Happy New Year of Ox 2021

If you are in Japan during the year-end and New Year holidays, you can see many pretty sweets at Japanese confectionary stores. As 2021 is the year of Ox according to the Chinese zodiac, we ate buns filled with sweet bean paste like these today. In most cases, such buns (called manju) are vegan, however, yellowish buns may contain egg as the one on the right. They represented oxen but looked like pigs. I just wanted to upload the picture because they were cute anyway. Happy New Year!

The design of the wrapping paper was also nice and suitable for a New Year's gift.

Swedish almond ginger cookies

Two years ago, I introduced Swedish ginger cookies in this blog. On December 13, Swedish people have Luciadagen or Saint Lucy’s Day. Since I have lived in Finland and Sweden before, I often remember their Christmas season and traditional foods like ginger cookies at this time of year. Today I went to Entetsu Department Store and bought ANNAS Original ALMOND THINS. Like the plain ginger cookies I wrote about two years ago, they are also vegan. Though they are supposed to have an almond flavor, I could hardly feel it. I noticed a strong flavor of cinnamon instead and felt like dipping the cookies into Swedish strong coffee (as I’m sensitive to caffeine, I don’t usually drink coffee). They were so tasty and reminded me of the atmosphere of the Christmas season in Northern Europe.

In 1988, I got a ginger cookie from a girl dressed up as Lucia at a youth hostel in Stockholm on Luciadagen. It was my first trip to Sweden, and I had a wonderful time in Stockholm. But now I’m in Japan and worried about Covid-19 there. Sweden is one of several countries where use of a mask is not obligatory/recommended in public areas and the majority of people don’t wear it even now. As I’m Japanese and have used a mask all the time during this pandemic, I feel very uneasy to see news from Sweden that shows people in crowd. Last April, I sent an e-mail to a local station of SVT (Sveriges Television) to tell about mask usage in Japan. I guess some readers of this blog live in Sweden. I’ll paste the e-mail below though my Swedish is not good and may sound childish. I really want to say that wearing a mask works. Take care! 

Hej!

Jag är japanska och tittar på Norrbottens nyheter om coronaviruset på nätet. Jag har haft väninnor i svensk och finsk Lapland och känner ängslig. Det var tråkigt att det finns många som har drabbats av viruset.

I Japan och andra östasiatiska länder är det vanlingt att bära munskydd när man gå ut och rör sig bland folk. Man gör så för att inte sprida smitta även om man inte har någon symptom eller inte är smittad. Wolfgang Hanson har skrivit en bra artikel om det på Aftonbladet.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/kolumnister/a/9v4bvd/nar-blir-det-tvang-pa-munskydd-i-sverige

Förra veckan tittade jag presskonferens och blev orolig när jag såg att det fanns ingen som hade munskydd på sig. När jag bodde i Sverige och var ute utan mössa mitt på vintern, mina kompisar blev så oroliga att de tog mig till en affär och tvang mig att köpa en. Jag tyckte de överdrev och betedde sig konstigt, men nu förstår jag hur de kände då. Nu är jag lika orolig för svenskar utan munskydd. Kanske är det min största kulturkrock. Vår premiärminister sa att de skulle skicka två tyg munskydd till varje hushåll. Men många japaner har redan sytt dem själv genom att titta på youtube eller annat på nätet.

Jag hoppas coronaviruset ska lugna ner sig snart i hela världen. Tack för informativa nyheter och sköt om er!

Många hälsningar 

Hiroko

Vegan emergency food in Yamada Denki

Last week, my PC didn’t work well, and I had difficulty entering characters. I wondered whether it was the PC or keyboard that had a trouble. I went to Yamada Denki, a chain of consumer electronics stores, where I bought the PC four years ago.

Like Bic Camera, another chain of consumer electronics stores, Yamada Denki sells some other things such as food, drink, and convenience goods, in addition to consumer electronics. On that day, they even had emergency food that were sold at a discount. I bought two items that seemed to be vegan. One of them is Gomoku Gohan that literally means rice with five ingredients.

