out and about

Saturday was forecast for sun while Sunday was forecast for rain.

So...we tried to get everything done on Saturday...starting at Todoroki Valley.

The trail is only a kilometer (.62 miles) and it will make you feel like you are not in a big city like Tokyo.

Lots of trees, birds and quiet.

There are several temples too.

WARNING: Just do not go after the rains or while it is raining, very dangerous & slippery.

Lunch was at Sushi Zanmai.

The owner is known to spend millions of yen on whole tuna and performs many tuna carving shows.

Meh, over-hyped...we felt some of the fish that was served was kind of "dry" in texture.

After lunch, we went up to Sarue Onshi Park.

They were having a tulip festival...but disappointing...only a little patch of tulips...(I guess when you've been to Keukenhof (pre-blog), nothing compares)

On the other hand, I will check this place out next year for cherry blossoms.

So many bridges in this area...

Clover Bridge...

Will need to check out Kiba Park for cherry blossoms too, next year.

And then we found ourselves near Kiyosumi Gardens.

The double type of cherry blossoms were blooming, so we paid for admission to check them out.

And the azaleas...

The weather was summery and it was nice to be out and about.

Sushi Zanmai
1-13-7 Jiyugaoka
Meguro, Tokyo
Phone: 03.5731.3211
Open 24 hours

gokayama-fukumitsu-tonami

Monday we again woke up early, not really by choice...The whole village actually has an "alarm" (loud speaker) that goes off at about 6:30...

Since we had some time before breakfast at 8, we took advantage of having a village pretty much all to ourselves without many tourists roaming around.

Breakfast was a lot of different things, even a raw egg, which we both left alone...

The weather was forecast to be overcast with chance of rain.

There weren't many buses running so we were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves until 11-ish.

It was then that the lady of the pension mentioned she was going into "town" at about 9-ish and if we wanted to catch a ride, she would be more than happy to take us.

So, we caught a ride with her, her daughter & grandson, to Fukumitsu.

Fukumitsu is a teeny town along the train line that we needed to catch to get back to Tonami.

After saying our goodbyes, we checked out the supermarket in front of the train station.

We then wandered a little into the town area and picked up some sweets from Sakagami Shokado & headed back to Tonami.

Back in Tonami, we headed to the hotel we would be staying at, Suigetsuro, to leave our things.

It was kind of a weird place, and very teeny.

The elderly guy at the front desk told us to bring our bags up to our room ourselves and that "oh maybe housekeeping hasn't cleaned it yet"...WT?

So, we left our things (half-heartedly) in our-soon-to-be-cleaned-doors-wide-open room and went to check out the Tulip Fair.

There was a free shuttle from the JR Tonami station that took you to the fair grounds.

The admission is 1000 yen but if you rode JR to get to Tonami, you could receive a 300 yen discount ticket, since we had these tickets, we only paid 700 yen each.

The fair grounds were quite spreadout. There was also a huge tower you could go up and see the whole grounds from.

It was nice to check out the different exhibits and we were also glad the weather decided to be nice and blazing though at times it was overcast.

Lunch was from one of the many booths they had in their eating area. I had the shiroebi yakisoba (white shrimp fried noodle)...500 yen.

A bit too salty for me.

While Satoshi chose to have a bowl of black ramen...800 yen. The shoyu is apparently what makes this bowl "black".

I had to stop him from drinking all the soup...

I also had a yogocchi burger...400 yen.

Yogoshi is a local food. Veggies are chopped up and mixed with miso. I think in Japanese cooking it is what we call "miso-ae".

This "burger" was a tasty version of it.

While walking around the fair, we found out that with our admission tickets we could also get into different sights around Tonami for free.

So, we left the fair and hopped on the free shuttle that took us to the Tonami Sankyoson Museum. A community center of sorts. It was a beautiful property.

And then the shuttle took us to Kainyo-en, another community center. This was actually someone's home until recently. While waiting for the shuttle we had a nice chat with one of the volunteers.

Next, the shuttle took us to the Demachi Children's Kabuki Hikiyama Hall. This is where we saw beautiful floats (hikiyama) and the theatre where children perform kabuki.

