Season of chestnuts

Last Saturday, my mother called me and asked if I wanted to go with her to Horaiji in Aichi Prefecture. She intended to buy some chestnuts in a Michi-no-Eki or a station on the road in the mountainous area. I went to my parents’ house and had lunch, and then she took me for a drive.
This time, we visited the same places as we did in spring. But the scenery was different. Near the first destination, Michi-no-eki Mikawa Sangoku, we could see many red spider lilies. In Japanese, we call them “higanbana” or flowers of the equinoctial week. During that week, we visit the family cemetery or a large temple where Buddhist services are performed and there are many stalls selling food and toys. Though the autumnal equinoctial week was over, we saw red spider lilies in bloom also along the mountain roads.

This is Michi-no-eki Mikawa Sangoku.

They were selling chestnuts and product containing chestnuts.

In this shop, you can also sit and eat some snacks such as dumplings and goheimochi or flat cakes of mashed rice. For goheimochi, they use vegan miso sauce containing walnuts that is also available separately.

Near the cash desk, there were some Japanese unbaked sweets.

My mother bought this one to eat in the car.

Seen from a distance, it looked like an egg, but it’s a rice cake stuffed with adzuki bean paste, with a big chestnut boiled with sugar on top. To my surprise, the adzuki bean paste also contained chestnuts! In Michi-no-eki like this, you can sometimes find a superb vegan sweet.

Then, she drove further to a farmer’s market Kontaku Nagashino.

They were offering big fresh chestnuts at a reasonable price. My mother bought two bags and gave me one.

Our final destination for shopping was Michi-no-eki Mokkulu Shinshiro.

There I bought steamed kuriyokan or jellied adzuki bean paste with chestnuts. Usually, steamed kuriyokan is sold as a big long bar to be eaten by several people. So, it was lucky to find a small piece. This one is 9 cm long and is made from adzuki beans, sugar, chestnuts, wheat flour, arrowroot flour, and salt. It has handmade feeling.

When we finished shopping, we took a footbath there. Then we returned home satisfied, after dropping in the café in a hotel THE HAMANAKO near Lake Hamana.

On the next day, my mother called me saying that she had eaten up the bag of chestnut with my father. The bag I got from her weighed 650g with big chestnut. Since I had never cooked chestnuts before, I boiled one third of them according to my mother’s instructions;

1. Put chestnuts in boiling water and boil for 10 minutes with a lid on the pot.
2. Turn off the burner and leave the pot for 15 minutes with the lid on.
3. Cool down the chestnuts with ice water and then drain off the water.

I forgot adding ice to the water in the last step, but the chestnuts became edible anyway. I cut them in two to eat with a spoon.

The fresh-boiled chestnuts were good, but I wondered if they could be sweeter with some other method. So, next time, I grilled them for 20 minutes with a cut on the surface.

The surface of chestnuts was burned and hard. Maybe I grilled them too long. But I found them tasty when eating with some sea salt. What shall I do with the remaining chestnuts? Maybe they can be mixed into pancakes after boiling, or cooked with rice as in my parents’ house and many Japanese families.

Vegan gummi candies in Natural Lawson

On our way back to Hamamatsu from the trip to Hakone last weekend, my sister gave me a present. It was a bag of German vegan gummi candies. According to the description in English on the bag, they contain 20% fruit juice of fruit juice concentrates (apple, peach, strawberry). Look how they are beautiful.

I tasted each of three flavors. The green one had a refreshing flavor of a green apple. The yellow one may be a little too sour for a peach, but it surely had the flavor of it. The strawberry gummi candy was sweeter than the other two though fresh strawberries can be sour sometimes. I liked all the flavors. In addition, this size of bag is convenient for a trip or to eat up alone.

My sister said that she had bought the gummi candies in Natural Lawson, which is a more health conscious type of a convenience store Lawson. While the ordinary Lawson has more than 13000 stores all over Japan, Natural Lawson has stores only in the metropolitan area. According to Wikipedia, Natural Lawson sells low-calorie lunch boxes and ready-made side dishes, organic food, imported sweets, fair trade end environmentally friendly products in addition to products that are also sold in other convenience stores.

