Slow Bullets: A blog site by novelist John Rachel: Japanese food

Showing posts with label Japanese food. Show all posts

Thursday, August 8, 2024

LIVE FROM JAPAN! Revisited Redux

I again want to send some love to the wonderful fans of LIVE FROM JAPAN!

My my how time flies! LIVE FROM JAPAN! was published end of January, 2021. I sent the first shot of love here to the fans of the book June 2023. Then, as now, I let everyone know that the saga continues, as I regularly post articles on new happenings and my evolving perspective on life here as an American expat.

While I believe my understanding of and appreciation for the customs and people of Japan is always growing in depth and subtlety, one thing has not changed: I love living here!

There’s no simple explanation for this. All I can suggest is read my book, then read the articles that have subsequently appeared. Judge for yourself..

Here is the entire list of “living in Japan” essays that have appeared on this website, to date:

All of those were written after this splendid book got published. My way of keeping you up to date and hopefully dazzled and delighted.

If you don’t have a copy, you have no idea what you’re missing. Time to remedy that. You can order it from your local book store or visit one of these sites:

An Apple iBOOK is available HERE.

A B&N Nook Book is available HERE.

Other popular ebook formats are available HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback from the printer HERE.

A deluxe paperback is available from Amazon HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback is available from B&N HERE.

ENJOY!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

LIVE FROM JAPAN! Revisited Redux | John Rachel

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Life In Japan: Eating Octopus

Octopuses are weird! Octopuses are creepy! The way they look. The way they move, slithering about frantically with those tentacles going in every direction, yet so frighteningly coordinated they promise to wrap up your head or face or limbs with slimy ropes, covered with suction cups ready to attach themselves in a slimy sucking unbreakable grip, then god knows what!

For some reason just hearing them mentioned, I used to immediately visualize giant octopuses enveloping ships and submarines, crushing them and drowning everyone aboard. I know that was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Captain Nemo in a life-or-death struggle not with an octopus, but a giant squid. Whatever! Big ugly sea creature. Tentacles. Bad attitude. It’s all the same to me.

Understandably . . .

For at least six decades of my life, I never once thought about eating an octopus, or any part of one. I put them right in there with rats, earthworms, cockroaches, garden slugs, slime mold, the beating heart of another human, in the I’d-rather-starve-to-death folder.

But something completely unexpected then happened. I’m not sure of the exact date but it was sometime in 2008. What I do know for sure is that I tried octopus and loved it! Masumi took me to the 道頓堀 district in Osaka — literally octopus central here in the Land of the Rising Sun — famous for takoyaki [蛸焼] and other octopus treats. It was the early days of our dating, so I was completely taken with her and all she was teaching me about Japan, the cuisine and the culture. Next thing I know I was eating the weird, creepy creature, and I WAS HOOKED.

Years later, I had some friends visit Masumi and I from America, I was preparing dinner, and just as a courtesy I thought I should ask: “Are you guys okay with me putting octopus on your salad?” I’ll never forget their look! They did their best to hide it, but it was somewhere between or a combination of horror, disbelief, revulsion, and fight-or-flight. I was amused. Because I did and still do remember my initial reactions when somehow confronted with the prospect.

How things change!

I can honestly say that octopus is among my Top 20 favorite Japanese edibles. It’s comfortably in my Top 50 all-time favorite foods from across the entire globe, which includes such diverse items as T-bone steak, cookie dough ice cream, pizza, BLT and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot fudge sundaes, French onion soup, cheese enchiladas, licorice, seaweed and sea salt potato chips, butter pecan ice cream and coca-cola floats, bacon-avocado cheeseburgers, yellowtail sashimi, Korean barbecue, Chinese hot-and-sour soup . . . you get the idea.

Traveling the world and living full-time in a country as different from America as Japan surely is, has taught me to be very open-minded. Still . . . don’t ask me to eat fried grasshoppers or the beating heart of another human being. I have to draw the line somewhere.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: Eating Octopus | John Rachel

Friday, June 16, 2023

LIVE FROM JAPAN! Revisited

I want to send some love to the wonderful fans of LIVE FROM JAPAN!

First, I thank all of you for the enormous outpouring of praise for my book. All 5-star reviews at Barnes & Noble. Fifteen 5-star reviews at Amazon. More satisfying than charts and book sales is knowing that people truly enjoyed the book. That’s the main and certainly most important reason for writing it in the first place.

Beyond my heartfelt gratitude, I want to remind everyone who has an interest in learning about the “real Japan”, that my sharing my unique life and experiences did not end with writing LIVE FROM JAPAN!

Since it was published in February 2021, I’ve continued to write articles and post them here at this website. Like the book, it’s a mixed bag of anecdotes about both life in my traditional rural town, and stories of travel and news from other parts of Japan.

I’ll make this very easy. Here is a list of all the articles to date, starting with the most recent:

All of those were written after this splendid book got published. My way of keeping you up to date and hopefully dazzled and delighted.

If you don’t have it and want the experience of holding it in your hands, here are the links:

An Apple iBOOK is available HERE.

A B&N Nook Book is available HERE.

Other popular ebook formats are available HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback from the printer HERE.

A deluxe paperback is available from Amazon HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback is available from B&N HERE.

ENJOY!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

LIVE FROM JAPAN! Revisited | John Rachel

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Life In Japan: Lunch Anyone?

A few days ago, my wife Masumi decided we should go to one of her favorite cafés for a special Saturday lunch. She certainly deserved a weekend reward for her hard work — and her job has been especially stressful the last few weeks — teaching music at an elementary school in nearby Inagawa.

This was the lunch set for that particular day at Café Arbour.

Let me be entirely candid. There are many ingredients in this meal I don’t recognize. There are many ingredients you certainly would never find in a typical American lunch: jellyfish, daikon (radish), koyadofu, soumen, sansyo (Japanese pepper), to name a few.

But isn’t that the point? Isn’t that part of the incredible journey of discovery intrinsic to marrying into and living in a completely different culture?

In a way, I end up with the best of two worlds. We still enjoy Western foods — or the best semblance of favorites from the West which are available here — quite regularly, either by my efforts in the kitchen or by going to any number of area restaurants. But I also get to sample, taste, experience and savor a whole new range of cuisine. And trust me, when you get deep into “traditional” Japanese food — as exemplified by our special lunch at Café Arbour — you end up discovering flavors I never could have imagined before. Some take getting some used to, while others are amazing from the get-go.

Let me give a truly unique example of how this cross-cultural pollinization can work.

Anyone remember this Mother Goose poem? . . .

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where’s the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?

I can’t say this piece of doggerel ever inspired in me anything particular profound. And I frankly assumed that ‘pickled pepper’ was a nonsensical phrase chosen for its alliteration.

But . . . I was SO WRONG!

At our lunch, right there for the taking — and admittedly they were delicious! (in a peppery pickled sort of way) — were . . . [drumroll] . . . are you ready? . . .

And that, folks, is how bridges are built between lands and cultures separated by history and thousands of miles of geography!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: Lunch Anyone? | John Rachel

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Life In Japan: New Years 2021 | John Rachel

No, we didn’t have baked ham and mashed potatoes for our New Years celebration meal.

In fact, Masumi-san cooked for THREE DAYS, preparing absolutely amazing traditional Japanese foods for our feast.

Usually, we have a huge feast at Masumi’s mother’s house, with sisters, in-laws, cousins, grandchildren, aunts and uncles. But this year, there were only six of us for the annual feast, and it was held at our house. Still it was a phenomenal way to start this new year. Perfect company and excellent food. Yum!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: New Years 2021 | John Rachel