Japan Navigator

The Visit Japan Campaign has set up a channel on YouTube where I found these video’s about Japanese Cuisine. They are nice introductions and above all beautifully made.
Gochiso, part 1, is about seasonality and kaiseki cuisine:

Gochiso, part 2, is about wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets:

Gochiso, part 3, is about sushi:

Gochiso, part 4, is a do-it-yourself cooking [...]

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Nigori sake
Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Nigori sake is getting more popular in Japan, but to my feeling it in the first places suits auspicious occasions as the New Year. We had a strong nigori genshu (an undiluted, raw nigori). The sake set is typical for the new year, too. Of course we did not warm the [...]

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Zoni

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Zoni or the New Year soup consisting of white miso with rice cakes (mochi) is literally a “killing” dish. The half-molten rice cakes get extremely sticky and every year several persons – mostly elderly – choke on them. But zoni remains a fixed part of the New Year meal. The advice is [...]

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Auspicious food for New Year
Originally uploaded by Ganjin
Here is a plate of New Year food, of which most items have an auspicious connotation: Starting at the bottom and going around clockwise:
- kazunoko or herring roe – the name sounds the same as “many children”
- Koya tofu, freeze-dried tofu
- the black pouches next to that: [...]

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Looking into the future

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Lotus root (renkon) is one of the fixed New Year dishes in Japan. It is considered as auspicious for three reasons:
1. The lotus is a flower symbolizing the process of enlightenment in Buddhism, as it rises up from the mud of the pond towards the light.
2. With its spokes [...]

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A very happy, prosperous and healthy New Year to all readers!
2010 will see an overhaul of this blog. As you have noticed, my posting has been on hiatus since October – the main reason being a problem with the database of the site. Whether it is a bug in Wordpress or MySQL I have [...]

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