My sister isn’t a vegan nor vegetarian, so it was very kind of her to give me such a present. In Japan, the concept of vegan is still unknown to many people. But if they can often see the word “vegan” in their daily life, more and more people may get interested in it. On the bag of the gummi candies, it is clearly printed with big characters and attracts consumers’ attention even if they don’t know exactly what vegan is. I hope that “vegan　(ビーガン or ヴィーガン)” will become a common word in Japanese and will be printed on food packages as necessary. It will also help people who are allergic to dairy products or eggs.

Trip to Odawara & Hakone (5) - Okada Museum of Art (Part 2)

Since we skipped the 2nd floor in the morning, we went there directly after lunch. We found a large collection of Japanese ceramics. Many of the items were from Kyushu. Some plates looked very modern, for example, with combination of vivid yellow and blue colors. Aritayaki in Saga Prefecture in Kyushu is the oldest Japanese porcelain. It was first made by a Korean potter Yi Sam-pyeong. He was one of the thousands of potters taken from Korea when Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea at the end of the 16th century. Aritayaki is also called Imariyaki. It was exported to Europe and loved by royalty and nobility in the old days. In the museum, we could see some variations of this porcelain.

On the 4th floor, we could see Japanese paintings during the Edo Period. There we could see a replica of “Snow of Fukagawa” by Kitagawa Utamaro. The original painting is the largest ukiyoe that has ever existed (198.9 cm x 341.1 cm) and owned by this museum. The size of replica was 90% of it, but it was still the largest ukiyoe I have ever seen.

Then, we went to a small exhibition room of Buddhist art on the 5th floor. It was the last room we visited in the museum, but we had still one important picture to see. We took the elevator to the first floor and went outside. In front of the museum, they have a row of footbaths. With the ticket of the museum, youcan use it free of charge.

With the ticket of the museum, you can use it free of charge.

From there, you can see a huge wall painting “Wind/Time.” It is based on the “Wind God

and Thunder God” screens by Tawaraya Sotatsu.

After the long walk in the museum, it was comfortable to sit for a while with my feet in hot water. In addition, this footbath area serves also as a café. You can place an order and pay the money to staff members who come and go. I had hot chocolate.

We left the museum a little over 15:00 and took a bus to Odawara. The bus rans very fast on mountain roads. After doing some shopping in Odawara Station, we took Shinkansen to Hamamatsu with my sister and arrived here around 18:00. In the train we ate sweets that my mother bought at a confectionary store Chimoto (ちもと) in Hakone-Yumoto. Each of them was wrapped with a bamboo skin. According to the label, this sweet is called Yumochi.

The inside looked like this. It contained small pieces of yokan or adzuki bean jelly. The white part looked like an ordinary rice cake; however, it was made from rice flour with egg white added, which make the sweet fluffy. It had also a flavor of yuzu, a citrus fruit. The sweet itself was delicious, but I also liked the old-style wrapping.

Hakone is a nice area rich in nature and culture. I highly recommend Okada Museum of Art to those who are interested in art in East Asia. Since it is a private museum, the admission fee is expensive (2800 yen for adults). But I think it’s worth visiting. Their website provide information in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese) and Korean. Also in the museum, you can read explanations of major exhibits in these four languages.

Trip to Odawara & Hakone (4) - Okada Museum of Art (Part 1)

The next morning, I stepped out on the balcony to check the weather. The mountain was seen clearly. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining.

Just in front of the balcony, there were maple trees. They surely look beautiful in late autumn when the leaves turn red. According to my sister, it is very difficult to reserve a room then and roads in Hakone are crowded with cars. From the balcony, I saw a trail. After breakfast, I walked there for a while. In the hotel, there was a sticker warning about a wild boar, but I couldn’t see one.

Hakone has a lot to see. If you participate in a bus tour, you can experience the highlights of the area such as Hakone Ropeway, cruise on Lake Ashino, and Hakone Checkpoint of the Edo Period in a day. But this time, we visited Okada Museum of Art because my mother was interested in an ukiyoe painting called “Snow in Fukagawa” she had seen on TV.

From the bus station Ohiradai near the hotel, we took a bus to Kowakuen. It was already crowded with tourists, and my sister and I had to stand. The bus running through the mountainous area often swung sharply. It took about 15 minutes to Kowakien, and the museum was very close to the bus stop. The museum held an exhibition of gold screens made from the 16th century to the first half of the 20th century.

