Japan's Seasonal Flavours

Japan is a land that is highly aware of the changing of seasons. I often get asked if we have four seasons in Canada and when I say that we do, I am met with a surprised and seemingly never ending "eeeeehhh?!?", like they assumed that Japan was the only place on earth that had four distinct seasons. In some ways they are right though. Japan relishes in the changing of seasons like no other place that I have ever lived.

Baby William trying to break his way into
a pack of sakura flavoured yogurt

In Canada we fairly passively observe the changing of seasons. Spring is met with a "Hey, its nice that the snow is gone and flowers are on the lilac bushes", but not that much more. Maybe because of year round climate controlled houses the seasons are merely something you see outside your window, not a cold, heat, or humidity that you endure all day long. If Canadians dealt with humid, sticky houses when it rained, freezing cold houses in winter, or hot and humid houses in summer, they might find a way of celebrating and glorifying the changing of seasons a bit more. We also like to have constant access to our favourite foods all year long, even if this means we are importing them from across the world and they taste like little more than bland shadows of the foods they should be.

After moving to Japan, we noticed fairly quickly the availability of certain foods and products only in the right season. Want to buy a fan in the winter? Sorry! Have to wait until the appropriate season. Is it an unseasonably warm spring day? Be prepared to get some looks like you are a crazy person if you wear anything other than long sleeve shirts, a sweater, and pants. Do you want to by strawberries in October or tomatoes in December? Not every store will carry them, and if they do you will pay and arm and a leg.

In late spring, I am always happy to eat boiled soramame

Summer is the perfect time to eat a delicious meal of cold noodles like somen

Would winter be winter without eating mikan every day?

Nabe. In winter we revel in it and every other season we
remember it fondly. 

The strict seasonality of products can occasionally be pretty annoying, but once you get used to changing your shopping and menu planning every three months it is really fun and wonderful. I look forward to spring every year because I love how sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured products suddenly show up on the shelves. In summer I am always happy to see my friends warabimochi and all sorts of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, and edamame cheap and readily available. Even though brassicas have never been my favourite, we eat turnips, cabbage, and daikon fairly often in the winter months. Though this is something we never really needed to do back home, it has made the seasons into something that we celebrate and anticipate. It is also a way to overlook the unpleasant things that come with them, like heat, cold, bugs, and rain, making them seem more bearable.

Every New Year my children test just how much
fresh mochi they can ingest in one sitting. 

The Joy of Nattō

At least once a week, I pick a food product which I have only seen in Japan and try it out. Sometimes, when I feel the most daring, I go for something that looks utterly unappetizing. I must confess that I limit myself to interesting and bizarre vegetable matter and dried goods, and avoid trying the mysterious and creepy looking meats I have found. I am really not brave enough to try them, but I am sure that if my dad ever comes to visit us in Japan he will be all over the congealed globs and slices of questionable origin. Dustin, after one too many unpalatable failures, has gradually stopped trying any of the experimental foods I bring home.

A single serving natto box

A delicious soy product that I discovered a few months ago is nattō, or fermented soybeans. I bought it mostly on a personal dare, but it turned out to be wonderful and has become a new favourite of mine. Natto usually comes in individual serving square styrofoam boxes with little sauce packages inside. The sauces are usually a kind of salty fish sauce and sometimes a strong mustard. You mix them all together to create a frothy, goopy, stringy mixture and then pour it onto rice. I have also heard that it makes a really good toast topper, but I have yet to try it that way.

Fermented soybeans with sauce packet

I enjoy natto, but the fermented flavour and slippery feeling that it leaves in your mouth turns some people off. The smell is also fairly strong and unpleasant to some. I didn't outright dislike it on the first try, but it took a few times before I truly appreciated its tastiness. The flavour is really mild, a bit nutty and egg-like with a slight brewers yeast flavour undertone. It has a strong fermented smell but that didn't really bother me, maybe because I am used to the smell of Dustin brewing beer. What I struggled with at first was the texture. It is a cloying sort of slipperiness that coats the inside of your mouth in slime. Little gossamer threads of viscous ooze stretch from your chopsticks and drift onto your face if you are not careful, spreading the fermented smell onto everything they touch I am not sure that I am making much of a case for this food, but someone told me that you need to eat it 8 times to know whether you definitely love or hate it and there is definitely some truth in that. A few months of eating it later, and the texture does not bother me in the slightest and I adore it.

