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.

Sawayaka Walking in Fukuroi (4) - Buddhist ice cream with adzuki bean paste

The building where I had the Buddhist meal has some interesting spots. After I finished lunch, I went out of the room and enjoy the view of the garden from the corridor. It was a typical Japanese garden with rocks, stone lanterns, and satsuki azaleas.

As they had a wind-bell festival, there were many bright red wind-bells. Later, I learned that they represented glowing Mt. Fuji.

In the backmost corner of the garden, there were blue and white wind-bells that seemed to represent a waterfall.

The treasure room was also interesting to see. They had an exhibition of sculptures of a Buddhist sculptor Kanamaru Etsuro. I liked his works very much. Especially, the sculpture of a flying Garuda hung from the ceiling was awesome. You can see his works on the Internet if you search with his name.

Kasuisai Temple has a treasure even in their restroom. The room is unisex, and you can see inside from the corridor. There are flush toilets built in 1937 and a statue of Ususama Myoo, a god of toilet. He is originally an Indian fire god Agni and can burn out all the impurities in the world. This statue is the biggest one in Japan.

Kasuisai Temple is a training dojo for monks, but they also provide lodging services for visitors. According to their website, you can have Buddhism meals and experience zen meditation and sutra copying. I think this is the building you can stay at night.

Kasuisai was a very interesting temple. Before I went to the next destination, I had Buddhist ice cream in a souvenir shop outside the temple. There were three flavors: soymilk, black sesame, and matcha.

I chose black sesame. According to the clerks, the ice cream is vegan, but the cone may not be.
It had much adzuki bean paste made by a monk in Kasuisai. I remembered the delicious Buddhist meal in the temple again, feeling happy.

Souvenirs from Singapore

Last Saturday afternoon, I visited my uncle and aunt. They are sociable people, and I can often see and hear something interesting in their house. This time, they had boxes of tea and cookies that their neighbor brought from Singapore as souvenirs. The boxes bore the name Raffles Hotel. I thought it was a famous hotel because I had heard the name somewhere. We were excited when my aunt opened the boxes finally to taste them.

The tea box contained 25 tea bags of Darjeeling tea. We could feel the fragrance even before taking them out from paper bags. We drank the tea with fine teacups with flowers. It was good. The cookies were white chocolate macadamia cookies. They were crunchy and had a rich taste of nuts.

We talked a lot. Before I left their house, my aunt gave me some tea bags and cookies. I thought I had to write an article about them, so I took pictures of the boxes.

Later, I learned a little about Raffles Hotel on the Internet. It is an old colonial hotel opened in 1887. As I imagined from the picture on the cookie box, it is a hotel of the highest quality. I also found that the tea company The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. written on the tea box is Singapore’s oldest tea producer. It has partnered with Raffles Hotel for more than 20 years. The products of The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. are one of the most popular souvenirs from Singapore because they have no shop in Japan.

Today, I had the tea and cookies again. The tea had a beautiful color and reminded me of wine somehow. It may be because today is my uncle’s birthday. Cheers!

Moomin sweets in Roppongi Hills

Yesterday, I went to Tokyo to see my friends from university. At first, I didn’t intend to write any article about this trip or take pictures, because I just wanted to talk with them to have a good time. I met them for the first time in 13 years.

We met up in front of the statue of Hachiko, the landmark of Shibuya Station at 11:30. Then, we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant Milan Nataraji, 5-minute walk from the station. There we had a buffet with naan bread, rice, four kinds of curry, salad, dessert, etc. I think I’ll write about this restaurant in detail some other time. Their food was good, and the atmosphere was agreeable.

After that, we returned to Shibuya Station and took a bus (Line 51) to Roppongi Hills. They have an exhibition of original drawings of Moomintroll series by Tove Jansson in Mori Arts Center Gallery on the 52nd floor until June 16. As Moomintroll is very popular in Japan, there were great many visitors. We had to wait for 30 minutes before we could enter the venue.

