think is mochi. Mochi is made from pounded rice, is sweet and very soft. It reminds me of a very elastic fondant. Wikipedia tells me that the company Mikawaya sells mochi ice cream (ice cream balls surrounded by mocha) at Trader Joe's. Mom, investigate next time you are there please! 

So there it is. Our Sunday night trying out a new restaurant! For the record, I have to mention that Louis did try one piece of tripe before going back to eating his plate of non-trip food. Not like the time I got what I now refer to as the "fish pasta". That time he wouldn't even take one bite. He must have been too full from eating the entire margarita pizza he got that night...

The best part was yelling tripe jokes at each other the whole way home. And as a loving reminder to my husband,

"I ate tripe for you!" 

One Night In, One Day Out.

On Friday night, we decided to stay in and try our hand at making homemade pot stickers or, as they are called in Japan, gyoza. I used a recipe from a cookbook my Mom gave me as a gift before moving. It is titled, Let's Cook Japanese Food!, by Amy Kaneko. The gyoza wrappers were purchased from the local Japanese grocery store. There were so many options! I ended up buying two packages, one large and one small sized. I chose them based upon the fact that they were both almost all sold out. The most popular must be bought first, right? (I use this logic all the time when choosing an ingredient whose packaging only describes what it is in Japanese.) Once the pork was mixed with the other ingredients, we set up a station on the kitchen table for assembly. Thank goodness Louis was willing to help fold!

Once finished, we had 40 folded gyoza ready to be fried. Of course, it wasn't until there were only 3 gyoza wrappers left when I realized how to fold them the "correct" way so they would look pretty... sigh.. A close up of two of the "pretty" ones is below. We ended up cooking a dozen or so, and put the rest into the freezer for another day. Not only can these go straight from the freezer to the frying pan and be ready in minutes, but they can also be boiled in water or added to soup.

While at the store earlier that day, I also bought a few things so we could "make" sushi rolls, also known as makizushi. In our experience, the sushi found at the restaurants is normally served as nigiri sushi. Nigiri sushi is a small piece of sushi pressed onto rice. Although delicious, I had been missing the  western-style sushi rolls you can get in the US. So using my go-to shopping logic, I chose a package of nori, the seaweed wrapper for the rolls. I also bough some pre-made white rice, tempura-cooked shrimp, and salmon nigiri pieces. We then took our store bought ingredients and rolled them up with avocado, cream cheese, and cucumbers! Our gyoza and sushi dinner was really tasty, even if it wasn't perfectly authentic (as you notice the bud-light on the table in the picture below...).

On Saturday we headed out and took a train to the Ueno station. One you walk out of the station, you cross the street and are immediately at what I can only describe as a large, outdoor campus. Here there are paths that lead to the Ueno Zoo, Tokyo Museum of National Art, National Museum of Western Art, Botanical Gardens, Tokyo National Museum, and our destination for the day, the National Museum of Nature and Science. I am sure that there is a temple and shrine or two located in this huge park that I am not mentioning as well. The park was large, with plenty of small cafe's to stop in for lunch or dinner. They even had a Starbucks. I can see how one could spend the entire day or even a few days there. 

As I mentioned, we visited the Nature and Science Museum. It reminded me of the Field Museum in Chicago, although much smaller. While there, we went to a special exhibit on chocolate. We got to learn about the entire history of chocolate, or at least as much as we could infer from the pictures as the entire exhibit was in Japanese. Oh well! I got to pretend to be the face on a candy bar, see sculptures made entirely from chocolate (see the fish below), and view yet another example of Japanese discipline and curtesy. Even with so many people in a small space, they all formed lines and waited patiently so they could see each part of the exhibit... amazing... Thankfully Louis and I are tall so we were able to walk through the exhibit in an efficient manor, seeing each part over the heads of those waiting in the lines. 

I can't wait to go back to see the zoo and art museum, but maybe not until the spring. I think walking around the large park will be much more comfortable once the warm weather returns.

The Race Has Been Won!

Do you know what this is? To some it may look like just an empty wash basket. 

To me, it is what success looks like. That's right, at this moment there is no dirty laundry in my house. And guess what? The washer AND the dryer are both empty too. And there are no piles of clean laundry stock piled on my bed or dresser. Yes, success indeed! It is 4:30pm. I know that as soon as Louis gets home from work he will take off his uniform and the basket will no longer be empty. But until then, I am going to enjoy the next half hour of laundry freedom. 