Usually, such a rice dish contains chicken. But this one doesn’t contain any animal ingredients according to the description on the backside. The five ingredients added to the rice are dried carrot, deep-fried tofu, dried burdock, dried shiitake mushroom, and konjac. They are flavored with plant oil, soy sauce, and sugar. The package also has a table of 27 allergens specified in the Food Labeling Act in Japan.

*えび (shrimp), かに (crab), 小麦 (wheat), そば (buckwheat)
 卵 (egg), 乳成分 (milk), 落花生 (peanut), あわび (abalone)
いか (squid), いくら (salmon roe), オレンジ (orange), カシューナッツ (cashew nut)
キウイ (kiwifruit), 牛肉 (beef), くるみ (walnut), ごま (sesame)
さけ (salmon), さば (mackerel), 大豆 (soybean), 鶏肉 (chicken)
バナナ (banana), 豚肉 (pork), まつたけ (matsutake mushroom), もも (peach)
やまいも (yam), りんご (apple), ゼラチン (gelatin)

The words 小麦 (wheat) and 大豆 (soybean) are highlighted, which means that this product contains these ingredients.

It is very easy to prepare this Gomoku Gohan. First, I took the spoon and the oxygen absorber out of the package.

Then I poured 160 ml hot water into it, closed it, and waited for 15 minutes. As it is a kind of emergency food, you can eat it directly from the package. But I wanted to see how it look like on a dish.

It tasted light and seemed to be suitable for everyone expect those allergic to wheat and soybeans. I think I’ll buy some more while they are sold at a discount.
The other vegan item from Yamada Denki is Rice Cookies. They are made from rice powder, rice oil, sugar, sweetened coconut puree, almond flour, fermented seasoning (rice, salt), shredded coconut. Any of the 27 allergens isn’t contained in them.

The rice powder is from Niigata Prefecture that is famous as a major cultivation area of rice.

The cookies looked delicious.

One of them was broken. They seemed to be fragile but were crispy and tasty. I thought the texture was very much like that of langue de chat, French thin cookies.

Both Gomoku Gohan and Rice Cookies are the products of Onisi (尾西). I heard this company’s name for the first time, but I appreciate their efforts to provide such food. Though it is not clearly described that they are vegan, they are vegan-friendly products. In addition, both of them bear the Halal mark.

As I wrote before, it has been very difficult to find vegan food in Japan. But it seems that more and more companies have come to release vegan-friendly products recently. I think I’ll stop writing this blog now. Thank you for reading.

My blog is mainly intended for visitors or inhabitants from abroad, but in fact I myself like traveling and wish to visit some countries after corona. So, I intend to study hard in my free time to improve my language skills from now on. I wish you’ll enjoy your stay in Japan. Thank you again!

Long-selling adzuki bean popsicle

In this blog, I have introduced many sweets containing adzuki bean paste. You may have got tired of it, but adzuki bean paste is inevitable for traditional Japanese sweets. In supermarkets and convenience stores, you can also find popsicles whose major ingredient is adzuki bean paste. The other day, I found one sold for a reasonable price (about 50 yen) at a drug store.

The manufacturer of this popsicle "Adzuki Bar (あずきバー)" is Imuraya (井村屋) that was originally a Japanese-style confectionary store started in 1896. In 1973, they released the adzuki bean popsicle. According to their website, its price was 30 yen at that time while most popsicles usually cost only 10 yen. From the very beginning, it was intended for adults. Since my childhood, I have had an image that this kind of popsicle with adzuki beans is mainly eaten by elderly people like my grandparents. So, I have seldom eaten one myself.

This time I bought it just because the price was reasonable, but I found it may be healthier compared with other popsicles and ice creams. The ingredients were only five: sugar, adzuki beans, starch syrup, corn starch, and salt. The popsicle looked like this.

I found it moderately sweet and mild. It wasn’t too hard or too soft and had a sophisticated flavor. I even thought it was more delicious than some traditional Japanese sweets containing adzuki bean paste. With a long history as a Japanese-style confectionary store, Imuraya developed such an excellent product. It surely was a popsicle for adults.