To make it even better, natto is really healthy for you, with lots of protein, vitamin K1 and K2, PQQ, and probiotics. It is said to prevent senile dementia, breast cancer, osteoporosis, blood clots, and aids in digestion. It has become a staple breakfast food for me but I have yet to convince Dustin and Theo of its wonders. If I end up outliving them by 50 or so years, we'll know why!

All mixed and on top of rice with green onions: delicious!

Onigiri Day

Delicious onigiri

This past Friday was onigiri day at Theo's kindergarten. Onigiri is rice that is formed into a shape, usually a triangle or ball, and usually wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. The rice can be left plain, slightly salted, mixed with toasted sesame seeds, shirasu, or other types of furikake. They are also sometimes filled with little bits of goodness, like pieces of vegetables, meat, or pickled things. Every other Friday, Theo is required to bring only onigiri as his lunch to school. He can have as many as he likes, but nothing else. I really love onigiri, and I know the Japanese do too for the most part, but it seemed a little excessive that they would enforce a special day in honour of onigiri.

What Theo thinks he is doing
at kindergarten each day

After enquiring a bit more, I was told that this is done every two weeks to make the children aware of world hunger and others in the world who do not have nice bento to eat every day. I think it is a fantastic idea, but I am really not sure if many of the children Theo's age are getting the message. After his first onigiri day, I asked him a few questions about his lunch. He told me it was a really great lunch and that there was nothing out of the ordinary with it. His words were exactly: "it was super oishii (delicious)!!". Yeah, I don't think he was given a taste of what starving children feel like. I certainly don't think most 3 year olds have a definite grasp on the real world. Just to prove a point to myself, I asked him if he had fun riding orcas and hunting dinosaurs in kindergarten that morning. The answer was, of course, an enthusiastic yes.


So, every other Friday I continue to place a few little onigiri in Theo's bento, knowing that he will be just as excited about eating it as he is with all of his lunches. Maybe by the time he is ready to leave yochien he will be old enough to understand a little bit of the reasoning behind it, but until then he will get to exclaim how oishii his onigiri is.

Daily Bread

A typical three slice bread package (yes, the
bread is supposed to be greenish)

I like bread, but I am not obsessed with it by any means. When we first arrived, I was shocked to see how many varieties of bread there is in Japan. Not sweet rolls and bun-like baked goods (there are many different kinds of those), but sliced loaf style bread. I suppose I just assumed since it wasn't a traditionally Japanese food, there wouldn't be too many types. I still haven't tasted my way though all of the breads offered by our local supermarket, and for a culinary adventurer like myself, that makes me extremely happy. 

I have found that all of the bread here has its own unique qualities. Firstly, the slices are gigantic. They are 2 - 3x thicker than I was used to and usually longer as well. It would be almost insane to make a sandwich out of it because you would end up having a 7 cm. thick wall of bread before any fillings were added. I assume that the only thing that people do with sliced bread is make toast with it. There is actually special sandwich bread which is super thin, always white, and crustless. Stereotypically in Canada, only really picky young children

Sandwich bread 

demand crustless, white bread sandwiches, so it is interesting to live in country where that is the standard for everyone. I know that my step mother's tricky way of getting her kids to eat bread crust was telling them that is where all of the vitamins are. Brilliant! The bread is also extremely chewy and dense. It is not heavy, but a virtually airless thickness that requires a lot more chewing. The last observation I have made is that bread is generally not sold by the loaf. You can buy a package with anywhere between 3 and 6 slices in it. Considering how massive each slice is, 6 pieces can last quite a while.

Our current favourite: kurumi bread

Truthfully, I love the bread here. I find that my bread consumption has increased dramatically from back home. I probably eat a slice of toast at least four times a week, which is quite a bit more than I ever have. Our current favourite is kurumi, or walnut, bread. I am not sure what is all in it, other than flour and walnuts of course, but it makes a very nice toasting bread with honey. Our latest exploration on the bread front was a package of yomogi, or mugwort, bread. I don't think I had ever ingested, or even really ever though about mugwort prior to buying this bread. It had a greenish hue to it and a slightly sweet, leafy smell. The slices were especially giganitc; 18 cm. from top to bottom. Unfortunately, the flavour was rather unremarkable. Not bad, but there was very little difference between it and white bread.

Mugwort bread

The only drawback to the bread scene is the difficulty (or near impossibility) of finding nice crusty artisan loaves, french bread that isn't rubbery, and sourdough. If we ever have something to bake in that is larger than our toaster oven, I suppose I could mix something up, but until then I will think longingly of pumpernickel rye and ciabatta.