Yoshiki's birthday!
Toilets on display at supermarket that I went to get my phone. Some of them are rediculous. Choose your seat warmth, water warmth, vacuum for smells, womens wash, mans wash, wash water strength & warmth, dryer, various flush types and sometimes even music to disguise any unpleasant noises!
Sukiyaki being prepared at home for yet another awesome dinner.
Another whoah! dinner. Each night had something I'd never tried before I think!
Small walk up a local mt. Another shrine and a view of toyohashi/ocean
Took the family (females only since Dad was working) to this restaurant. Really nice decor.
At this particular restaurant they served lots of Daikon and variations on recipes of the food. Daikon is a root-type vegetable that doesn't really have an equivalent in my experience of western diets. Its crispy when raw, kind of like the same texture as the white part of a lettuce but not the same flavour. And when stewed it takes on a kind of soft salty flavor commonly with the same taste as the soup. It's really hard to describe. Since Mako's dad's garden had such an abundance we ate lots and lots of them at home in different forms, but it was really fun to see a restaurant take on soo many new variations of the vegetable.
A 3-species type daikon salad with a nice dressing.
Ebisalad. Kind of like a potato salad but prawn salad. Delish
Some Sashimi of various fish. Delish
Some chicken served with shallots and sauces. Delish
Some mountain potato. Interesting type of food this one. Basically you pull this root and grind it up. It has an extremely high water content, and a very high starch content, and somehow it forms a very soft slimy sticky substance. At first try it makes you question why people even eat it, but after different dishes you find its actually alright. Adding it to okonmiyaki makes the inside nice and soft and fluffy, adding it to takoyaki the same effect. Various soups to give it more substance. Ended up eating quite a lot of it at Makos house. Here the restaurant showed it deep-fried wrapped in seasoned nori seaweed wraps. Delish
Lettuce leaf, daikon, peice of meat, a herb, some sesame salt oil and wrapped. Kinda like a vietnamese dish. Delish
Desserts! Left is a kind of pannacotta-esque based from a tea flavour. Middle is a bean/mountain potato thing underneath the icecream. And on the right is a tea-flavoured pannacotta.
Japanese desserts often aren't all that sweet. Tending to favour smooth textures and a subtlety rather than intensity. Personally I find some of them a little strange. Like a savoury food got confused and put sugar on himself instead of salt. But theyre not too bad.
Golfing on a shortcourse with Mako and her dad. The course was a 'short course' where the holes were all par 3's and all quite difficult with either terrain or obstacles. Think a large-size golf course had babies with a minigolf course. More about the skill and accuracy than anything else. Was very fun!
After golf we went past a Shitake mushroom farm & Mako demanded we stop to get some fresh ones.
The farmer was very friendly & showed us how they grow it all.
Basically about 80% of shitake mushrooms were formerly grown in Fukushima area where the nuclear disaster occurred. Some other ones are in Nagano, and only one farm here. Since the type of timber that they naturally grow on was originally from Fukushima too - the farm is now running out of timbers and the future is really uncertain. Some farms switched to a synthetic growth base but it's just not the same. Really sad that the Shitake mushroom may not have much of an authentic future remaining.
The farmer was very friendly & showed us how they grow it all.
Basically about 80% of shitake mushrooms were formerly grown in Fukushima area where the nuclear disaster occurred. Some other ones are in Nagano, and only one farm here. Since the type of timber that they naturally grow on was originally from Fukushima too - the farm is now running out of timbers and the future is really uncertain. Some farms switched to a synthetic growth base but it's just not the same. Really sad that the Shitake mushroom may not have much of an authentic future remaining.
Went to a stationary book shop to kill time. We were waiting to catch up with Masako's old english teacher from America. Was a good chance to meet up & ask some questions over a coffee!
The book shops here are actually amazing. They have soooooo many books. Of course the comics and book series are biiig popularity here so the book shops stock all of them. Multiple stories of just books and magazines and comics. It's quite alright to stay for as long as you like and read as much as you like.
This stationary section had lots of materials for art and nice papers and of course obligatory cute shit.
