Warabimochi - My favorite Japanese unbaked sweet

In this blog, I have briefly mentioned warabimochi a few times, as it is a very common sweet. It is supposed to be made from bracken starch, but in most cases, some other starch such as sweet potato starch is added to it. Bracken starch is an expensive ingredient because only a small amount can be obtained from bracken roots. Genuine warabimochi made from 100% bracken starch is said to be black, but I don’t think I have seen it before.

Warabimochi sold at any supermarket all year round is usually transparent and round, and a small bag of toasted soybean flour is included in the same pack. In summer, some supermarkets sell warabimochi that is a little closer to genuine one. I like the one sold in Bio Atsumi because the  size of the pack is suitable for me. The ingredients are only four: sugar, roasted soybean flour, bracken starch/processed starch.

It was elastic and chewy and reminded me of mochi or a rice cake (unlike mochi, it doesn’t stretch though). The toasted soybean flour on warabimochi seemed to be too much, but I could eat it up as it wasn’t too sweet. I thought the flour might be also suitable to use for pancakes.

In addition to this common type, this warabimochi has also a matcha (powdered green tea) version.
Though the powder still contains toasted soybean flour, the color and the flavor are those of matcha. The combination of the sweetness of warabimochi and the bitterness of macha was very good.

Another variation of warabimochi is the one containing black sugar. Warabimochi is highly recommendable to people who want to try Japanese sweets without adzuki bean paste or who like jelly-like sweets. It tastes especially good after cooled in a refrigerator. I heard that in some districts or stores, warabimochi is sold with brown sugar syrup or both brown sugar syrup and roasted soybean flour. That sounds delicious!

Kashmir - Indian restaurant with wide selection of hotness of curry

When it is hot, I often feel like eating curry. Last Saturday, I went to an Indian restaurant Kashmir that is 20-minute walk from JR Hamamatsu Station. I had seen the restaurant several times from Bus #80 going eastward from the station, and it was quite easy to find it.

They have some holiday lunch sets, and I chose Set A that consists of two kinds of curry (out of five options), one pieces of samosa, salad, naan bread or rice, and oolong tea (980 yen). For curry, I chose Mix Vegetable Curry and Mix Dal Tarka or curry with mixed beans. The naan bread included in the menu is a plain type, but you can have another bread at an extra charge. Including the plain one, they have nine kinds of naan bread in total, such as butter, garlic, and green (spinach) naan bread, Onion Kulcha, etc. I ordered Stuff Kulcha (+150 yen). In addition, you can choose the level of hotness of curry from 1 to 20. According to a staff member, Level 1 to 3 are not hot at all, so I choose Level 5. I was looking forward to tasting how hot it would be.

The interior of the restaurant was interesting to see. These are accessory boxes from India. On the table, they had cloth with a motif of elephants.

First, I got a glass of oolong tea. It is popular Chinese tea found in many kinds of eating places. For example, those who can’t drink alcohol often order oolong tea at drinking parties at Japanese style bars.

Here they came! The salad was an ordinary kind of salad with orange dressing that you often see in Indian restaurants in Japan. I was glad to see the samosa steaming when I cut it with a knife. The colors of two kinds of curry looked similar to each other, but I found potato, mushroom, ginger, and several other vegetables in Mix Vegetable Curry. The beans in Mix Dal Tarka were all unknown to me. Though the hotness was just Level 5, both of them were hot enough to make the inside of my mouth feel tingly. It was surprising, and I wondered how hot Level 20 would be. However, I prefer hot curry to mild one, especially on hot summer days. I enjoyed eating them very much.

This is Stuff Kulcha, naan bread stuffed with potato, green peas, and cashew nuts flavored with spices. I ate this kind of naan bread for the first time. I noticed at once that the stuffing was almost the same as that of the samosa. Maybe Onion Kulcha might have been a better choice. However, it was appetizing and good.

In addition to Set A, I had chai. I had already oolong tea, but I felt like drinking something Indian and was satisfied with it. It was tasty without sugar.

This restaurant is recommendable as there are many options to choose from. Naan bread contains milk and egg, but there seems to be several vegan curry options. If you search with “Curry of India Kashmir Hamamatsu”, you can find menu items also in English (They don’t have a separate English page).

Kashmir
Address: 5-12, Aioi-cho, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Tel: 053-461-1830
Open hours: 11:00-22:00  Open 365 days a year
Access: Take Bus #80 from the bus terminal and get off at Aioi (5-minute ride)

Dessert with hojicha agar jelly

Today is my sister’s birthday. Since she isn’t particularly fond of sweets, she may prefer celebrating her birthday with sake and potato chips. Come to think of it, both are vegan, though she is neither vegan nor vegetarian. Even when it is your birthday, maybe you don’t have to stick to a cake if you don’t like it or can’t eat it for some reasons. I think I'll have a Japanese sweet on my next birthday instead of looking for a vegan cake.