Salt Lychee Candy in cute package

Today, the Japan Meteorological Agency announced that the rainy season is over in the Tokai district (including Hamamatsu). It was fine and I went out to buy some foods early in the morning. It took me more than 30 minutes to get to a supermarket MaxValu, which is situated in the opposite direction to the downtown where two corona clusters broke out last week. When I returned home, I sweated a little though it was still 8:30. It has been getting hotter recently, and I saw people walking without a mask, even in the supermarket. As mask wearing is required by stores including supermarkets, customers should follow the rule. Even if mask wearing is said to increase the risk of heat stroke in summer, I don't think it occurs in stores that are cooled with air-conditioners.

Last year, I introduced salt candies that are said to prevent heat stroke. In summer, you can find several kinds of such candies in supermarkets, convenience stores, and drugstores. Today, I ate one of them for the first time this year. It was Salt Lychee Candy sold at a FamilyMart.

The package is palm-sized, and there were eight candies inside. It is convenient to carry in a bag or eat alone. The candies are vegan and contain concentrated lychee juice.

I expected that it was salty, but it wasn’t. The candies were a little sour and had an exotic flavor. As real lychees are difficult to find in Japan (at least in Hamamatsu), I have eaten them only twice before (one or two at a time) and can’t tell the difference of the flavors between the fresh fruits and candies. Anyway, I was relieved to confirm the candies don’t taste bad.

One month ago, I sent this Salt Lychee Candy and other things to my friend in Sweden. Since they had an extraordinarily high temperature in June, I was worried that it would become a hot summer. I chose this salt candy because the package was cute but never tasted it myself before.

Fortunately, it wasn’t so hot in July in Lapland where my friend lives, but Sweden has problems concerning covid-19. A few days ago, a Swedish mathematician Marcus Carlsson had a talk with Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang and uploaded it on YouTube with the following title:

On Pandemic Management, Dynamic Democracy and How to Implement Social distancing in Intimate bars :)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOfgquh6UPY).

Taiwan is a country that has successfully controlled covid-19 with rapid and effective measures including the mask map launched by Audrey Tang. This video was eye-opening and informative, and I was very impressed by Audrey Tang's intelligence and fluent English. I hope more and more people will access it from Sweden and other countries as well.

GariGarikun - Popular soda popsicle in convenience stores

In convenience stores such as Seven-Eleven and FamilyMart, you can find a popsicle in a blue bag with a funny picture of a boy. It is a vegan popsicle GariGarikun (ガリガリ君) with a flavor of soda. “Garigari” is a Japanese onomatopoeic word that represents the sound that occurs when you crush hard things such as an ice cube with your teeth (and “-kun” is a word used to address a boy or a man who is younger or the same age as the speaker). As a popsicle, it has a nice name. It gives me images of hard cold ice, ice shaver, and shaved ice – something I want to have on a hot summer day.

Like other soda popsicles, GariGarikun was pale blue though the color of this picture is not good.

As I expected, it was refreshing to eat it. It was crunchy and had a slight flavor of lime juice. I enjoyed the crunchiness of the ice and thought it had a refined taste compared with soda popsicles I used to eat when I was little. Soda popsicles have been loved by children in many years, and they seem to have evolved.

I ate the popsicle in a little haste because I wanted to check the stick in the popsicle. If “当たり (Atari (win))” is printed on your stick, you can get another GariGarikun at the store you bought it. This time I didn’t win, as there was nothing printed on the stick.

In addition to this soda-flavored one, GariGarikun seems to have a variety of flavors such as cola, Kyushu mandarin orange, pear, grapefruits, and sports drink. I don’t think I have seen them before, but these five products seem to be vegan. According to the information on the website of the manufacturer, an ice cream company Akagi Nyugyo, they contain only apple as an allergen. GariGarikun is the company’s most popular product series and one of the bestselling popsicles in Japan. The soda popsicle is a regular product and available all the time.

