Names found in vending machines

Sekihan

Sekihan 赤飯 is sticky rice (mochigome もち米) cooked with red beans. It's cooked for celebrations such as o-bon, which ends today. A basic recipe would call for 3 cups of glutinous rice, 1/3 cup adzuki beans, a little salt, and water. Cook it the usual way for rice and serve it at room temperature, topped with roasted sesame seeds.

When my wife told her family we were engaged, after the shock wore off ("Couldn't you find somebody younger?") her grandmother invited us over for sekihan, a way of giving her approval to the match, I think.

Some more festival food

From the last night of Awa Odori in Tokushima.

Candied apple.

Hamburgers

Baby kasutera

Lee bought some baby kasutera, a popular Japanese cake based on Portugese Pão de Castela which was introtuced to Japan by (who else?) the Portugese about 400 years ago.

Takoyaki

Raw bacon sushi topped with mayo

Weiner sushi

More on food prices

Here's another article about rising produce prices due to our (relatively) cool, cloudy summer.

Rice maturing

Summer produce -- summer prices

I just bought these at An Shin Ichi, basically for dinner, basically shopping the specials. Not bad prices, 350 yen total, $3.68 US. Now I have to figure out what to make using these plus whatever I can find in the fridge.

Food prices

Food prices are much higher in Japan than in most other countries, but I guess you knew that, right? There are several reasons for this fact. One is that, in general, lower cost options and cosmetically imperfect food is unavailable. Fruit is generally grown to be as large and as perfect looking as possible, resulting in costs of 100 yen or more per apple. (Over US $1)

Another reason is the lack of an underpaid class of agricultural workers. I don't know (for sure) about other parts of Japan, but around here, most food seems to be grown on small plots of land adjacent to houses most of my friends and relatives couldn't possibly afford to buy, cultivated by people over 60 (over 70? 80?) who live in those houses .

Rice, the nominal staple and still the symbol of Japanese cuisine, is bought by local rice co-ops and sold for two to three times as much as the same sort is sold for in the U.S. where it's grown on 100+ hectare (250+ acre) plots in the Sacramento Valley. The economics of small-scale agriculture obviously come into play.

Small scale + insistence on highest quality + government support of high producer prices (to keep rural voters happy) = High Prices

Weather has something to do with this as well. This article on asahi.com today talks about how El Niño has driven wholesale prices on potatoes up to about 200 yen per kilo (about $0.95 per pound) this summer. The lack of sunshine also attributed to El Niño will probably reduce rice and other harvests, increasing prices on many products this fall.

Mountain Experience Pizza

We made and ate pizza as part of our "mountain experience" weekend. It was rather more American style than a lot of the pizza sold in Japan. Only the canned tuna would have seemed out of place in California -- well, maybe the eggplant too. But there wasn't any canned corn or potato -- though I should say that when I camped near Rome years ago, I often got potato as one of the toppings on my pizza at a little place next too the bus station and it was delicious. However, that wasn't Japanese style potato salad pizza.

BBQ

Lee and I went camping with a small group and had a big barbecue. It was a typical Japanese barbecue consisting of:

• slices of beef
• hot dogs on sticks
• two kinds of sausage
• sliced onion
• sliced Japanese pumpkin (kabocha)
• shiitake mushroom caps
• cabbage leaves
• chicken (I think this was bought specially for me since I don't eat mammals)
• dipping sauce

There was also rice cooked in mess kit tins. It was perfectly cooked and much tastier than 99% of the plain white rice I've had in Japan. I don't know if it was the water, the slight trace of wood smoke, or the rice itself that made it so good. I don't think it was the fact that we ate this after hiking around a mountain, though I guess that's possible too.

Pickled Plum and Mint flavor gum

The little white pieces of paper are, of course, for wrapping up the used gum before you throw it away.