This exhibition is one of the memorial events for the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Finland and Japan. It was the most fulfilling collection of Moomin drawings I had ever seen, and so was the souvenir shop. There were many Moomin goods that were available only there.

On the same floor, there was “Cafe THE SUN” providing Moomin menu. There, each of us ordered different menu items. One of my friends had “Parfait of Little My.”

The other friend ordered “Moomin Valley Plate.”

I had “Moomin Fika Set” just because I wanted to eat the cinnamon roll included in the set.

According to my friends, the sweets they had were very sweet, but they were colorful and beautifully made. The set I had was moderately sweet and quite satisfactory. All of us took pictures of each of them.

On the table, there were paper coasters that also serve as discount coupon for the exhibition. It’s a pity that we went to the exhibition first!

Cookies from Moominvalley in Japan

What a coincidence! Yesterday I wrote about tea and mentioned my trip to Finland and Sweden. And today, I got a packet from my friend in Saitama Prefecture who had visited Moominvalley recently. Moomintroll (abbreviated as Moomin) is a character in a series of books written by a Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson. In 1969, the first animation series of Mumin was made in Japan. Since then, his family and friends have been loved by many people, and Japan Post has issued sets of Moomin stamps. This is the one issued four years ago.

Moominvalley Park in Saitama was opened in March 16. If you search with “Moominvalley Park Japan”, you can find many articles in Finnish and English. According to them, it is the first Moomin theme park outside Finland. My friend said that the park was spacious and refreshing. She sent me a card, a clear file,

and a box. What’s this?

The character on the box is Stinky. If I remember correctly, he is a nuisance in Moominvalley. Inside the box were cocoa cookies, which seemed to be delicious. However, I still wondered what the red and white things on top were.

At first, the cookie tasted as any other cocoa cookies. I felt the rich flavor of cocoa and egg. But as I ate the center of the cookie, I noticed an unexpected flavor of spice and saltiness. According to the label on the box, it contained pink pepper and sun-dried salt. Then I learned what were on top of the cookie. I heard of pink pepper for the first time. I thought this combination of flavors very interesting and ate three cookies, wondering how my friend liked them if she ate them herself.

Two kinds of McVitie's biscuits

In December, I found the famous Swedish ginger cookies were vegan. Then I wondered if there were other European vegan cookies sold in supermarkets.

In the basement of May One, a commercial facility in the building of JR Hamamatsu Station, there is a supermarket Seijo Ishii where many imported sweets are sold. The other day, I found McVitie's HobNobs on the top shelf. As soon as I saw the picture of a biscuit on the package, I recognized that it was an oat biscuit, my favorite, from its rough surface. After checking the ingredients on the label in Japanese and finding that no animal products were contained, I bought one packet home.

Oat is not so common in Japan as in Europe, so it may be difficult to find oat biscuits in ordinary supermarkets. I have often seen Swedish oat biscuits made by Gille in import grocery stores and supermarkets like Seijo Ishii, but they contain eggs. IKEA has some vegan oat biscuits, but I haven’t tried yet. So, this was the first time I tried oat biscuits without animal ingredients.

In addition to oat, they also contained whole wheat. The texture was grainy, which is something I like about oat. The biscuits were thick and had sweetness of syrup. I thought they were just the opposite to the delicate ginger cookies I had in December. I like them both though they are so different.

In Seijo Ishii, there were also McVitie’s Digestive beside McVitie's HobNobs. Since there were no animal products among the ingredients in Japanese, I bought them, too.

They were whole wheat biscuits and had a simple but good taste. While eating them, I remembered a commercial song of McVitie’s biscuits I heard a long time ago. In Japan, they have been sold by a Japanese company Meiji (Japanese versions with packages in Japanese), but I have never eaten them. According to Meiji’s website there are three kinds of biscuits sold: Digestive Biscuits, Milk Chocolate, and Vanilla Cream. All of them are made from whole wheat like English versions, but they contain milk constituents.