*Next day, I found the pear-flavored GariGarikun at Seven-Eleven. I liked its sweet smell, but it tasted much sweeter than the soda popsicle. It contained 2% of pear juice, but I couldn't feel the flavor of a pear. I prefer the pale blue GariGarikun.

Usuchatoh - Beloved drink in Shizuoka Prefecture

As I told before in this blog, Shizuoka Prefecture is known for its tea cultivation. Many local people drink green tea five times a day or more. In summer, cold barley tea may be preferred sometimes as in other regions in Japan, but we have also unique summer drink. It is called Usuchatoh (ウス茶糖) and produced by a tea shop Chikumeido (竹茗堂). Two yeas ago, it was introduced in a local TV show and was called “soul drink” by one of the local people.

Chikumeido is an old-established shop founded in the downtown of the present Shizuoka City, the capital of Shizuoka Prefecture, in 1781. Usuchatoh was invented in 1933 by the seventh-generation owner. It is powdered green tea with sugar and cinnamon added. I’ve heard there is a similar product called “Green Tea” made by other company, but the taste seems to be different. Anyway, the names Chikumeido and Usuchatoh are so famous in Hamamatsu that I had thought for a long time that it was drunk all over Japan. In fact, it is a local drink and difficult to get outside Shizuoka Prefecture.

Chikumeido has three shops in Hamamatsu: in the basement of Entetsu Department Store, the first floor of AEON Hamamatsu Ichino and AEON Hamamatsu Nishi. I got this pack of Usuchatoh in Entetsu Department Store. It contained five stick-type packs. There is also a bag containing 300g of Usuchatoh sold in the shop.

The powder looked like this.

As instructed on the backside of the pack, I added cold water of 140 cc and stirred well. It became dark green tea.

I expected it would be very sweet because of my memory of childhood. But it was not so sweet as before. It was moderately sweet and surely had the refreshing flavor of green tea but felt rather weak.
I wasn’t satisfied and immediately made another cup of tea, with about soymilk of 125 cc instead of water of 140 cc.

It tasted much better than the previous tea. In fact, there were some people on the Internet who said that they preferred making it with milk. Even with soymilk, it tasted richer, and I really thought it was good. According to the staff on the shop, Usuchatoh can be added to a shaved ice dessert. I don’t have an ice shaver at home, but Usuchatoh + soymilk would add a delicious flavor to the dessert.

At the cashier, he gave me a little present.

It’s a green tea candy. As soon as I put it in my mouth, I felt the distinctive flavor of tea that was very similar to Usuchatoh. It became increasingly stronger and bitter as I ate the candy. It’s surprising that a candy can be so alike to real tea.

If you search with the shop name “竹茗堂” on Amazon Japan, you can find their products including Usuchatoh, regardless the language you select. It seemed impossible to search with “Chikumeido” or “Usuchatoh” as no result appeared.

Minazuki - Traditional sweet in June originated from Kyoto

We have the rainy season now. It is expected to last until around July 21. In old Japanese, June in the lunar calendar was called minazuki (水無月). According to these Chinese characters, it means “month without water”, however, I’ve heard minazuki actually means “month with water.” June in the lunar calendar is said to be the season when rice fields are filled with water.

At the end of June, people in Kyoto have a tradition to eat a sweet that is also called minazuki (written with the same Chinese characters). It is intended to pray for good health for the second half of the year. Now, this sweet is sold also in Hamamatsu, and probably in other towns as well. It is a triangle cake (to look like ice) with adzuki beans on top.

In fact, I wanted to introduce minazuki last year in the article “Vegan sweet in June”, but I couldn’t, because it was only sold in a pack with two pieces or more. As it doesn’t last long, and I didn’t want to eat more than one, I gave up buying it. But this year, I could find a small product suitable for one person. It was sold in Mataichian in the basement of Entetsu Department Store. I cooled it in a refrigerator to have it more delicious.

When I removed the cover, I found that this minazuki was not one square piece but was cut in two, in triangle!