These three women are from “Snow in Futagawa”, the painting my mother wanted to see.

When I entered the museum, we put our mobile phones, camera, PET bottles, and bags in lockers. It was prohibited to take pictures, and we went through security check as in an airport. It was unusual for a museum in Japan to conduct such check, however, I thought it might be necessary when I saw precious exhibits in the museum.

The first floor has a fulfilling collection of Chinese and Korean ceremics. We could see many kinds of ceramics that we had seen in our high school textbooks of history. One of the most impressive exhibits was a Chinese sancai camel from Tang Dynasty (618-907). The camel showed its teeth and looked lively. The colors were vivid though it was made a long time ago. I was also glad to see some Korean Goryeo ware. One of them looked very graceful and unforgettable with its pale greenish-blue color.

From 11:30, they had a guided tour of the exhibition of golden screens on the 3rd floor. According to their website, the English title is “Japan: Country of Gold  Screens of the Kano, Hasegawa, Rinpa and Other Schools.” The curator explained characteristics of each school and motifs they used. According to her, this is the first exhibition in Japan that specializes in gold screens. There were about 30 screens, which looked simply gorgeous.

The tour ended around 12:00, and we hurried to the restaurant Kaikatei on the premises of the museum. I ate udon noodles with mushrooms. Kaikatei uses dried bonito broth for the sauce and has no vegetarian or vegan dish for lunch. As for vegetarian-friendly facilities or restaurants, there is Hakone Kowakien Yunessun a few minutes walk from the museum, which has an Italian restaurant, buffet restaurant, and bakery. When you are hungry, you can leave the museum temporarily to have lunch outside and come back to the museum because the ticket is valid all day. But Kaitatei in the museum becomes a café after 14:00. Then you can have some sweets and drink while enjoying a wonderful view of the garden.

The garden is large and may be interesting to explore, but we went back to the building of the museum after lunch. Since it is a five-story building, we had still a lot to see.

Trip to Odawara & Hakone (3) - Shrine dedicated to peasant sage of Japan

In this blog, I have written about a famous agrarian reformer Ninomiya Sontoku (1787-1856) in the article on January 11, 2019. He is from Odawara, and there is a shrine dedicated to him near the castle. It is called Hotoku Ninomiya Shrine. When we entered from the gate, I thought it a cozy shrine with many trees.

This is the main building. This shrine seemed to be loved by local people as we saw a wedding pair taking pictures near the building.

As a boy, Ninomiya Sontoku was called Kinjiro. He was born in a rich farm, but they lost their fields due to floods. His parents died when he was 14 and 16 years old. He worked hard at his uncle’s house and read books at night by using rapeseed oil made from rape plants he cultivated on his own for light. A boy reading a book while carrying firewood is the most prevailing image of his childhood. Many elementary schools in Japan have a statue like this in the shrine as a symbol of diligence (not in the schools I went to).

On the contrary, a statue of Ninomiya Sontoku as an adult is rarely seen. Maybe this was my first (or second?) time to see one. After he left his uncle’s house, he succeeded to make his family rich again and rebuilt the domestic economy of the chief retainer of Odawara. Later, he reconstructed over 600 poor farming villages with his pragmatic approach and philosophy.

In the shrine, my sister bought feed for carps, so we went back to the moat of the castle. As we expected, carps gathered immediately. But we had also pigeons around us snatching feed we threw to carps. They came so close to us that I was a little scared. There was a sticker near the bridge that told us not to feed pigeons or seagulls, but it was no use. It was impossible to feed only carps.

Then, we went back to Odawara Station. Near one of the ticket gates, we saw a big Odawara lantern. This kind of lantern was invented in Odawara during the Edo Period. For the convenience of travelers in old days, it can be folded up when not in use.

From Odawara Station, we took Odakyu Line to Hakone-Yumoto, the entrance of Hakone. We wanted to eat onsen manju or a hot spring steamed bun, a typical sweet found in hot spring areas in Japan, or something sweet. But it was late in the afternoon, and cafés were already closed. At the end of the shopping street, there was a Japanese-style confectionary store, and my mother bought sweets for us. We had some drink in a café in the station and took Hakone Tozan Railway to the station near the hotel.