We realized that we were close to the center of town, so we walked back to our hotel from here.

We checked-in (our stuff was still in our room, whew!) and took a bath in their reserved bathing area.

Dinner was kaiseki-style. All sorts of seafood.

Another long day, but we were happy the weather was cooperative and that we got to see lots of tulips.

Sakagami Shokado
5546 Araki
Nanto, Toyama

Suigetsuro
15-16 Omotemachi
Tonami, Toyama
Phone: 0763.32.2054

Tonami Tulip Fair
Held near the end of April, check their website for more info (Japanese only)

we're back

We're back from a trip to Toyama...lots of photos to sort through...talk to you soon!

on a sunny day

The wind has been really cold the past couple of days, I think they said the temps would be similar to February's, there may even be some snow in some places...Yikes!

Anyway, on a sunny day, while I was walking, I ran into this doggie in our neighborhood, I guess she (I'm assuming it is a she because of the ribbons) and her master were out for a "walk".

On another sunny day, I tried the 5 minute mug cake that Rowena and Laura posted about. I split the batter up between 2 mugs. I also added toasted macadamia nuts and one small handful of Ghiradelli 60% chocolate chips (these chips are larger than the usual chocolate chips).

I snapped the photo of them as soon as the 3 minutes were up. While putting my camera onto the table, they fell. While they were still warm, I turned them out onto some plates. The texture was dense probably like those English puddings. I say probably because I've never actually had an English pudding.

Eating it warm was delicious. The chocolate chips were oozy, and there was crunch from the mac nuts...Dividing the batter was a good thing. This "cake" was just enough to satisfy a sweet tooth, plus I have one for Satoshi to try.

On my lanai, I took some close-ups of the lavender, strawberry flowers, and tulip.

Happy Wednesday!

wanted!

I am not sure if I ever told you, but I wish I had a camera built into my eye.

If I had one in my eye, I could've shown you the guy on the train digging his nose and then eating what he dug...okay, maybe you wouldn't want to see that, but there are some pretty outrageous things that I witness on public transportation.

Like the women who insist on putting their faces on while riding the train. Can you believe that some use 4 different mascaras? (When they do it while you are facing them, you tend to take notice.)

I could've shown you the guy smoking then throwing his cigarette into the stream and the other who threw his into the sewage drain.

Or the people who drink canned drinks on the train and leave them under their seat for others to clean up after them.

I could've shown you the 980 yen (about US$9.80) price tag for 1 nub of wasabi (Japanese horseradish) at the market.

I could've shown you this bird taking the very tiny, but very ripe strawberry from my planter. This bird was quick and smart.

It sat on the edge of the planter, looked at me looking at it and took the strawberry.

It went up to the roof of the house across from our lanai to eat it. While I ran to get my camera, he came back to check out the planter again.

Then went onto the roof once more to wait until I left the window, I took its photo while it was waiting on the roof...I have a feeling it was a bulbul, but I can't be too certain.

The tulips on my lanai have started to bloom, so fast and so pretty!

bulgogi

Last Wednesday, I met my friend, Kazumi for a lesson. She then invited me to dinner. It seems that she had travelled to Korea last month with some friends and learned how to make bulgogi from a well-known chef. (This photo was taken by Kazumi at the lesson.)

After coming back from the trip, she had been wanting to try the recipe and had gotten all the ingredients together, but her husband was suddenly invited out for a night of drinking, this was why I happened to be invited.

In Japan, it is often the case where businessmen invite each other out for drinks and dinner at the last minute, this is called tsukiai, sometimes it is for business, but most times it is just a reason to get together for drinks....whether they tell their wives they don't need dinner is a matter of how well-trained they are or just the plain fear of what will happen if they don't...

Ask Satoshi and he will say that for businessmen, tsukiai is the most important law to participate in this because it is their way to communicate with each other. A slang terminology of this is called nomunication--nomu = drink + communication.

Still, it was nice to be able to eat dinner with someone, not alone like my usual weekdays.

Kazumi prepared the marinade and soaked the meat for 1/2 an hour.

After cooking it, she basted the meat with honey and served it with greens. It was delicious.