When I learned this, I got worried and peeled off the label of McVitie’s Digestive and read the description in English. It said “CONTAINS: GLUTAN. MAY ALSO CONTAIN MILK.” Then I checked the packet of McVitie’s HobNobs and found “May contain: Nuts, Milk, Soya.” I was perplexed and called the company that handles these biscuits in Japan. They said clearly that both of them contained milk.

I read their Japanese labels again and found a warning “In the manufacturing plant of this product, products containing milk are also manufactured.” Then I understood that contamination may occur during manufacturing.

Hattasan - Temple with popular dumplings

On my way back to Hamamatsu, I got off the train in Fukuroi to visit Hattasan Soneiji Temple that is usually called “Hattasan” by local people. It is one of the most popular temples in Enshu or the western area of Shizuoka Prefecture for hatsumode or the New Year's visit to a shrine/temple.

Hattasan is famous for its dumplings for warding off bad luck. They are sold on the premises of the temple, and I think many people come there mainly for them. In recent years, my mother, sister, and I have visited there on January 3. But this year, my sister preferred staying at home though she wanted to have dumplings. So, I went to Hattasan to buy dumplings for her and others on my way back from Atami.

After arriving at Fukuroi, I took the last bus to Hattasan that left the bus stop in front of the station at 15:05. The road near the temple was still crowded, and it took about 50 minutes to get there.

Along the road from the parking lot to the temple, there were many shops and stalls selling foods. The road was full of people coming and going. It was difficult to walk through the crowd, but I finally reached the gate of the temple. According to their website, this is a national important cultural property.

Hattasan has large premises. So, visitors walk a long way partly through a grove to reach the main building. It was refreshing to walk under trees. I saw some camelia blossoms.

Though it was 16:15, there were still many people waiting in lines in front of the main temple. It took time to reach inside.

After praying, I hurried to the area where dumplings were sold. There were as many as seven ticket vending machines, and people were queuing in front of each of them. As I was hungry, I bought a ticket of “one portion for here” in addition to a ticket of “four boxes to go” and went to the place for eating. In exchange for the ticket, I received a plate of dumplings and a cup of green tea.

The dumplings tasted so good with green tea! They were fresh and soft.

After that, I went to the receiving place to pick up the four boxes of dumplings: one for my parents, one for my uncle’s family, and two for my sister. She needed two because she wanted to take one box to her working place to give out dumplings to her co-workers who also like them.

I got on the last bus to Fukuroi Station at 17:05. The road was no longer crowded, so it took only about 15 minutes to get there. When I read the label of the ingredients of dumplings in the bus, I found that they were not vegan as I had thought. They contained enzyme derived from eggs. Otherwise, they were ordinary dumplings made from mainly rice flour with adzuki bean paste on.

I had to come back to Hamamatsu by 18:30 to meet my sister at the station who would take Shinkansen to Tokyo before 19:00. The next train came soon, and I could arrive at Hamamatsu before 18:00.

Dinner on New Year’s Day

Every year, I go to my parents’ house in the evening of New Year’s Day and have dinner with them and my sister. Though I have been a vegetarian for more than 27 years, my mother still believes that meat is necessary to get enough nutrition for our bodies and keeps telling me to eat some meat. To avoid an awkward atmosphere, I eat fish on New Year’s holidays with my family. This year, we had sushi with osechi-ryori or special dishes for celebration of the new year.

When I arrived at my parents’ house a little over 17:00 on New Year’s Day, father was preparing salad. He and mother usually eat kiwi fruits, tomatoes, broccoli, or some other vegetables at the beginning of meal. I don’t know why, but it may be some sort of a method to keep health.

Osechi-ryori was from Entetsu Department Store. They provide many kinds of sets every year, and customers make a reservation in advance. This year, we got a 3-layered box with five chopsticks and chopstick rests. It was an ordinary set with many seafood and meat products. However, there were still some traditional foods that were vegan. They were a plum flower-shaped rice cake, baby peaches, simmered black beans, flower-shaped radish, pickled white radish and carrot, tenderized burdock, candied walnuts, and mashed sweet potatoes and chestnuts. At the lower left corner of the picture, there are kelp, butterbur, bamboo shoot, and hu or wheat gluten, but they might be cooked with dried bonito broth.