The hotel room was spacious. My sister had reserved kaiseki ryori or a traditional Japanese multi-course meal for us. Most of the dishes contained fish, but luckily no meat. Before we ate dinner, we went to their large bathroom with an open-air bath. It was so refreshing to take a bath in cool air outside. I looked up the sky and wondered how the weather would be next day.

Trip to Odawara & Hakone (2) - Odawara Castle Ninja Museum

Odawara Castle is an old castle first built in the 15th century. The donjon was dismantled in 1870 and rebuilt in 1960. It is quite big compared with Hamamatsu Castle as it is seen from the platform of Shinkansen in JR Odawara Station. The premises with a moat are also spacious. When we passed by the moat, we saw many carps gathering.

First, we visited Ninja Museum. My sister had been interested in it as it was a new facility opened on April 20, 2019. A ninja is a person who was engaged in espionage, sabotage, assassination, etc. for a feudal lord by using special skills called ninjutsu. During the period of warring states (approx. 1467-1568), Odawara Castle was the home of the Hojo clan who employed the Fuma ninja clan. In the museum, you can learn and experience some ninjutsu techniques.

In the first area, you can see quick transformation from a townsman to a ninja. The explanation in this museum was written in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean.

There were some staff members in the museum who gave explanations to visitors. I heard for the first time that you can know the time of the day by seeing the eyes of a cat because the shape and size of the pupils change according to the time. It was interesting.

There was also a room of a ninja house with spaces to hide themselves, for example, behind a scroll.

Outside of the house, ninjas sometimes hid themselves by holding cloth with a picture. My sister succeeded to do that.

The museum provided some other interesting experiences. Finally, we fought against enemies, another group of ninjas appearing on a big screen. I was so busy throwing invisible stars to them so I couldn't take any pictures of this most exciting place in the museum. Unfortunately, we got defeated but came out of the museum alive.

When we walked toward the donjon, I saw a woman ninja in pink cloths beside Tokiwagi Gate. While I was speaking to my mother and sister, she vanished quickly as if she had been a real ninja. Near the gate there was Tokiwakimon Samurai Museum where you can try on clothes of ninja, samurai, or princess. On the second floor of the building, there were many armors and helmets displayed.

The design of this helmet was interesting.

After visiting this museum, we didn’t go inside the donjon but took pictures in front of it. Even though it was a rebuilt one, it was a picturesque and symbolic building in Odawara.

Trip to Odawara & Hakone (1) - Buckwheat noodle restaurant with good soymilk pudding

Last weekend, I went on a trip to Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture with my mother and sister. It was my sister who suggested this trip. She lives in Tokyo and could use the hotel owned by the ward where she lives in at a reasonable price. My mother and I took Shinkansen that left Hamamatsu at 11:23. We arrived at Odawara at 12:40, where my sister was waiting for us beyond the ticket gate.

First, we went to a buckwheat noodle restaurant Hashimoto near Odawara Castle. It is an old restaurant with history of 170 years.

I had a lunch set with cold noodles and grated yam rice. Like other restaurants, they used dried bonito broth for their sauce. When it is difficult to have vegetarian food when I go out with others, I eat meals containing fish or dried bonito broth sometimes. However, they had also this dessert, soymilk pudding with jam. This was included in my sister’s lunch set, but she doesn’t like sweets. So, she gave it to me.

In many Japanese restaurants, you can see a variety of dishware with different shapes and colors. Hashimoto is such a restaurant, and the soymilk pudding was served in a beautiful small bowl. It was so good that I wondered if it was possible to come to this restaurant just to eat this pudding. Since it is open from 11:00 to 19:00 or 18:00, you may be able to order it as an afternoon snack with buckwheat dumplings and drink. The buckwheat noodles I ate were very al dente and one of the best I have eaten. I hope they and other buckwheat restaurant will prepare also sauce for vegans someday by using shiitake mushroom or kelp.