I emailed her for the recipe, but she hasn't responded yet, hopefully I'll be able to get the name of her teacher and the recipe.

While having dinner, Kazumi gave me some kim chee that she had, this one was kind of "a deluxe type" with all kinds of vegetable, nuts and even squid inside.

To go along with the kim chee, I decided to try to make bulgogi for tonight's dinner with the help of my friend, Sue's recipe. NOTES: I used meat for kalbi instead of for bulgogi. I grated apple instead of pear for the marinade. And I also left out the green pepper in the sauce because I didn't know what to substitute it with.

I should mention that Satoshi doesn't care much for Korean food, but he really enjoyed these dishes. (The kim chee seems to be getting hotter and hotter as each day passes.) To cool off our mouths, we had some dark chocolate covered mac nuts from my favorite, Big Island Candies for dessert.

Just wanted to show you some candies that I found at the convenience store--Tirol chocolates with a hanafuda motif. Hanafuda is a card game which uses the different flowers of the four seasons in Japan. Satoshi says that when he was growing up 3 of these chocolates were just 10 yen. Times have changed since then, these were 21 yen each. Apparently, the manufacturer had to make them bigger to fit the bar codes onto the package for convenience stores (not very convenient, huh?). These were aoume(green plum) flavor--a white chocolate dyed green with a pectin jelly center--Satoshi and I agree they didn't taste very good.

This little pink tulip is coming up amongst the bright orange ones, cute, yeah?

Well, it has been raining very hard the past couple of nights, with lightining and thunder. I hope this weather clears up soon, so that the sakura(cherry blossoms) can bloom and we can enjoy them!

Have a nice week!

pizza!

Yesterday's dinner was pizza! Inspired by Kitchen Wench's post, (here).

I decided to mesh her recipe for her dough to the one that comes with the yeast packets.

Here's what I came up with: Pizza Dough: makes one 12" pie.
300g (3 cups) flour
1 sachet instant dry yeast (6g)
pinch of salt
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp olive oil

Mix flour, yeast together.
Add salt, water and oil. Combine well.
Turn onto floured board and knead.
Let rest for 50 minutes.
Knead again.
Let rest for another 10 minutes.
Roll out and add sauce and toppings.
Bake at 200C(400F) on pizza stone for 20 minutes.
Enjoy!

Toppings: store bought pasta sauce, eggplant, red bell pepper, mushrooms, thinly sliced red onion, salami, several grinds of fresh pepper. Cheeses: mozzarella, emmental (a type of swiss) and parmigiano-reggiano. I pre-cooked the eggplant and red bell pepper to take out most of the moisture and pre-cooked the salami to take out the oil.

The pizza really poofed up! I think I should have pricked the dough like Ellie did. Still, it tasted great!

Notes: Next time, I will make my own sauce, the store bought one was a bit too watery. And I will add some Italian seasoning to the dough to give it more flavor. Will also try to roll out the dough thinner and prick it. And at the end, put it under the broiler to give it a little more crispiness.

It is a rainy and cold first day of October...I had to make a quick trip to the D.I.Y. store to pick up new tulip bulbs. The ones we had from last year were all clear and a bit soft...ick! I planted the new bulbs--so we'll have to wait until April to see what happens!

Have a good week!

great to be back...

For the past couple of days I have been battling a fever, chills and body ache...the kitchen and appetite was closed...and I became another year older in the whole process...
This was a gift from my host sister, Tomoko and her husband, Koji. Can you believe that these beauties are artificial? I plan to use this to hold fresh fruit.

My husband gave me these purple tulips. Tulips are one of my favorite flowers. I'm not quite sure when it became my favorite but it is. Maybe it's because they look like light bulbs all lit up in the sun...For part of our honeymoon we went to Amsterdam's Keukenhof Gardens. There were tulips everywhere! I only wish that the weather was a bit more sunny, but I guess in April, it gets a bit cloudy...I think I've influenced Satoshi because now he's into tulips and lavender too!

Thank you also to all my family and friends who sent wonderful e-cards. You really made me smile on a day when I was really feeling low. :)

Finally, I can get back into the kitchen and back to being a foodie...