natto day

July 10th is Natto Day.

The goroawase (a play on the pronunciation of numbers) for 7 and 10 is "na" and "tow" respectively.

I try to serve natto at least once a week, mostly for breakfast.

Back in June, I served it as part of a soba salad for dinner.

We are nearing the end of rainy season, but the rain doesn't seem like it will stopping anytime soon.

The weather dude said it will probably rain off and on until Sunday!

On the other hand, the nightly news said that it would continue to rain off and on until next Wednesday...sigh.

Hoping all those in the flooded & landslide areas will continue to be safe.

Since June 19th, Japan has opened up, people can go to other prefectures.  

Tonight, they will allow 5000 fans to watch baseball games.

This week Tokyo had 100 confirmed cases for 3 days straight and an alarming 200 yesterday...I am hoping the people in charge have "a plan"...

Have a safe weekend everyone.

natto

Have been trying to work natto into my diet, but cannot get past the stinkiness.

I think I found a brand from Gunma that isn't stinky.

I like that they just wrap it in a thick piece of paper, or maybe it is a thin piece of bamboo leaf...they also don't include any Japanese mustard or sauce, so you can control how you eat it and what you eat it with.

The other morning, I masked the natto with some kim chee, a little sesame oil and a little shoyu.

I know natto isn't everyone's "thing", but I think I'll be eating natto this way for now.

naniwara

A news program recently featured Koganeya's Naniwara. A natto that is made in Osaka and sold in the traditional way, wrapped in straw.

The name is a combination of "naniwa" the name for Osaka and "wara" which is straw.

It is a little higher priced than the natto packed in styrofoam, but the daizu (soy bean) flavor is a little stronger and it is definitely stinky.

It doesn't come with the Japanese mustard or soy sauce.

The package says to sprinkle some salt on and eat it, which we did, but Satoshi added a little shoyu to his.

I'm glad we tried this.

tkg & natto

You ever have one of those days when you needed to overcome things you feared eating, fast?!

That was the breakfast for me at Waterfront Inn Yosaso...

The photo above is what we were served....miso soup (not pictured), nori, pickles, rice, tiny dried mackerel, a raw egg and natto...

To tell you the truth, I've tried natto before. I didn't like it, it was too stinky.

I thought I could give the natto to Satoshi, but I would still need to eat the raw egg...gah! and I would definitely be hungry afterwards, I thought.

So instead of taking the easy way out, I went for it.

I mixed my natto, put a little onto my rice. And put it into my mouth.

A little sour, but other than that...not bad. Not smelly...

So what is TKG? in Japanese it is the acronym for "tamago kake gohan" (raw egg on hot rice)

If you were to eat an egg raw, I believe the only place you would be able to (without fear of getting sick) would be in Japan.

I didn't grow up eating eggs this way, so this was another food fear for me to overcome.

On the hot rice, the egg supposedly "cooks" a little, but for the most part it is still really raw.

Since it was still raining quite heavily, I quietly bargained with "someone up there"..."if I eat all of this, will you make the rain stop?".

I thought that would be a nice "reward" for overcoming the foods I feared eating.

And wouldn't you know, after breakfast, we checked out, the rain went from downpour to slight drizzle and by the time we reached Miyazu, the sun came out...

I don't know that I would choose to eat natto or TKG again, but at least now I know I could if I had to.

odds & ends

Just cleaning out my photos....

A.C. Perch tea. I saw this on QVC Japan and found it at Dean & Deluca Japan. This one is called Copacabana. It is very fruity and has a nice aroma.

A new product from Meiji, Hokkaido choco-potato. Potato sticks covered with milk chocolate. I was hoping the sticks would be bigger and the chocolate darker...I'm going to try making this on my own (later though).

When you go to bars or some restaurants in Japan, you may see bottles with tags on them, like this. They call this "bottle keep"--you pay the bar to hold your bottle of booze. In some restaurants recently, they have "mayonnaise keep"--where they keep your bottle of mayo and "chopstick keep"--where they keep your pair of chopsticks. I'm not sure if this is a Japanese thing or if other cultures do this too.

Bamboo curry spoons from my friend, Kazumi. She got them from a bamboo craft center in Kobe. (Thank you!)

Mentaiko (salted pollack eggs with chili). Satoshi loves this, but I can't bring myself to eating this, it reminds me of tongues. Though I will eat beef tongue...weird? maybe.

Natto (fermented soy beans) I don't eat this either, mainly because it smells. Another of Satoshi's favorites.

Some of our cherry tomatoes. We were lucky to get some even with the cold. I brought the plant into the house and it gave us some tart but delicious tomatoes.

The tuna cans don't have the normal pull tops here. They have been replaced by this thin, but sturdy foil-like top. I'd still be careful though, you probably could still cut yourself on the edges of the foil.

Anyway, I'm off to somewhere warm in a couple of days....tell you about it soon.