Japan has been attacked by super cold climate, and it’s been snowing hard in the area around Japanese Ocean since few days ago. Here in Shiga also gets lots of snow, and yesterday the snow level went over 1 metre. Very cold. No, I don’t feel “cold”actually,  it’s rather “pain” that I feel. :p

Many people have been suffering in this snow as they have to dig out their car from the snow and pass-way from the house to the car-way. They wake up around 4am just to dig out the snow before going to work.
Yesterday, kindergarten, elementally school, and junior high school in my area were closed because of the snow.  Today the schools started 2 hours later than usual.

There are many accidents occurred due to the snow across Japan, and it’s been the top news on tv these day. Not only northern area of Japan but also Kagoshima (Kyushu island near Okinawa) was snowing yesterday too!!!   Many people must be fed up with these heavy snow already but actually I still like it. Although I’m stuck at home whole day and can’t go out anywhere, I still like watching it, digging it, and playing with it.  It must be because I was born in a snowing day. (my birthday is coming up, I just realized :p) I feel happy that I can enjoy the view of this beautiful white world before going back to Perth.

Change of subject, today is 3rd of February, and it’s Setsubun in Japan. As I wrote about Setsubun “here“, we eat a whole sushi roll while looking toward this year’s good-luck direction (this year is north-north-west).  The sushi roll shouldn’t be cut, so you have to hold it and bite it as if you are eating a burger.

We ordered a sushi platter from a sushi place near the house, and also few Eho-maki rolls from Seven Eleven convenience store. As well as normal Eho-maki (which contains lucky 7 ingredient inside) I ordered “Fruits-maki” (strawberry, kiwi & banana with whipped cream and sponge cake). It looks just like sushi roll but it a rolled cake covered with dusted cocoa powder which resembles to nori sheet. I thought it’s funny and also a great dessert on Setsubun

I also bought a pack of soy beans for the Setsubun ceremony – throwing the beams while saying “fuku-wa-uchi” “oni-wa-soto”. I don’t know if we’ll do that inside the house as my little monkey may pick up the beans from the ground and eat it.  Then we eat the soybeans according to our age.  If you are 15 years old you get to eat 15 beans.  Packed soy beans sold in stores are cooked and edible.

Japan has many interesting traditions and events through out a year. I want to continue doing these thing after going back to Australia

Tanita is the world leader in precision electronic scales. With almost 50% of its domestic market share, the name of Tanita is now a household word in Japan.  By using Tanita’s BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) technology, our body composition monitors can measure #your: weight, body fat percentage, body water percentage, muscle mass, physique rating, basal metabolic rate (BMR), daily caloric intake (DCI), metabolic age, bone mass, and visceral fat.  … Amazing!

On 11th January this year, just 2 days ago, Tanita opened a cafeteria called Tanita Shokudo in Marunouchi, Tokyo.  A scale company and food?  It seems odd at first, but there’s a big relation between them – health.

There is a cafeteria inside Tanita company in Japan, and the food there had became famous for being healthy.  Many workers there said they lost weight because of the food they eat at the company everyday.  Because of that, Tanita has published two cooking books showing the recipes of the food they cook at the cafeteria.  Now, they opened a cafeteria in public so that anyone can enjoy Tanita’s food.

Their concepts for the food are “healthy – low calorie)”, “nutritious”, and “wa-shoku (Japanese cuisine)”.

There is a counseling room at the entrance with a big scale (of course Tanita brand) where customers can check their weight etc and get advice from Tanita’s nutritionist for free.

All the food there looks so tempting to me!  I love healthy food.  And I love Japanese food!

I saw Tanita’s recipe books in a section of “popular books” at a book store the other day.  Looks interesting too!

Rakuten Books Tanita Shokudo 1 Rakuten Books Tanita Shokudo 2

Amazon Amazon

While I’m in Japan I often went to family restaurants to have lunch or snack. The top reason is the price! I can easily get a coupon for free drink bar (unlimited drinks) online.  Not all family restaurants have good drink bar though.   D loved matcha latte at Big Boy and Gusto, but we didn’t see matcha latte at Saizeria.

Saizeriya is a Japanese chain of Italian family-style restaurants.  I used to go there often when I was a student because the food there is very very cheap.  Pasta, gratin and pizza starts from 280 yen each.  Plus, they have drink bar (which is normally 190 yen).  Although their pizzas and pasta are with just few ingredients and don’t really look nice, students like us were happy with those foods.  We could kill time with just few hundreds yen after school I saw many students at Saizeria when I went there have lunch the other day.  Food there is much cheaper than other family restaurants such as Coco’s and Gasto, It could be even cheaper than McDonald’s.