On another positive note, I backed my car into the parking space at the Japanese grocery store just like all the Japanese people do! I did it without hitting anything or (more importantly) anybody, and I did it in less than 30 seconds. My Dad, knowing my less than stellar driving history, will be so proud.

PS. I am sorry this post isn't very exciting. Life in Japan can't be exciting every day. People would get too jealous :) 

New Years Eve Part II

After a exploring Shiba park and Tokyo Tower we caught a train back home. At the train station nearest to our home is an amazing grocery store. It is one of my all time, favorite places in Japan to shop and walk through, but more on that in another post... The point is I like to walk through the grocery store to get outside after riding the train, whether I need to buy something or not. To my delight they were still open when we arrived. We were slightly tempted to cancel our plans for cooking dinner when we saw the delicious looking food they had prepared special for the New Year.

The fried food looked so good!

This (smoked?) fish, not so much.

In the end we decided to stick to the plan, and headed home with just a small bottle of champagne. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that eating noodles before the New Year was considered good luck in Japan. Something about long noodles symbolizing a long life? I told Louis that even if I was wrong about it being a tradition, that I really like noodles and wanted them anyways. It also gave me an excuse to use a recipe from one of our numerous Bon Appetit magazines for an Asian flavored cold noodle salad. 

It didn't quite look the the picture, but I was happy enough with the results.

Louis didn't mind what side dish I was preparing because potatoes and steak with a cilantro chimichurri sauce were also on the menu. 

At 11:30pm we walked a few blocks to the local Buddhist temple in our neighborhood. At midnight people ring a bell that is at the shrine. They are supposed to ring it 108 times to ward of the 108 worldly sins. There were only around15 people there when we arrived. We waited for midnight to approach and watched the line of people grow. People of all ages lined up to ring this bell. Some people arrived with a wooden arrow. From what we could see and guess, the people were bringing these arrows to the person in charge of the nights celebrations, where they were then placed in a large can to be burned. I bet you they had wishes for the new year written on them. Around midnight (there was no "count-down" to speak of) there were a few announcements made to the crowd in Japanese. Then someone rang the bell. At this point we decided it was cold and we had seen enough to get the general idea of what happens on New Years Eve in Japan so we began to head home. We were very surprised to see that the line had grown to over 100 people. It was over two blocks long!  This is a picture of people waiting in line to ring the bell. I wouldn't be surprised if some Japanese people have pictures of us, the ONLY tourists to be seen, watching the festivities. 

And that, in a nutshell, was how we spent our New Years Eve! Happy New Year!

Alf wishes you a happy and blessed 2013 as well. 

New Year, New Blog!

Happy New Year! The end of 2012 brought a lot of changes. Starting a home with Louis has been a very (much anticipated) good thing. However this change also meant a big move. IL to Japan. I think this blog is the perfect way to share my experiences with family and friends! To be clear, when I say, "family and friends" I really mean, "mostly my Mom and Dad". And maybe my grandma if I can get someone to bookmark the link for it on her bookmark toolbar. 

On new years eve, we took a train to Shiba Park. Our first stop was the Buddhist temple Zojoji. It is conveniently located right next to Tokyo Tower. 

While at the temple square we got a chance to walk around the grounds. This is a picture of wooden plaques with Japanese writing on them. I did some research and found out that like me, no tourist really knows what these things say or mean. Let me know if you figure it out.

Next we walked into a garden filled with stone statues. They are all childlike in appearance and decorated with knitted hats, pinwheels, flowers, incense, etc. We even saw one that someone had put a baby sized fleece jacket on! 

These statues represent unborn children, including miscarried, stillborn, and aborted babies. The bringing of gifts to these statues is supposed to please Jizo, the deity who guards unborn children and guides them safely to the afterlife. 

Around the square there were some food vendors. It was fun to see someone making Takoyaki. Also known as "Lou's least favorite Japanese snack". They are round dumplings filled with octopus, brushed with mayonnaise, and sprinkled with dried fish. What's not to like?

Next we walked across the street to go 150 meters up in Tokyo Tower.

By this time the sun was setting and the city looked really beautiful. Tokyo is HUGE!

You could purchase wooden plaques to write wishes for the new year on. 

At the bottom of tokyo tower we got our picture taken with the "Tokyo Warm Heart". I don't know why, but all the Japanese people were doing it, so we did the same.

The explanation for the picture above also explains this next picture. I am clueless about the red ball. 

 Tokyo Tower is very pretty at night time. My pictures don't do it justice.