Osechi ryori were originally intended to be preserved for several days so that housewives could have a rest during the holiday season. Because of this, the foods generally contain much sugar or salt. These vegan foods were very sweet, in fact, too sweet for me. With these, I had sushi from a sushi restaurant near my parents’ house. The raw tuna was fatty, and the boiled shrimp was fishy.

We had also miso soup that father made. He has liked cooking since he was young, and he always put the same things in his miso soup: tofu and deep-fried tofu. Previously, I thought that this combination was boring, because tofu, deep-fried tofu, and miso are all made from soy beans, and they are just the same ingredient in different shapes. But now, I have come to think that it is not so bad. This time, I added finely chopped green onion. Though father used dried bonito broth, this soup can be also made with kelp and/or shiitake mushroom broth.

Father is 80 years old and is from a farming family. When he was little, the majority of Japanese people lived in countryside and had simple eating habits. Maybe this miso soup reflects such history.

After dinner, we ate ningyo-yaki that my sister, who lives in Tokyo, brought from there. Ningyo-yaki are a famous souvenir of Tokyo and were originally baked in Ningyo-cho. They are small pancakes baked in small molds and are usually filled with adzuki bean paste. The ones we had represented faces of Seven Deities of Good Luck and were filled with white kidney bean paste mixed with chestnuts, which I thought was better than ordinary adzuki paste. They were ovo-vegetarian and contained honey.

Besides these, we had a lot of things to eat, as New Year’s Day is the most important holiday in Japan. The festive time continues until January 3.

Christmas in Japan

Yesterday was a public holiday. This was not because it was Christmas Eve, but because the emperor’s birthday (public holiday) is December 23 and it fell on a Sunday this year. So, it was just a substitute holiday.

Though majority of Japanese are not Christians, we have Christmas. I think our Christmas is just like Halloween. We want to have fun without thinking of the meaning of it. Many people eat chickens of KFC or roasted chickens and cakes decorated with cream and strawberries or chocolate cakes. When I was little, my mother used to take me and my sister to a cake shop so that we could choose between these two kinds of cakes by ourselves. She also took us to a toy shop to buy what we wanted on the spot or gave us presents she chose, because she didn’t care for Santa Claus. My parents are practicalminded people. But these days, more and more parents seem to try to make their children believe in Santa Claus.

As for Christmas cakes, some convenience stores and supermarkets provide vegan options. They are not specifically intended for vegans but for children who are allergic to eggs, milk, and wheat. I have seen some reservation forms of such cakes. They looked as beautiful as other Christmas cakes but too big for me to eat by myself.

Before Christmas, I found that Swedish ginger cookies are vegan. Since then I have wondered if there are any other European traditional vegan sweets for Christmas. So, I went to Entetsu Department Store today. It was noon and not very cold.

On shelves in the basement, there were imported Christmas sweets sold already at half price.

I bought Walkers Rich Fruit Pudding as it seemed to contain no animal products according to the label in Japanese. The package was also attractive.

Before trying it, I peeled off the label in Japanese to check the ingredients in English just to make sure. It said “Suitable for vegetarians” in the last line. I wondered why not vegans. The pudding looked like this when I took it out from the plastic case inside. It had beautiful colors.

The inside looked like this.

It had a dense texture and a very rich taste. It was so rich that I had to check ingredients again to see if any alcohol was contained. To my surprise, no alcohol was written on the package, but I felt my body got a little warmer. It contained much raisins (33%) and mixed spices.

I remembered Agatha Christie’s book “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding” and thought this rich pudding was indeed suitable for a feast. Maybe I’ll buy one again next year.

Christmas Market in Create Hamamatsu

Create Hamamatsu is a community center, where many cultural activities and events are held. Today, they had a Christmas market. I had been looking forward to going there since a couple of weeks ago because I heard a German bread bakery Roggenmehl would participate in the event.