I went to Big Boy more than 5 times during this stay.  I’m actually quite fed up with their menu now :p.  D wanted to go there because of Matcha Latte at their drink bar.  At some Big Boy they gave us a toy for Hiro too, and it was nice.  They do “Kids Members Card” as well where you can chose one item from their selection as a gift to your kid after earning 5 points (1 visit = 1 point).

One thing I was surprised was that Gusto now has few different versions – normal Gusto, Ohashi-Gusto, and Steak Gusto.  Ohashi-Gusto serves all the foods with chopsticks (ohashi = chopsticks).  I loved their food menu than Big Boy.  They had matcha latte at their drink bar too. (the one near my house)  And I won a free vanilla pudding as they were doing “instant win” scratch for New Year.   Steak Gusto serves steak, and it’s cheap!  It comes with salad bar & drink bar, and you can enjoy it under 1000yen.  I should go there one more time before I go back to Perth.

Oh, another thing I noticed when I came back to Japan was that some Japanese fast food restaurants, such as Yoshino-ya, Nakau and Matsuya, now have drive-thro facility!  It’s just like McDonald’s and KFC.  People can take-away beef donburi etc through the drive-thro.  Many people are using it, actually.  Japanese people work hard, and just want to eat up one donburi in the car then head back to office, maybe!

Today my friend picked us up and went out to had little snack at Starbucks. Unlikely I didn’t feel like having coffee (I’d already had 2 cups this mowning) so I ordered Double-squeezed Fruits Juice ¥220 (Starbucks brand drink in a paper pack). I didn’t feel like sweets either coz I had 2 donuts this morning, so ordered chicken and roots vegetable salad wrap ¥290.

The location is lovely – this Starbucks is located just near Biwako Lake shore, and I could see many cute ducks floating on the water throu a window. Because it was cold there’s no one siting on the chairs outside. Drive-thru got lots of cars with people wanting to get hot drinks.

My fried ordered caramel latte, cheese cake and pancakes. Looks yummy

My wrap was smaller than I thought : it was just half size. But I felt good eating salad and root vegetables because I’ve been eating meat and fish most of the time here.

It tasted ok.

It was shame I didn’t feel like sweets because I saw a big board with a photo of delicious-looking drinks!

Azuki Matcha Latte…

Matcha White Chocolate!

Soy Ho-ji-cha Tea Latte!

There are cold version of Azuki Matcha Latte & Soy Azuki Matcha as well, but in this cold weather people will go for hot drinks (unless they are thirsty or feel already warm after exercise).

Suntory, one of Japan’s leading beverage companies, is selling something that some people were looking for…..  All Free!  This All Free is a drink with no calorie, no sugar, and no alcohol.  Yap, all free.

Some may ask what’s the reason of drinking this…  Why don’t you drink water or herval tea instead?  Well, this All Free is actually a non-alcohol beer.  It tastes like beer, but has no alcohol, sugar, or calorie.  This is selling well in this busy drinking season…

Georgia, a popular brand of coffee-flavored beverages sold by The Coca-Cola Company in Japan, sells this unique can of coffee.  It’s a mixture of “coffee” x “green tea”.  It’s not green tea latte.  It still has color of coffee, brown, and contains matcha powder from Uji in Kyoto.

Pepsi in Japan sells these unique flavour drinks.  Azuki, Cucumber and Shiso!  I’ve never tried these, but I think shiso may taste better than others.  It’s just my guess…

I love that cute little tirol chocolate – love the cute little square shape, and their variety of flavours.  But I didn’t know that this popular chocolate snack “tirol chocolate” has its drink version!  Tirol chocolate drink tastes like its original chocolate.  It should taste very rich?

Happy New Year!

It was a sunny new year’s day yesterday.  My mum came over, and we stayed home eating all day on the 1st Jan.

We grilled mochi (rice cakes) on the stove.

Mochi was little burnt, but it was delicious.  This is zenzai (azuki bean soup with rice cake).

We had sukiyaki, funa-no-nitsuke, zenzai and seasoned rice in the morning!  Oh, plus red wine (not me though).

Funa is a fish which lives in Biwa lake.  It has distinguished taste, texture, and smell.  Its eggs are delicious  I’ve been eating this since I was a child, but I guess it’s what only Shiga people do.

On the 2nd, we went to hatsumode (first visit to shrine to celebrate the new year).  We thought there’d be many people on the 1st, and wanted to avoid all the crowd.

We prayed, and bought taiyaki, okonomiyaki, takoyaki & mochi from food stalls outside.  It was our lunch.

