Minazuki - a half year celebration

It's one of our traditional events to eat a Japanese sweet cake called "Minazuki" at the end of June before July arrives. "Minazuki" means June. I got this cake from a bakery and enjoyed it with my family yesterday. It's a traditional steamed mochi cake made from rice powder and sugar and topped with sweetened red beans. The cake represents our wish both to avoid bad fortune and to survive the harsh summer heat. The slightly translucent white mochi depicts cool ice and the red beans are believed to be an auspicious food that can fend off evil.

The first half of 2024 is over today, June 30th, it's time for us to reflect on our lives during the first six months of the year and purify our minds hoping for the other half of the year to be peaceful. It's a good time for us to pause for thought before we start again and attempt to stay healthy in mind and body for the latter part of the year. Many Shinto shrines also conduct a ritual today. I love these old customs from the past that show as much respect for the spiritual side of life as for the enjoyment of the special foods they involve.

The Amabie is Back

 In Japanese folklore, we have many imaginary supernatural creatures called “youkai”, whose history mostly dates back to the period between the 17th and the 19th centuries.

The “amabie” is one example. It has recently caught our attention throughout the country. The creature has a mermaid-like body but its face looks like a bird with a beak, and it wears its hair very long. It is believed to be a harbinger of disease, telling people, "Draw my image and pass it on to others so as to ward off infectious disease." That's the reason the amabie has come back into our modern lives during the coronavirus pandemic.

People have been posting many amabie drawings on SNS, and they have gone viral. What's more, Japanese sweet shops across the country have been making sweets in shape of the creature.

Let's not talk about whether you approve of this business trend of making a profit from coronavirus confusion. We surely take comfort in sharing amabie products in hopes that we can put an end to the crisis.

Summer Sweets

Good friends of my late mother-in-law's kindly visited us to give a prayer before our Buddhist family altar for remembering her on her first death anniversary.　

I served Japanese tea for them and I put some Japanese sweets on a glass plate. Although this summer heat was exceptionally weird, we still keep the nice way to appreciate the season that traditional Japanese confectioners depict using refined sugar and beans.

We really had a good time together sharing nice memories of my mother- in- law.
I believed she smiled on us.

Today March 3rd 2014

Today it's Dolls Day Festival !

These chicks dressed like a pair of "Hina" dolls are puddings

from a popular confectionery right in the Nagoya station building. 

Enjoy the Hina Dolls Festival with your families and friends !

What shall I do?

This year, I enjoyed making summer tangerine peels more than I had expected. I wonder how many summer tangerines I used so far to make sugared peels.

Last year, at this time of the season, I spent more time visiting my elderly parents and my in-laws and I spent more time with them. I had hardly any time for myself. Eventually a lot of the fruit in our garden fell on the ground and spoiled. I feel guilty. I didn't want it to happen again this year. So I made a little bit of extra effort to pick the fruit when they were at their best.

I cooked many and decided to package them into little bags in a cute way. Aren't they nice?
Just looking at these home made sugared peels in cute bags made me so happy. How can I possibly spoil this sight? Now it seems to me that the idea of opening one of the bags is insane. 

Alas, I am at a loss. To eat or not to eat: that's another question. 

So what happened next ?

So,  as I described in my previous post,  after struggling with picking tangerines in the trees,  there I had the most delightful part of making use of them. Cooking!

Summer tangerine peels from our garden!

I made them twice.  And I learned that I could never have exactly the same result each time.
I followed the same recipe and I believed I did just the same as last time.

I liked the first peels better than the second ones.  They were softer. What brought this result?
That's what the cooking is fun all about.

 

My husband usually doesn't have anything sweets but surprisingly enough he likes its unique bitterness. He says it goes great with a glass of Scotch.
Very good for him.

Since I have still plenty of tangerines,  I'll try out for the third and maybe the fourth and until I feel I enjoy pretty much the seasonal blessing.

