Japan 2022 Special food edition

Special edition: Japanese food

By Sally Cohen ( who happens to be a great cook)

In Japan they eat seasonally so at our special Azusa kaiseki dinner we had chestnuts and ayu (a river fish) which are eaten in autumn, as well as sea eel, sashimi, steak, buckwheat (soba) noodles, mushroom rice and a special Azuki paste with chestnut. The menu was decorated with a maple branch with red and yellow leaves and we each had a red origami maple leaf decorating our first course. 

Satoko organised a magnificent Japanese seafood banquet, for which we all dressed in kimonos. Sashimi with its own dipping sauce, crab legs with a different sauce, abalone, salmon cake, a pot of water over a burner in which we cooked thin slices of octopus and mushrooms.  They then brought a little pot with stingray, taro and ocra in a sweet sauce, chicken with lotus root and in case you were still hungry, a lacquer box of sushi.  The meal finished with slices of sweet juicy pineapple and lychees. Generally, one person will use about 40 pieces of crockery for one meal, including chopstick rests, dipping bowls and lids and none of them can be washed in a dishwasher!

Food is beautifully presented in an assortment of china, pottery and lacquerware dishes in different shapes.  In Japan your chopsticks sit horizontally in front of you closest to the table edge. Never leave your chopsticks standing in a bowl – this means someone has died. 

There are many rules for the etiquette of eating, and these vary from place to place.  What is acceptable in Tokyo may not be considered correct in Kyoto. Here, Satoko demonstrates the right way to pick up a bowl and chopsticks when you want to bring the bowl near your mouth. We have been practising!

Satoko had a set Japanese breakfast one day. It comes all at once and you can eat in any order.

We haven’t seen much fruit and what is for sale has to be perfect in shape and form and is very expensive. Sara has bought a few apples which look as if they have been on steroids for about $4 each and she is generous in sharing. 

Usually our breakfasts have been buffet style in a cavernous hotel dining room, with food stations socially distanced around the room. Japanese food, sashimi, miso soup, dumplings, set chicken custard, a variety of cooked dishes that look like dinner, salad, hamburgers, eggs and bacon, pickles, cold meat and cheese, various bread and buns and pastries, yoghurt and berries and even ice cream. For non Japanese there is a small selection of cereal – and Les brings his own Weetbix because the cereal in Japan is very sweet, like the bread. 

Occasionally we have a set breakfast which is juice, eggs, toast, salad and yoghurt, which has a dollop of fruit purée and a drizzle of oil on top. 

It is bad manners to eat on the street which means very few takeaway places so for lunch we have been buying delicious sushi and sandwiches and chippies from a convenience store like 7 eleven – where you can also buy alcohol and beer – which we eat on the bus. You can also buy hot coffee and chocolate in cans from a vending machine.  There are some interesting choices for sandwiches: pistachio pudding and red bean paste, strawberry and cream, whipped chocolate and banana, cream cheese and pumpkin. 

We have also enjoyed yakitori and ramen. Japanese restaurants all have photos or plastic models of their dishes displayed outside so even when you can’t read the menu it is easy to point to what you want. 

There are many varieties of sake and they range from very dry to sweet. Depending on the type, it is served cold, at room temperature or hot. Some of it is regional such as the sake from Nagano which is sweet and therefore served cold.  Japanese beer is popular. Light and very easy to drink. 

A lesson in cooking trout

At one of the shrines, we saw a fascinating real life demonstration of cooking trout.

Watch the man catching trout from a net in the stream; he guts it, places it on a
skewer and it is then cooked on an open flame, ready to be served to customers.