Two pieces of mini minazuki for one portion. The confectionary store Mataichian is very smart.

I mistook the white layer as a rice cake. Actually, the ingredients of this minazuki were sugar, adzuki beans, wheat flour, wheat flour starch, plant protein, and starch syrup of reduced malt sugar. Though the white layer was elastic and resembled a rice cake, it was a little harder and wasn’t sticky. This cooled cake tasted very good with sweet adzuki beans.

Minazuki is widely known in the Kansai area but not in Hamamatsu. The ingredients seem to vary depending on stores. If there are any other stores that sell it loose, I’d like to try again by the end of this month.

Fresh green leaves & tea leaves

May is the season of newly harvested tea. Last year, my mother, sister, and I went to Mori-machi, a town about 30 km from Hamamatsu and visited a tea shop Ishikawaen (石川園). In April this year, we got a brochure of their products including new tea leaves and a tea bag by post.

When I visited my parents’ house on May 5, my mother took me for a drive to Mori-machi as it was the last day of the annual sale of newly harvested tea. I got out of Hamamatsu for the first time in more than two months and had a feeling of freedom in the nature. We enjoyed the beautiful scenery of mountains with fresh green leaves. There weren’t many cars running on the road in front of Ishikawaen.

Last year, they had a tent in front of the shop and offered a cup of free green tea and Ochabatake (tea garden) Yokan (thick jelly made from adzuki beans, agar, sugar, etc.) containing green tea to each visitor. But this year, they didn’t do that

and had a disinfectant at the entrance.

My mother bought some tea leaves and a box of Ochabatake Yokan.

I ate one piece of yokan at home with the tea sent from Ishikawaen in April. The yokan (5 cm x 3 cm) was dark green and had a rich flavor of green tea.

The contents of the tea bag consisted of green tea, Gyokuro (玉露), and powdered green tea. Gyokuro is the highest quality green tea. Before harvesting, its tea plants are covered to be protected from sunlight for three weeks to increase sweetness and decrease bitterness. The tea bag is intended to make tea with 400 cc of cold water. The pale green color of tea was beautiful, and the tea had a mild refreshing flavor.

Ishikawaen is a generous tea shop. Before we left, they gave another tea bag of this tea and a small bag of newly harvested tea to each of us. I think I’ll send them to my sister who has stayed in Tokyo all the time.

In Mori-machi, we also visited Daitoin Temple,

where we found thistles that can be rarely seen in the area where we live,

and went to FamilyMart. Though it is a convenience store chain, this store has a corner of locally produced vegetables and fruits.

I bought a pack of strawberries at a reasonable price. Though they were small, they tasted very good. Such simple local products always give me energy.

Unique kashiwamochi in Hamamatsu

May 5 is a national holiday Children’s Day in Japan. It is also known as Tango-no-Sekku (端午の節句), a festival to pray for healthy growth and success for boys (for girls, we have the Doll Festival on March 3). Families with boys celebrate this day with warrior dolls displayed at home and carp streamers hung up outside. In recent years, however, it has been getting difficult to see carp streamers because of declining birth rate or for some other reasons.

May 5 is also my father’s birthday, so I visited my parents' house today.

I brought kashiwamochi or rice cakes stuffed with adzuki bean paste and wrapped with oak leaves. They are traditionally eaten on Tango-no-Sekku. One of them was a special one,

which was three times as big as the other (ordinary size).

Instead of a birthday cake, we cut it into three pieces.

I got the right one. The rice cake was fresh, soft, elastic, and delicious.

My father got the middle piece with much adzuki bean paste in it. After eating it up, he asked me if he could have the other kashiwamochi. I was glad that he had a good appetite (we had already lunch before this). The normal-sized kashiwamochi was brown because it was made from sorghum. I heard this type of kashiwamochi is unique to this area and it is softer than ordinary white kashiwamochi.

In addition to kashiwamochi, we had tsurunokomochi, pink and white rice cakes eaten in festive occasions. They have the shape of an egg of a crane that is a symbol of longevity and said to live for a thousand years. My mother and I ate one tsurunokomochi respectively. It was soft and had mild sweetness.