Edible Fujisan

Here you are! Senbei(sen-bay)! ----- Japanese traditional rice crackers baked and brushed simply with sweet soy sauce or additionally coated with green seaweed or crystal sugar , sesame, red pepar----- In fact there are varieties of flavor. Besides flavor, there are varieties of shape as well such as a square, a circle shape or other modified shapes.

Recently my daughter brought a bag of senbei as a souvenir when she visited Shizuoka Prefecture which is famous for Fujisan(Mt. Fuji), a symbolic mountain of our country. She found a unique shape of senbei at a store.

You see, how these senbei look like Mt. Fuji! Just pleasant idea to take an advantage of a prefecture being at the foot of this symbol of Japan.

Delicately they are coated with different taste toppings. Guess what each senbei represents? Yes they have a reason for this. Not being coated in random. Look at a picture of Mr. Fuji above. You see an answer.
Amazing! Each represents the four season. Mt. Fuji senbei covered with white snow on top, one with trees of which leaves changed colors into red, one with green leaves in spring and presumably with no sprinkle on senbei representing summer. How do you like this idea?

It surely added casual topic to our tea time.

One of the Japanese popular sweets

(click each for larger images)

Look! This is called "Peco-chan Yaki". I went to this shop when I visited Tokyo last month. Peco-chan is a popular girl character from a famous confectionery called Fujiya with a long history in Japan. "Yaki" literally means "bake". It originally comes from a traditional Japanese cake with sweet beans filling called　in general "dora-yaki".


Many confectioneries from fancy to local ones throughout the country make their own with a little bit of modifications in their ingredients and shapes.　
Try it when you had a chance to visit Japan. You'll find it almost any cities and towns. You won't miss it at any food floors of the department stores. Some times you are supposed to join the line to get this sweet. When you see the line, it is a "delicious" sign!

　

Like this "Peco-chan Yaki". They have several different fillings of the season besides sweet beans such as custard cream, cheese cream, green tea cream, mushed sweet potato,mushed pumpkin and several more.　

There is one Japanese traditional confectionery on the Fifth Ave. New York and I heard not only the Japanese living there but also other local residents love this "dora-yaki". I didn't expect that people besides the Japanese love this sweet beans paste. I think sweet beans paste is rather authentic and unique that I thought sweet beans filling just don't appeal to their taste. But it's fun to see on TV some fans of Japanese sweets enjoy eating "dora-yaki" while walking along the New York streets after they get them from the shop. Just like they eat burgers!

Wagashi pleases our eyes

Here are the sweets I got from my favorite confectionery at the airport shopping mall yesterday.

Wagashi(Japanese small sweets) are formed into shapes to express the images of different four seasons. During the summer, every confectionery has their own way to express some faces of the hottest season using kudzu powder or agar powder. These ingredients create a transparent layer which adds some cool images of water and breeze which we admires in summer.

Just imagine what these three wagashi express the faces of the summer.
Since each wagashi is titled after some images of the season by the confectionery, here are the answers.
From the left to right:" physalis alkekengi fruit with the red husk","summer evening" and "the moon reflecting on a lacquer tray." Well what do you think? Before putting them into a mouth, they certainly please our eyes.

Yay, TGIF!

(by photojoy)

It was an exhausting week! So I'm deserved to have some sweets! This is a bowl of shaved ice with green tea syrup. Now it's getting hotter and damper as the summer is getting close to us. It's the season of shaved ice with syrup and ice cream. What do you think ? I love Japanese sweets. By the way I was visiting Kyoto last Saturday and had a chance to eat in at this sweet shop. It's a very popular tea house run by a famous Japanese tea company in Kyoto especially among females of all ages.

(image from google images)

There are always a long line to get in. Girls are often so patience when it comes to having something delicious. We can't miss it. Thanks God, that afternoon we didn't have to wait in line. How lucky!

How we wrap a gift

My daughter sent me a small box of assorted "wagashi" Japanese sweets from Kyoto on Mother's Day. When I opened the brown mail box, I found this pretty box of sweets. I could tell instantly from its outer wrapping paper this was from one of the prestigious old confectioneries in Kyoto called "Kame-sue-hiro". Three Chinese characters are used for "Kamesuehiro" and it consists of "turtle" "forever" "widespread" ---- all indicate good fortune.