Dinner was this huge steak…..  The fat is marbled.  It was very tender and delicious.

It was eat→ sleep → eat → sleep ….  day.  Just what New Year should be in Japan!

Before New Year’s Day, people usually spend busy by cleaning the house and finishing all the chores they have to do within the year.  But once New Year’s Day comes, people stay at home relaxing, eating, and spending time with families.

This year, I could experience white Christmas and normal Japan’s New Year with families.  Everything are not the same as before (e.g. Now I can’t stay awake until late because I’m very tired from looking after Hiro all day), but I enjoy this homecoming trip pretty much.  I just remembered how funny Japanese tv shows are!  Especially around this time of the year there’re many comedy shows on tv and they’re seriously funny.  I’ve been laughing as if I’ve gone crazy!

2011 was not a happy year for Japan.  Big earthquake, tsunami, and many people lost their families.  But, because of the event, people could realize somethings – importance of ECO (saving the power), and warmth of people.  We appreciate people who came and supported the victims from outside this country. We felt so close to each other.  Families are important.  Friends are important.  Mates are important.  And, “life” could be so short and fragile.  Now the things are getting better and we are about to welcome a new year in few days.  I appreciate all that, and hope 2012 will be a happier year.

Now, snowing has stopped and I can see blue sky during the day.  There’s still big chunks of snow on the side of the roads, but it seems that it’s not going to snow for awhile here.  I hope the New Year’s Day is going to be a sunny day.  We will go to a shrine to celebrate and pray for the new year (hatsumode) as an annual event, and I think there’ll be many people.  I slipped on the snow on the road and hit my head last time (2 years ago), so I hope it doesn’t happen this time!

I hear it’s around 40 degrees in Perth these days.  Being here made me realise that I prefer cold climate to hot climate.  I love winter in Japan.  I love snow, I love the clean cold air, and I love taking hot bath in a cold night (and day).  I can’t wait to go to Disney Land or Universal Studio Japan, onsen trip, and play with snow when Hiro is older.

As there is one more day to New Year’s Day, and I’ve pretty much done all the shopping.  I think I will stay home tomorrow trying to clean the house so that we can welcome a new year with clean mind and clean house

Finally…..  I’m eating Japanese sausage!  I was having craving for Japanese sausages since I was pregnant.  Japanese sausage is processed food (smoked), and has crispy skin.

Normall sausages outside Japan are usually raw meat.  I was surprised to see them in Perth the first time, because the sausages I knew was like the photo above.

Because they are processed, you can eat Japanese sausages as they are.  But people usually grill them to add flavour and texture.  I, on the other had, love boiling them.  It’s healthier, and makes the skin crispy.

When I broke the sausage, you can almost hear the sound of breaking the skin.  Although I boiled them for 3 minutes or more, the meat inside was still juicy thanks to the skin.

Sometimes I just boil sausages and eat with seed mustard. Ummmm… yum yum.  Goes with beer, chu-hi, and even hot Japanese tea! ♨

Few days ago my dad bought few kinds of pickles from a pickles shop.   He knows I like pickles.  I remember eating whole takuwan (yellow, pickled daikon radish) by myself when I was a teenager. The combination of takuwan and hot Japanese tea was addictive, and I couldn’t stop eating takuwan once I started.  Pickles got lots of salt (sodium), and it’s not a good diet….  besides, one whole takuwan is about 30cm.  I don’t know how my body survived….

People make pickles so that they can keep the food edible longer.  The salty pickles goes with steamed rice, and Japanese people (in old era) used to eat just rice, pickles and miso soup.  To think about it, Japanese food contains lots of salt.  Miso is also salty, and so is soy sauce.

Back to the subject….  Here is pickled cucumber.  You can also buy it in Perth.

Rakkyo – pickled onions.  People eat it with Japanese curry rice.

Takuwan – pickled daikon.  You see it often in a bento box from Japanese restaurants in Perth, too.

Nasu-no-asazuke (lightly pickled egg plant).  Looks bit weird, but I love this.  One of popular item at  izakaya.

Gobo (burdock roots) and aka-kabu (red radish).  I never seen pickled gobo before!  It’s new….

It has vinegar-like taste, and not salty.  I love the texture.

There’re many more kinds of pickles in Japan, including cabbage, Chinese cabbage, mushroom, etc etc ……  Kyoto and Nara are famous for pickles.  If you love Japanese pickles and enjoy soshoku, try some unique one there

When I woke up this morning, outside was like this.

WHITE CHRISTMAS ☆☆☆☆☆

Hiro enjoyed his first Christmas in snow

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!