Hot Japan Festival in Forrest Chase

Posted February 23rd, 2014 in Perth WA | No Comments »

Japan Festival 2014

Were you there??  There was a Japan Festival held in Forrest Chase in Perth from 2pm until 7pm yesterday.  It was a HOT day, especially that I’m 24weeks pregnant and also had a huge headache from the cold I’d caught few days ago I honestly didn’t want to get out of air-conditioned room in my house.  But I pushed myself to head to the city just because I wanted to eat okonomiyaki (saucy savoury pancake) and kaki-gori (snow cone).

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As I expected, there were so many people at the event.  When we arrived there was a cosplay competition going on on the stage.

There’re huge queues around the stalls.  Because the water fountain was on, people had to queue around the water area and I couldn’t see where the okonomiyaki stall was at first.  We walked around, and first my son played super-ball tsuri ($2).   You scoop floating super balls from water using a catcher made with thin paper.  Once the paper is broken you are out.  You could get maximum 5 balls and when my son caught 5 balls he broke the paper using his fingers :p  Anyway he got 5 balls!

We decided to queue to get some food.  It was so hot so we wanted to get kaki-gori first.  Huge queue…  The stall was also selling snack bags for kids and cold drinks.  We got kids snack pack, ramune (Japanese carbonated drink for kids typically seen in summer festival in Japan) and kaki-gori.  My husband didn’t want to queue so he went to grab hot dog which had no queue in front of the stall.  Okonomiyaki and takoyaki stalls had the longest queues :p

We noticed that Japanese consulate was giving away plates of yakisoba for free, so I queued there.  In the end I didn’t get to eat okonomiyaki 🙁

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Around 5pm it started to cool down a little.  Kids were crazy playing in the water area.  I wanted to listen to live music but decided to head home around 5:30pm.

 

 

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It was a fun event and I was amazed to see how many Japanese people (and people who like Japanese culture) are in Perth.  I thank all the volunteers who helped this event, and the people who contributed towards the Fukushima charity.


Korean Ice Cream

Posted February 28th, 2011 in Food, Perth WA | 9 Comments »

I know I say this too much, but can I say it again?  …..  It’s soooooo HOT!!! (><)

People say that pregnant women feel hotter than normal people do.  I’m originally weak against hot & humid climate, so I’ve been staying in air-coned room all day.  It was rather depressing to see the glaring sunshine and feel the hot air at 7:30 AM.  …  Yeah, this might be the pregnancy thing –

The other day I got some Korean ice-cream from Hi Mart, one of Korean grocery chains.  They were selling some individual packs of ice-cream for “any three packs for $5.00” (my memory may be wrong – it may be $6.00?).  Cheap!  There’re 6~7 kinds of ice-cream in the showcase, and all of them looked so familiar – very similar to Japanese ice-cream!

This vanilla ice-cream sandwich with crunchy chocolate bits : This is my favorite!  It’s like Morinaga Choco-Monaka-Jumbo ice-cream , but more chocolate inside.  The texture of crispy chocolate and soft wafers are the best match.

I used to eat this Morinaga Choco-Monaka-Jumbo ice-cream quite often during summer in Japan.

Taiyaki-shaped (taiyaki = a Japanese fish-shaped cake) coated with thin crisp wafers.  The inside contains vanilla ice-cream and azuki bean paste.  We have few Taiyaki-shaped ice-cream sold in Japan, and I guess this is the Korean version of it.  I thought the amount of azuki bean paste was too little compared to the amount of vanilla ice-cream.

The original Taiyaki-shaped ice-cream in Japan is Imuraya brand.  They have black (dark sugar) and pink (strawberry) versions.

This is cookie n cream sandwich ice-cream.  The ice-cream was quite sweet, and the thin layer of sponge cake was soft and fluffy.  I preferred the above two to this one, as it is too sweet to me, and there was no texture in the ice-cream.

I want to find more delicious ice-cream!


Car, Storm and Summer

Posted July 17th, 2010 in Japan | 4 Comments »
It’s been a rather stressful three weeks…  I was trying to sell my car privately, and all the games between buyers and me were… crazy (><)  I mean, I understand that they want to buy the car cheaper, but I want to sell it more expensive.
Although my car had no major problem I had to accept the negotiation and reduce the price, but I think it’s fare.   If I were looking to buy an used car, I would also want to make sure if nothing is wrong with the car.
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And, there is something else happened around me recently.  I will write about it some other time 🙂
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The storm has gone, and I feel the sunny days are back.  The forecast says that we are having another cold morning starting from this Sunday, but I always thought the mornings are always cold in winter. My hometown, Shiga had a strong rain for the last few days, and I contacted my dad to see if everything was ok.
It must be hot and humid over there.  Normally the rainy season in Japan is around June, but this year things started slower than usual.
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While staying in Perth I sometimes forget that summer is the rainy season in Japan.  In Perth, we hardly get any rain in summer.
I haven’t been back to Japan in summer for 7 years now.  It’s because I’ve been avoiding this season, as I don’t like the humid climate.  Almost every shops and buildings are air conditioned, but because of the temperature difference on outside and inside the buildings many people get summer cold in Japan this time of the year.
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There are things that I miss about Japan’s summer, such as fireworks, summer festivals, summer food and dessert, going swimming (well, I can do it here in Perth)…  Fireworks is the biggest event in summer.
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Many people wear yukata on this day and gather around the shore to enjoy the beautiful sky entertainment and the delicious food from the stalls.
Summer festivals are held at many places across Japan, almost at every suburb.  In my town, we have a small festival at the beginning of August every year, and we enjoy the food, games (eg: kingyo-sukui = goldfish scooping), and bon fire and dancing!  I have a friend who is learning Yosakoi dance, and she is always excited about this festival each year.  Just let you know, Yosakoi is not like other dancing you see on tv (hip-hop, jazz, etc)  The style of Yosakoi dance is highly energetic, combining traditional Japanese dance movements with modern music.
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I used to go to the festivals in the neighboring towns (just 10 minutes by bicycle) too, and they have different theme and sometimes karaoke.  But, there are always delicious food (I love stall food) and that’s the biggest reason I enjoy the festivals so much.
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Ramune drinks