Sobadokoro Hashimoto
Address: 1-13-37, Sakae-cho, Odawara-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture
Tel: 0465-22-5541
Open hours: 11:00 – 19:00 (Mon,, Tue., Thu., Fri., Sat.)
                   11:00 – 18:00 (Wed., Sun.)
Closed: January 1
Access: 7-minute walk from East Exit of JR Odawara Station

High school students in Hamamatsu inspired by Greta Thunberg

Yesterday the 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg made a speech at the UN Climate Action Summit. I saw her video on the Internet for a few times. In her speech, she was expressing her emotions straight toward world leaders who hadn't worked on the climate crisis seriously. I had never seen her speaking like that before. She said; "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” While critizing world leaders, she repeated "How dare you!" a few times. She also said; “If you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.” Throughout the speech, my heart ached as I saw her expressions. I saw how angry and sad she was.

I wonder how our new environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi felt hearing her speech. He also attended the UN Climate Action Summit. Soon after his arrival at New York, he went to a steak house for dinner. He said that he wanted to eat steak every day. How dared he! Apparently, he doesn’t know the relationship between the livestock industry and climate change. This topic is ignored by Japanese media, and people are poorly informed even though they are politicians.

Recently, Greta Thunberg and her school strike have been increasingly covered by Japanese newspapers and TV programs. But I haven’t found any articles that mentioned that she is a vegan to reduce the effects on the environment. I think they must write about her lifestyle as well as her activities. She not only demands politicians to take actions, but she herself leads an environmentally friendly lifestyle.

On September 20, 4 million people participated in the global climate strike. Even in Hamamatsu, about 400 students in Kaiseikan, a combined private junior and senior high school, marched from JR Hamamatsu Station to the city hall with placards and balloons. They appealed to people in the town by shouting “Save the planet, save our future!” Finally, they handed recommendations to the mayor to require implementation of RE100 in schools and hospitals, establishment of a “youth conference” to collect opinions of young people about climate change, promotion of greening in the urban area, etc. They responded to Greta’s call to children in the world.

I was surprised to hear this news because I had thought the global climate strike would be held in only big cities. But I was wrong. I have the book “No One is Too Small to Make a Difference”, a collection of Greta’s speeches. I wish this book will be used in English classes in high schools all over Japan so that more and more students will get interested in the world they live in.

Sawayaka Walking in Arai (3) - Vegan sweet in seaside festa

After leaving Kinokuniya Museum, we walked through residential area until we came to Shinsui Park near Hamana River. As it was a hot day, many people took a rest and drank water.

Then we walked along the river, the water of the river wasn’t very clear,

but trees cast shadows, and I felt the smell of the sea.

It was about 4.5 km from Kinokuniya to the final sightseeing spot Kaikokan. I began to worry about if I could manage to walk. I wanted to have something cold. On the premises of Kaikokan, they had an event called South Hamana Lake Autumn Festa with music, stalls, and activities.

This is Kaikokan. It is a facility to provide various activities such as catching fish, grilling eel, making handicrafts with shells, etc. On that day, there were some activities with fish.

This facility is not especially vegetarian-friendly, but I expected to find something to eat in stalls outside. In many Japanese events where various food stalls are set up, you may have a chance to try some vegan traditional snack. This time, I found unexpected kind of sweet, warabimochi-bar.
Warabimochi is my favorite sweet made from bracken starch. Usually it is a jelly-like sweet eaten with soybean powder, but warabimochi-bar is a frozen sweet like a popsicle.

As there were two kinds of warabimochi-bar, I chose the one flavored with Mikkabi mandarin orange. The other was flavored with soybean powder as ordinary warabimochi.

Look! It contained real mandarin orange.

Until then, I had never eaten orange-flavored or frozen warabimochi. It was very different from warabimochi I had known. Though it was sweet with the flavor of mandarin orange, the texture felt like konnyaku, a jelly-like food made from konnyaku yam roots. It may be partly because that this warabimochi was so big that I had to bite into it as with konnyaku. Ordinary warabimochi is bite-sized. Anyway, I was very interested in this new type of warabimochi. I hope I can see their stall again in some other events.

It was refreshing to look at Lake Hamana for a while.

There were some children swiming in the lake. It was like summer. On my way back to Arai-cho Station, I saw some flowers. Are they morning glories or convolvuluses?

It’s a pity that I don’t know much about flower names.

There was a road with fine pine trees. Arai had several spots that reminded me of the history of Tokaido Highway in the Edo Period. Pine trees are also drawn in ukiyoe paintings of Arai.

It was so hot that I saw warnings for heatstroke in several places on the course (even on the map). I was relieved when I got to the station after walking about 8.0 km.