A box wrapped in a white "Noshi" with a red line
Today a custom of Noshi is modified in a simple style.
In stead of attaching a dried abalone, modified red letters "noshi"on the right corner was designed.

This brown one is added by a confectionery to explain the history of this Japanese sweets.

In this small box, you certainly find an essence of each season.

This small box is arranged with "Chiyogami" paper of printed patterns and what's more it was wrapped with a white sash-like paper called "Noshi". This is a kind of formal manner for us to hand out someone a gift. The origin of this manner of attaching "Noshi" on a gift was dated way back in Japanese early history. At that time, a stretched, dried, thin sliced abalone wrapped in a white paper was attached on a gift because ancient people believed that abalone carried away bad evil. So it was a token of good fortune. This might be one of the reasons why we use so much attention to wrap a gift today.
Today when you buy a present at any department stores, they never fail to ask you if you 'd like to attach a paper of "Noshi" or not. Well, we prefer having them attach it when we certainly want it make very formal or when we just add a bit of Japanese way of etiquette.
I would say that wrapping is not only a matter of covering something or decorating but of adding good wishes from a sender to a receiver.

Here are some more images of gift-wrapping with "noshi".

(above five images are from Google)

information website of "Kamesuehiro"

Good excuse for sweets

Here are one of my favorite Japanese sweets called "Ohagi" , sweet rice balls.

Ohagi are rice balls similar to sticky rice cake and are covered with sweet red beans paste(right rear), sesame, sweet soybeans powder(front) or so on. My grand mom and my mother used to make these sweet balls as some offerings on the family Buddhist altar on several special commemorative days during the year. They are popular Japanese sweets which we have daily throughout the year as well.

So today I just needed something sweet so badly after I walked quite long to enjoy cherry blossoms at Nagoya Castle. On the way home, I stopped by at one confectionery store and found these Ohagi. Such a treat after I went through a comfortable fatigue. Good excuse to have some sweets!

When I got home, I had them with coffee not green tea but it was a good combination.

Well, just forget about calories. Happy tea time!

Have some "senbei"!

These are the most popular Japanese confectionery. They are "senbei", which made from glutinous rice and wheat flour. The dough is stretched thinly into circles or squares of about a coater-size in general, but in fact in varieties of shapes and sizes. Then, they are put into molds and baked.

They are flavored with soy sauce, salt or sugar and some are applied or mixed with sesame, beans or soybean paste. Some are wrapped in seaweed as well.

I love the one seared maple leaves and ginkgo leave in the picture. These are made from wheat flour mixed with sugar and eggs. Slightly sweet. Mmmmm I love them. This old senbei confectionery shop downtown Nagoya changes their seared stamps on "senbei " in every four season. Isn't it fun?

"Senbei" are snacks that go really well with green tea. It cerntaily provides a nice tea time in a family.

Much better!

I'm surviving!

I'll be back in a few days.

Konpeitou

These colorful star shaped small candies is called Konpeitou(kon-pay-toe). Konpeitou is usually 5 to 10 millimeters in diameter. Each piece is covered with tiny bulges, which occur in the cooking process. A word of konpeitou came from "confeito" in Portuguese. It's now one of the Japanese traditional and popular sugar candies which everyone knows. But as you see this word came from "confeito" in Portuguese, it was first brought to Japan by Portuguese merchants while Japan secluded herself from any other countries but Portugal and the Netherlands. Konpeitou was very rare sweets at first since we didn't know the technique to refine sugar and eventually konpeitou was a very precious sweet in those days and so they were often brought to the Imperial court people and the powerful landlords by Portuguese merchants or some Jesuit missionaries as the gifts before its making process was widely prevailed in the country. In fact the whole process of making tiny konpeitou requires time and delicate techniques. Nowadays there are many kinds of shops that makes konpeitou but there is only one long-standing shop in Kyoto that handmakes all kinds of tiny konpeitou and is a purveyors to the Imperial House of Japan.
Lucky me! because this store locates very close to the university where my daughter goes to in Kyoto. In fact she was home over this weekends to spend time with us. She brought the box of konpeitou especially arranged for Tanabata. Aren't they lovely! Too lovely to eat them.