When I buy bread at bakeries, I choose either French bread (baguette) or German rye bread. This is not because I try to choose vegan options, but because I simply like European hard bread. Unfortunately, options of hard bread are quite limited in ordinary bakeries, so I expected to have much wider selection in this Christmas market.

When I entered the building around 10:00, there was already a chorus group singing a Christmas song. I found a big Christmas tree beside a stall.

Roggenmehl was easy to find. They had too many kinds of bread to choose from.

Besides, they also sold German Christmas cakes stollen that have become popular in recent years. I bought a slice of Stollen as I had never eaten one before, and almost all kinds of hard bread in half size. Each of them had a label on which all the ingredients were listed.

I especially like bread that contains fruits and seeds. I had three kinds of bread for lunch and felt very happy.

This is a slice of stollen. The name of the bakery is beautifully written on the label.

I think Roggenmehl is the only German bread bakery in Hamamatsu. I checked information on their website.

Bakery Roggenmehl
Address: 1-51-32 Takaokakita, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Tel/Fax: 053-437-4753
Open hours: 7:00 - 18:00
Closed: Mondays
Parking space available for six cars

In the Christmas market, I found another interesting stand Maple Experience run by Mr. David Martel from Canada and his wife. They sold Canadian Christmas sweets. I saw Canadian Christmas cakes for the first time. They were slices of fruitcakes with marzipan on top. They explained me that they usually use marzipan for Christmas cakes in Canada and the cakes they were selling would keep for a few weeks. I thought it quite a long time, but I was really surprised when I heard that there were cakes that kept for 25 years!

I became interested in Canadian Christmas cakes and searched for a while after I came home. I learned that the marzipan on the cake represents snow like sugar on Stollen.

I ate a slice with peppermint tea. It was dense with many kinds of ingredients mixed together. It was so good that I regretted not having bought one more.

According to their Facebook page (@mapleexperience), they produce maple sugar and maple butter. Since I was so absorbed in the cakes in the Christmas market, I forgot to ask about their maple products. I wish I can find Maple Experience in some other events and can taste different kinds of sweets flavored by their products.

At JR Hamamatsu Station

Hi! Welcome to my blog. As Hamamatsu is not a major tourist destination, you may wonder where it is located exactly. It is halfway between Tokyo and Osaka, and it takes about two hours to come here by Tokaido Shinkansen (Kodama) from both cities.

On the way to the ticket gate from the Shinkansen platform, you can see exhibit spaces of two companies whose headquarters are located in this city.

One is an automobile manufacturer Suzuki.

And the other is a musical instrument manufacturer Yamaha.

When I was in elementary school, my classmates and I took a tour of the grand piano factory of Yamaha. It was very interesting, and each of us got a nice souvenir from the factory; a palm-sized grand piano-shaped pencil sharpener. Though the factory has been moved to Kakegawa, which is also located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, you can learn about the history of Japanese organs and pianos at Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments, which is just a 7-minute walk from the station.

After you pass through the ticket gate, you’ll see the tourist information center across the floor, near the south exit. Some brochures and maps in English are available. The area of the city is the second largest in Japan. There are many things to see and places to visit in downtown and rural areas.

Hamamatsu is one of the sunniest cities in Japan, with many mandarin orange trees on the north side of Lake Hamana. From October to December, you can participate in mandarin orange picking. The most famous brand is Mikkabi (a district’s name). They are very sweet. On the same side as the tourist information center, there is EKIMACHI WEST that consists of souvenir shops. In GIFT KIOSK, you can find sweets such as cheese tarts and gaufrettes made with Mikkabi mandarin oranges.

For vegans, I’d like to recommend orange-flavored potato chips. I don’t know why, but in Japan, there are many kinds of potato chips flavored with local specialties. GIFT KIOSK has also wasabi-flavored ones, and Sagamien, a tea shop, has green tea-flavored ones. Wasabi is hot horseradish paste added to sushi. I can imagine how they taste!