Posted May 12th, 2009 in Food, Perth WA, Ume's Interests | 3 Comments »

Ramune is a carbonated soft drink which you can find in Japan. Ramune is one of the symbols of summer in Japan and you’ll see this drink during warm festival days and nights.

Ramune’s bottle is known for its very distinctive design: they are made of glass and sealed with a marble.  The marble is held on the narrowest part of the bottle to keep pressure of the carbon in the drink. To open the bottle, a device to push the marble inward is provided with the bottle. The marble is pushed inside the neck of the bottle where it rattles around while drinking.

The flavor of Ramune I know is sweet, it’s almost like sprite.  It’s transparent but it looks like it’s blue color because of the blue colored bottle.  That’s the original Ramune which I used to drink when I was little.

…. now, I found these!

Left: Curry Flavored Ramune

Middle: Wasabi Flavored Ramune

Right: Almond Jelly Flavored Ramune

They are genuinely made in Japan, by the way.

… Would you drink them?  I mean, curry flavored soda drinks?!  Wasabi?  … Almond Jelly may be fine, but other two are not really tempting.

I’m curious though, how it tastes like…

In Perth they are available in some places…  if you wanna try those.


Spicy Seafood Japanese Curry

Posted February 2nd, 2009 in Food | No Comments »

It was another hot day…  Onece I stepped outside, I could feel that my body was getting cooked in this heat.  Japanese people tand to eat hot/spicy food in summer to overcome the heat, and today was the day for me.  I cooked spicy Japanese curry with seafood.  I chose Udon noodle to accompany the curry instead of steamed rice as I wasn’t in a mood for rice.  I prefer noodle to rice in such hot days.

It’s always easy to cook Japanese curry: you just need to buy Japanese curry roux which is available from Asian grocery shops or some supermarkets.  Then you can arrange any flavor: pork, beef, chicken, veggies and seafood.

The key for tasty curry is the cooking time.  Longer you simmer, deeper the taste develops.  I used Japanese curry mix “Hot” and added extra chili to make it really spicy!

<Spicy Seafood Curry> for 3~4 ppl

  • 1/2 Japanese curry sauce mix “hot” (about 110g)
  • 3 cups water
  • 1 onion
  • squid, prawn about 250g
  1. Slice onion and squid.  Heat a sauce pan and saute onion.
  2. Add squid and prawn into the pan.  Saute until lightly browned.
  3. Add water and bring to boil.  Turn down the heat and add curry sauce mix.  Simmer over low heat for about 20~30 minutes.  Add chili (or chili powder) if you like.
  4. Enjoy with steamed rice, noodle, whatever you like.

The standard Japanese curry uses sliced meat (pork, usually), potatoes, onions and carrots.  They are the ingredients that you can see at the back of the Japanese curry mix package “how to cook Japanese curry”.  The standard curry tastes great, but why not try more varieties??  You can add any vegetables like cabbage, eggplant, capsicums, corn, and broccoli.  Or, add boiled eggs (shells off) into curry and simmer.  The egg absorbs the flavor of curry, and you can enjoy the different texture.

By the way, I also like eating pieces of bread dipped in Japanese curry too.


Stamina Food -Japanese-

Posted January 17th, 2009 in Food | 3 Comments »

I cooked some stamina food to overcome this heat.  Although it wasn’t so hot today, the heat from last whole week (44 degrees!) really damaged my body energy :p

(BTW I feel terrible about Kings Park bush fire which happened yesterday…)

Those stamina food is kind of Japanese home cooking.  The right top is stir-fried garlic sprout with beansprouts and cabbage, top left is unagi donburi, and the one at the front is tako karaage (deep-fried seasoned octopus).

Garlic sprout and unagi are believed to give stamina.  In Japan, these food are eaten in summer when the temperatures and humidity are high.  People tend to lose their appetite and they ultimately suffer from summer exhaustion or summer lethargy.  These stamina food are great sources of nutrition for Japanese people in steamy hot weather.

I hope these food give us the strength to survive this long summer 🙂