In the evening, I found a gorgeous dessert at a supermarket Seijo Ishii. It reminded me of the dessert in the Singapore Fair I tried at the beginning of August, but it consisted of Japanese sweets. Its name was long: Hojicha agar jelly anmitsu with home-made yomogimochi and warabiochi. Anmitsu is a dessert with cubes of agar jelly, adzuki bean paste, boiled peas, and fruits.

The toppings looked like this. They are a grazed apricot, warabimochi made from tapioca and bracken starch, two yomogimochi (kusamochi) made from glutinous rice flour and mugwort, smooth azduki bean paste, and kanoko beans.

Under the inner plastic case with the toppings, there were hojicha agar jelly with a pack of brown sugar syrup.

I poured the sauce over the jelly and put the toppings on it. The jelly could be hardly seen.

I couldn’t dare to mix the toppings with the jelly, so I ate them one by one. The apricot was a bit sour, and I thought it was a right choice to eat it first, because other toppings were much sweeter. Warabimochi with soybean powder on it was stuffed with adzuki bean paste, but yomogimochi wasn’t. So, I ate yomogimochi with smooth adzuki bean paste. Though they were small, I could feel the distinctive flavor of mugwort. Both warabimochi and yomogimochi were soft and good. Kanoko beans, which I wasn’t familiar with, were boiled sweet beans.

The toppings were gorgeous, but for me, the most interesting part of the dessert was hojicha agar jelly. Hojicha is roasted green tea, and I like it very much. The jelly looked like smoky coffee jelly and was bitter like coffee jelly. But I regretted to have poured the syrup before I tasted the jelly without it. Since the syrup had a unique sweet flavor, I couldn’t taste its original taste sufficiently. However, their combination wasn’t bad.

As I have tea leaves of hojicha at home, I may be able to make hojicha agar jelly by myself. How about eating it with yuzu marmalade instead of black sugar syrup? Russian people add jam to their tea. So, it may also taste good.

Salt candy to prevent heat stroke

Like last summer, this summer has been very hot. The temperature is still around 30℃, and we easily get sweaty when walking outside. According to data from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency in Japan, 12,751 people were carried to hospitals from August 5 to 11 because of heat stroke. Even if you don’t need to go to hospitals, you may feel dizzy or numb in your limbs or have a headache when you get heat stroke.

Before the bus tour to Mt. Ibuki on August 11, I happened to see several kinds of shioame (塩飴) or salt candies sold in a supermarket. I learned for the first time that they are said to be good to prevent heat stroke. Even in other supermarkets, I saw a variety of salt candies from a simple traditional type to a fancy one that looked like a watermelon and had a flavor of it. It was difficult to choose, but I finally bought this pack because of the nice design and simple ingredients of the candies: sugar, glutinous starch syrup made from sweet potatoes, salt, plant oil, and emulsifier. The salt was extracted from deep-ocean water near Koshiki Island in Kagoshima Prefecture. In the red circle at the upper right of the pack, there was a message “Take salt after sweating.” According to some websites, when you eat a salt candy, you should also drink a glass of water, and you should be careful not to eat too many candies.

I took it for the hiking in Mr. Ibuki. As it wasn’t hot there because of fog, I didn’t need to eat the candies to prevent heat stroke. I just had them in the bus with my mother. From the name “salt candy”, I had expected that they would be very salty, but they weren’t. On the contrary, they had mild sweetness that somehow reminded me of butter candies. It may be because the candies contained glutinous starch syrup made from sweet potatoes. According to the website of the manufacturer, a company in Kagoshima Prefecture, their specialty is a sweetpotato candy.

Like this one, many salt candies contain salt from deep-ocean water around islands of Japan. They may become a nice souvenir from Japan when it is very hot in your country. There are also candies containing Himalayan rock salt. I wonder if they taste differently from those made from sea salt.

Bus tour to Mt. Ibuki (4) - No more Battle of Sekigahara

We returned to the bus before 15:40, and the bus left the parking lot punctually. Soon after descending the mountain, we came to HanaIbuki, a restaurant and souvenir shop in Sekigahara.
Their most popular souvenir seemed to be a cheesecake that can be preserved at a normal temperature even in summer. We sampled the cake (it’s still difficult for me to be vegan completely!) and found it very rich.

Near the shop, there was a museum “Sekigahara Warland” that seemed to be well made. Though we didn’t enough time to go inside, we saw some life-size samurai dolls standing in the open air when the bus passed by the museum. In 1600, one of the most significant historical events in Japan took place in this town. It was the Battle of Sekigahara with Tokugawa Ieyasu leading the East Army and Ishida Mitsunari the West Army. After winning this battle, Tokugawa Ieyasu founded Tokugana shogunate in 1603, and the Edo Period began.