Which one would you like to have?

Basically twice a month, I have a get-together with some of my ex colleagues to study computers mainly on handling soft wares.
Here, at my friend's, there are three pieces of different cakes. How lucky I am! It was just one day after my birthday so a friend of mine got some cakes for a coffee break. It was such an exciting moment to decide who was going to take which one. Imagine women in their fifties discussing who was going to have a privilege to pick up the first one out of different three! Funny, funny! Anyway I had that privilege just because of my birthday. Oh what a perfect decision! I had that chocolate one. It came out so good with a coffee.

I remember one day on TV program, foreign residents in Japan from almost every part of the world were interviewed what was cool about Japanese culture. Some of them mostly women pointed out that they can take out any kinds of cakes by pieces in Japan. Then the rest of them agreed. Well, I've never thought of that. So, I'm asking my blog friends here, "Is it true? In your country or town, you take out cakes by a whole, not by pieces?"
In Japan it is common to buy a birthday cake or a Christmas cake in whole but usually for daily use we prefer get different kinds of cakes by pieces. At any confectioneries they put each piece of cakes into a box very carefully using some paper partitions in a box so that each cake won't stick each other. They even put a small bag of dry ice in a box. It is exciting moment to decide and tell a clerk at a shop which one to buy. Oh, sometimes I start telling before I know what to take. Poor clerk!

The folktale behind the "Kibidango" sweets

These are one type of Japanese wagashi called "Kibidango(ki-bi-da-n-go)". Dango literally means dumplings but this "Kibidango" belongs to sweets and each one is wrapped in an illustrated paper and comes in a pretty box full of animated characters of a Japanese ancient folktale, "Momotaro(Peach Boy).

Momotaro is a hero from a Japanese folktale, who fights the evil demons for bringing back the peace in his land. His name "momo" means "peach" and "taro" is a typical name for boys.

Since this story is so well known and loved, it is associated with many ways in movies, books and in almost any way possible. This cute box of sweet dumplings is a good example. One confectionery in Okayama Prefecture took an advantage of its long history that they had been producing wagashi associated with a story of this folktale. They asked GOMI Taro, one of the famous illustrators and writers for children's books to design a package and wrapping papers featuring the characters of this story.
Oh, I like his illustrations so much and still keep many children's books I got for my kids. Now in a picture , can you tell the hero Momotaro, the dog, the monkey, the pheasant, and the devils? They are just so cute!-----even the devils are adorable!

Any children who have grown up in Japan know this story and they love to sing the story of Momotaro.

So here is an adventure story of "Momotaro" and his three followers of the dog, the monkey and the pheasant. (it comes up with a song. If you don't want a sound, turn off a sound before you click a link above.)
Hope you'll enjoy it.

Here you are

Like you pick up some of your favorites from a chocolate shop, we stop by at a wagashi(Japanese sweets) shop and get some. Here I show you some I got today. This wagashi is named " flowers fileds". Aren't they cute. It has even butterflies flying over the flowers. And it is all made from beans paste cooked with good quality of sugar. You will see two more sweets at the back with a Japanese tea bowl and a powered tea container in a bag. It's a small but happy moment of tea time on a hectic day. Try some by all means when you get here!

Bon Bon Chocolat

Amazing! These colorful chocolate are the ones I picked up from the shop in Tokyo Midtown. Fingersize bars called Bon Bon Chocolat have 17 varieties of tastes and every color tells its flavor and taste. The round ones are named Chocoron which are chocolate-glazed macarons. I'm glad that I brought home some boxes of these unique chocolate since they only have their shops in Tokyo and Paris. (Why not in Nagoya?) Anyway it's just a little excitement!
The name of this pattisserie is Sadaharu Aoki.