cheek-zai

(picture from Unico Website)

While I was in Hawaii, Satoshi sent me an email stating that we "had" to buy a dining room table....WT?

When we moved from Osaka to Tokyo, I got rid of our dining room table because I didn't think it would fit in our kitchen area.

Plus, the chairs that were with the dining table were made of cardboard that were covered with leather(?) and were starting to fall apart.

Anyway, since moving we had been using our kotatsu which is a low table that has a heater built into the base of the table.

In the winter, you sandwich a futon (comforter) between the table top and the base of the table.

While you eat or sit, your feet are toasty from the heater and the futon also keep your legs warm.

I really don't like the kotatsu because during the winter I've often found "someone" sleeping under the table with the heater on...ahem

On top of that if you spill something while eating, it is hard to clean the futon...

I thought it would be good using the kotatsu because if others come over, we would just need to take out another zabuton (cushion) or two.

Anyway, "someone" said he is too old to sit on the floor, which is why we "need" a dining table...

When I told him we'd need to get rid of the kotatsu, he didn't understand why...um, because we have nowhere to store the kotatsu...sigh

So I looked online for something with a bench that could be tucked under the table when we weren't eating.

The bench could seat several people if necessary and would cut down the amount of individual chairs we would need for a table...

Sunday, we went to several furniture stores and decided on this one by Unico (pictured above).

It's made of cheek-zai...WT? is a little larger in length than the kotatsu table we have and also has a little storage under the table as well as the benches.

I looked online and "cheek" is teak and "zai" is material...I hate katakana it doesn't even come close to sounding like teak...

Anyway, our table and benches will be delivered next week and they will also take away our kotatsu (for a fee), which is good because I'd hate to have to deal with discarding the kotatsu ourselves.

Hopefully this table will stop "someone" from moaning and groaning.

kouglof

This post took a bit of research. The problem? Katakana words.

I received this bread from my host sister for Christmas. In katakana, it is called "kugurofu raru" (now just by hearing it, you know it is a foreign word, but how do you spell it in English?)

I typed in the katakana word into Yahoo Japan hoping that someone had an English spelling of it...(yeah!! some one had it) It is spelled two ways, Kouglof or Kougelhopf (coo-ghel-hof). The next step was to find out what "raru" was...this is where the research took MAJOR time. Since Kouglof was a French word, I figured that "raru" must be too. Japanese is tricky because sometimes they pair words from different languages together (some apartments have names like "maison de matsui", but in katakana it is written and pronounced "maizon do matsui").

Since the bread had bacon or ham in it, I tried to find the pronunciation of both words, but couldn't find one with a voice recording of the pronunciation. I then tried typing in the katakana word "raru" into Yahoo Japan and got lucky...it is actually short for lardoons (cubes of fatty bacon sometimes used in French salads)...(whew!)

So now that I knew what I was dealing with, I had to find out more about kouglof...Kouglof is usually a sweetened yeast bread w/currants and almonds. It is found in the Alsace region of France and the mold that it is baked in, is usually a terracotta type mold, shaped like a crown. It is very similar to the bundt pan. Kouglof is also found in Switzerland, South Germany and Austria. Most of the entries on the internet seemed to say that this version of bread is eaten at Christmastime.

Kouglof Lardoons is a bread baked using the mold with pieces of bacon and walnuts in it. It was made by Mikage Takasugi, a well-known shop in the Kobe/Osaka area. The main shop is in Mikage, you can also find his desserts in several department stores and at other shops around the Kobe area.

Since the bread had bits of ham in it, I decided to serve it with some vegetable soup and a salad.

Mikage Takasugi
1491-1 Azashironomae (not too sure of pronunciation) Mikagemachi
Phone: 078-811-1234
Open: 10am - 8pm
Closed on Tuesdays

interesting book

Recently, on a morning television show, this book was talked about and it caught my attention. 

It is a dictionary which you can look up a food term or food name in Japanese, if there is a Chinese character it is given, the English term is given next and if there are terms in other languages (such as French & Italian) for the same food; they are also given.

The book was written by Kazuhiko Nagai & Kikue Suzuki under the supervision of Yukio Hattori. Some may know Mr. Hattori from the television program, the "Iron Chef", where he was a guest commentator.

A lot of times trying to figure what the katakana word for some foods or things can be a bit stressful.

If you have been to Japan and/or understand some Japanese, you can understand why katakana can be a bit stressful, for example, ba-su could mean bath or bass, ro-zu could mean rose, rows or roads.

Katakana is one of the four Japanese writing systems (hiragana, kanji and romaji are the other three).

The main uses of katakana in modern Japanese are for onomatopoeia--used to represent sounds, like hii means "to sigh", for technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animals, plant species and minerals and the transcription of words from foreign languages (gairaigo)--television would be terebi in katakana.

Although nowadays people use hiragana for foreign words too.

For people learning English, I would suggest that you give up using Katakana because you will lose the true pronunciation of the English word.

Anyway, if you're a foodie, like me, I think you'll find this book very useful.