I thought these rice cakes were very good. They were all from a rice cake shop Tsuchiya Mochiten (つちや餅店), not a confectionery store. I remember a Japanese proverb saying “For rice cakes, go to the rice cake shop (餅は餅屋)”. It means one should go to specialists for the best results. As for Japanese traditional sweets based on rice cakes, rice cake shops can excel confectionery stores sometimes.

Rice cakes are given or eaten in a variety of festive occasions. In Hamamatsu, extremely big kashiwamochi are often used as a return gift for a gift to celebrate the birth of a child (when a boy is born, it is often his grandparents who buy warrior dolls and carp streamers for him). In addition, they are also used as a treat in Hamamatsu Festival where big kites are flown to celebrate the birth of children. It is usually held from May 3 to 5 but was cancelled this year to avoid the crowd like this.

The rice cake shop Tsuchiya Mochiten provides three sizes of “big kashiwamochi”, and I bought the smallest one to be eaten by three people. The biggest one is ten times as big as an ordinary kashiwamochi, which may be the one intended for the festival.

In addition to kashiwamochi, Tsuchiya Mochiten has dumplings, warabimochi, and some other traditional sweets. If you live in Hamamatsu and seek real vegan treats, I highly recommend visiting there. From the bus station, take bus #40, #41, etc., get off at Izumicho-Naka (泉町中), and walk southward for a few minutes. You can find the shop easily. Though it was open today, it is usually closed on Tuesday.

When I went there this morning, I saw drawings on the ground to help customers in a queue to keep a social distance. The shop is small, so customers have to wait outside sometimes. The drawings represented skewered dumplings, grilled rice cake, and rice cake pounding, and people should stand on them. In addition to this, they seemed to take several measures against COVID-19, leaving me a good impression.

Best-selling custard pudding in vegan version

Custard pudding (called "purin" in Japanese) is one of the most popular western-style sweets in Japan, especially among children. Though it is a simple dessert basically made from eggs, milk, and sugar, any western-style confectionery store has one, and convenience stores and supermarkets provide several options made by different companies. The most well-known product may be Pucchin Purin (プッチンプリン) made by a food company Glico. It is a long-selling product released in 1972. In 2013, it was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling pudding in the world.

I can’t remember when I last ate the original Pucchin Purin. Though vegan cookies and cakes are available in some stores, I could hardly imagine the existence of vegan custard pudding. Last month, however, Glico released Pucchin Purin in vegan version that looked like the original pudding. I happened to see it on a website and got curious. I couldn’t find it in convenience stores and small supermarkets but finally got one in a supermarket chain MaxValu.

When removing the cover, I noticed that the pudding smelled like ordinary custard pudding. The smooth pale yellow surface also reminded me of the original version.

The bottom looked like this. As with the oridinal Pucchin Purin, there was a little protrusion on the surface.

When I pushed the protrusion and made a hole, the pudding sank down. Then I realized why Pucchin Purin has been loved by many children.

The vegan Pucchin Purin really looked like ordinary custard pudding.

The ingredients were soy milk, sugar, glucose syrup, vegetable fats and oils, roasted sugar, almond paste, salt, agar/starch adhesive, flavoring, emulsifier, pH control agent, carotene coloring, and caramel coloring. According to the description on the cover, the sugar is cane sugar. Not only the appearance but also the texture was also very much like the original version. It was as jiggly and smooth as the original version, but the taste was lighter. So, I thought it may be good for diet.
Though the soy milk was used as a major ingredient, I couldn’t specifically recognize the taste of soybeans. I was just impressed by the jiggly texture common to both the original and vegan Pucchin Purin and enjoyed it. Glico did a good job!

This Pucchin Purin may be a great option for vegans and people who are allergic to dairy products and eggs as it is available in an ordinary supermarket chain. MaxValu is a big supermarket with a relatively large selection of products. I hope it will be soon sold in other supermarkets as well.