The number of soldiers who participated in the Battle of Sekigahara was about 180,000, and 6,000 to 8,000 of them were killed. Beside Sakigahara Warland, there was a temple Hozoji that holds a memorial service for the deceased in October every year. In front of the temple, there was a monument saying, “No More Battle of Sekigahara.” Later, I learned that Sakigahara Warland and this temple were founded in the same year by the same person, and the same message is found in the museum as well. It was impressive.

We stayed in this area for 30 minutes. On our way back to Hamamatsu, we dropped in Kamigo SA again (but on the opposite side on the expressway) and arrived at the parking lot near Hamamatsu-Nishi IC around 7:30. Since the working hours of the driver became too long because of the traffic jam, we were offered taxi-ride from there to the train station free of charge. What a luck!

Bus tour to Mt. Ibuki (3) - View of Lake Biwa

A long time ago, Mt. Ibuki had several temples for mountain ascetic practices. Though they don’t exist anymore, there is Mirokudo on the summit, in which a statue of Meitreya is placed. It was a small place but looked somewhat mysterious.

We also went to see the statue of Yamato Takeru, a legendary prince in ancient Japan. One day he came to Mt. Ibuki to defeat the Deity of the mountain but was driven away by heavy rain caused by the Deity himself.

Before we climbed down the mountain, I bought kusamochi for me and my mother as it looked delicious. Kusamochi is a glutinous rice cake in which mugwort is mixed and is stuffed with adzuki bean paste. Though it is a common sweet and I have already mentioned about it a few times in this blog, I must say this one was elastic and very good! It was real kusamochi.

Near the shop, we found a tool to carry things on the back. I think this is a very old kind of tool used in mountains, but the cord wound around it seemed to be relatively new. In another shop, I saw tomatoes and cucumbers soaked in water and sold. Maybe they are refreshing to eat when you are tired after climbing the mountain on a hot day.

On our way back to the parking lot, we went to a spot with a nice view of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the lake, but the houses and rice fields were clearly seen.

When we came to the field of meadowsweet, there was a butterfly on a lily.

While I was busy taking pictures, the weather changed drastically. When I finished and looked back, a clear blue sky was spreading over the mountain.

It was harder to climb down than to climb up because I had to be careful not to slip and fall. Finally, we could see the parking lot.

My mother found a grasshopper.

After returning to the parking lot, we climbed up the observation terrace. We could see Lake Biwa clearly with an island in it. It was difficult to take pictures as the sun was in the same direction as the lake.

Then, we entered Sky Terrace Ibukiyama and had goheimochi, a flat cake of mashed rice skewered and grilled with miso sauce. Though goheimochi is a common food also in the mountainous areas in Shizuoka Prefecture, this one was a bit different. They used peanut butter in the sauce, which I thought was a good idea.

Bus tour to Mt. Ibuki (2) - Efforts for revival of wildflower

From Yoro SA, it wasn’t very distant to get to Mt. Ibuki Driveway. We could enjoy exciting views as the bus climbed up the mountain. When we arrived at the parking lot near the summit, it was 12:10. We should be back by 15:40 after enjoying hiking freely. When we got off the bus, it was so foggy that we couldn’t see anything beneath the mountain. In the toilet near the parking lot, there was no toilet paper set inside, because it would soon get wet because of the weather. But you could buy some from a vending machine.

Between the parking lot and the summit, there were three routes. The eastern route was for climbing down only as it was longer and more difficult to walk than the other two routes. The center route was the shortest but the steepest. So, we took the western route. Near the starting point, there was a statue of Kannon or Goddess of Mercy who helps you succeed in love.

 Since last Sunday was our national holiday “Mountain’s Day”, there were volunteers of Ibukiyama Moribitonokai. According to their website, this is an organization that informs visitors about nature and culture of Mt. Ibuki and conducts awareness-rising activities about importance of environmental conservation. First, we got a brochure about flowers on the mountain at the starting point. Soon after we started walking, we noticed that the peak flower season was already over. However, there were still many yellow flowers in bloom. According to a brochure, they are Senecio nemorensis.

My mother found mugworts.

On our way to the summit, there was another volunteer, who taught us the names of flowers. It was also interesting to hear about the weather on the mountain. According to him, beautiful sunrise could be seen from there the day before.

As we climbed up higher, we could see more flowers in bloom. This one had a bee.

But the road became rougher.

This is a field of meadowsweet. Six years ago, members of Ibukiyama Moribitonokai planted young plants of meadowsweet for their revival as they were decreasing significantly because of climate change and for some other reasons.

It was also interesting to see big rocks.

On Mt. Ibuki, it was easy to come closer to some rare insects. This is a butterfly on a thistle flower.

It took us about an hour to get to the summit. It’s time to have some refreshment. Mt. Ibuki is the highest mountain in Shiga Prefecture with a height of 1,377 m.

My mother and I drank Fanta and Mitsuya Cider respectively. Mitsuya Cider is just a carbonated soft drink first made in 1884 and totally different from English cider. Though it was foggy, it was still refreshing to drink it.