Goodbye and thanks for all the Sushi.

We're leaving this afternoon. I've moved all the the plants to a rainy place, disconnected the car battery and put on a cover, sent the heavy suitcases to the airport by courier.... so that's it.

What fun it all was.

A perfect rose and Japanese maple leaves from the garden. Photo taken today.

The Nezu Museum

A trip to the mountains last Monday

Our local farmers' market.

The class of 2012.

The Eel Restaurant

In our town, along the river, is a wonderful and very old eel restaurant. Takahashiya has been a centre for family celebrations, good eating and entertaining for 150 years. Eel is very popular in Japan and specialist eel restaurants have a special quality.

There is a lovely old building by the river with a perfect Japanese garden. While you are deciding what to order tea is served with crackers made from the eel backbones treated in soy and sake then baked.

The choices are many: Plain eel, grilled eel, marinated eel, eel soup etc.

Most people, including us, have the traditional set menu. Marinated eel grilled and served on rice, pickles, soup made with eel stock and a desert of soybean jelly rolled in green tea powder, served with a type of cream caramel.

Once the river by the restaurant was lined with cherry trees of great age. Sadly during the war they were used for firewood.

 

Typhoon Time.

We had a major typhoon last week that passed over the house. I've never really experienced anything like it. 160 km winds and 400mm of rain, which is more than half of Adelaide's annual rainfall. It was also incredibly hot at the same time, despite the horizontal rain. The  barometer dropped from 2012 to 991 in about two hours.  Quite a lot of tree damage in the area but nothing serious to the house.

A beautiful Tofu restaurant

On Friday we went to a specialist tofu restaurant called "Tofuya Ukai." To say it is an astonishing place is an understatement. It is right underneath the Tokyo Tower right in the heart of Tokyo. It has an amazing 2 acres of perfect Japanese gardens which you walk through to get to the restaurant. The building itself is enormous, ancient  and immaculately restored. It was an old sake brewer's house and factory. The inside inside is crammed with wonderful bits of sake brewing equipment and the  private rooms look out to exquisite gardens. In the middle of the gardens they are actually making tofu in an open kitchen so you can watch.

 The  set menu features tofu but includes many other lovely things served by a kimono clad lady in a traditional room. It is an extraordinary experience considering the quantity of concrete and people that surround the place outside the garden.

Bamboo sake decanters are a nice touch

The Tonbi (black kites) of Japan.

In the area where I am staying there are hundreds and hundreds of "Tonbi". These are a large black kite found in certain areas of Japan. The peninsula where I live is a real haven for them. The hills around Kamakura are in their native state and there must be plenty of food for them.They also seem to be keen fishermen.

They nest on top of trees, and indeed light poles. Their rather mournful cry can be heard all over town. You see more of them than any other bird, a bit like magpies in SA. I'm sure one of the reasons is that the smaller birds have become very good at hiding from them.

How to eat Bamboo

There are all sorts of new and marvellous things to eat. Even though we've been coming to Japan for a long time there seems to be always something at the local market we haven't eaten before.

It's late spring/early summer and the bamboo are sprouting everywhere. Young shoots are delicous and are eaten grilled then peeled. You dip them in a little salt or in our case we had miso paste mixed with  Japanese lime (Yuzu).

The flavour is a bit like white apsaragus and a bit like chestnuts with a flowery perfume.

The Shoji's Family Temple

The Shoji family's temple is reached by narrow and winding roads and sits a cool valley surrounded by gardens and forest.

It was built about 700 years ago and has been meticulously maintained.


Beautiful enclosed gardens can be glimpsed from the internal corridors the whole building can open up to the air. There are many traditional tatami rooms were the family come for  memorials and funerals. If I was an ancestor I would be very happy here.

It is not open to the public so it was a great privilage to visit.

 ( Also see the two posts below.)