The Pied Piper

It's very exciting, there's going to be a movie made in the village! And the old Kuimaru Primary School, half of which was knocked down late last year, is going to be the main filming site! Once the filming's finished, they'll knock the rest of it down. What a huge waste of a fantastic building. The director, a guy called Tsubokawa Takushi (sorry, Japanese only link, the next one too), apparently traveled all over Japan looking for the perfect spot and found it here in the village. How flattering!

The movie's about the problems that little rural places are having all over the world right now because most of the young people leave and never go back, so the film is going to be called 'Hamlyn', as in the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. Apparently some of the actors in it are very famous, and they're all working for free because Tsubokawa-san has no budget at all for the project. He's won a few prizes at big international film festivals, but it pretty much unheard of here. Well, here's hoping this changes all that for him. Y, M and I hung out with him and a few of his band members (Kumonosu Quartet, Tsubokawa-san's an accordionist, amazing!!) and showed them around a bit with the help of the principal of the local primary school. The batteries for my camera ran out after this first photo at the school though...sigh. We went to some very beautiful places, so we'll have to go back with new batteries sometime.

Hijiki Seaweed Salad

I've been looking for some good seaweed salad recipes lately for my good friend Mr O. and came across this hijiki seaweed salad. The plan was to make it and take photos, but the recipe calls for cucumber and celery neither of which can be found in the village in winter time. After dealing with many many kilograms of cucumbers last summer, I'm happy to wait for another few months so it actually worked out quite well! The closest thing I could think of was tofu seeing as it's cool and refreshing and it was great. Here's the real recipe though, it should be just as good if not better! Oh, and if you're wondering about the funny shape of the tofu, it's because I forgot to take the photo before we started eating it.

Ingredients:
10g dried hijiki
1 cucumber
1/2 stick of celery
as many toasted sesame seeds as you like

Dressing:
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon each of
soy sauce
vinegar
vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
pinch of salt

To Make:
1. soak hijiki in warm water until soft, blanch, and drain.
2. slice cucumber and celery finely, soak in iced water and drain.
3. mix dressing ingredients together
4. mix it all together and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

So simple! And if you believe everything you read on the packet, hijiki is very good for you - it's apparently high in iron, calcium, magnesium and fibre. Nice.

(Belated) Happy New Year!

Back in June last year about a week after we moved to the village, our neighbour got up at the crack of dawn, de-shrouded his geriatric tractor and started ploughing up the garden right outside our bedroom window. I was pretty unimpressed because the first I'd heard of the whole scheme was the tractor roaring round the corner of the house that morning. Y. spent the next three days telling me how lucky we were because that would normally cost 5000 yen, while I helped to plant the green soybeans (edamame) that our neighbour had decided we needed to grow because they're a great snack to have with beer. Still struggling with the local dialect, I misunderstood my instructions and planted only one seedling per hole instead of two, and so spent the next week being alternately ridiculed and scolded by our neighbour at least twice a day.

Against all odds the beans battled their way through life, and by October we were eating them! We ate some when they were still young, boiling them with a little salt and eating them, yes, as a snack with beer. (No beer for us breastfeeding mothers of course though!) Any we couldn't finish we left to dry on the bush, then picked them, shelled them, dried them in the sun and put them away for winter. I wrote about it briefly in this post. By the end of the month they were safely away in the cupboard. But what next? I had a feeling there was a pretty good chance that the next time we'd see them would be in six year's time when we pulled them out from the back of the cupboard in an unrecognisable state.

Well, this year I decided to have a go at cooking Japanese New Year's food. It always looks very fancy and is arranged in tiered boxes. There are all sorts of things that tend to go in these boxes, with Kazu no Ko, roe of the Pacific herring, being one of the staples. We found out that around here instead of leaving the roe whole which is what I've usually seen, they break it up and mix them with soaked and boiled green soy beans. Hooray! What exciting news!

So here it is, New Year's Herring Roe with Beans by Us! Not all that pretty, but it was very yummy and helped fill up the empty spaces in the boxes. And for once in my life, I've seen something through right to the bitter end. Not a bad way to start the New Year!

Winter in Aizu

Last weekend about a metre of snow fell over two days. It was amazing, neither of us had ever experienced anything like it! Digging our way out from the front door to the road was tough, but just look how beautiful it is. We went totally snap-happy just in the area around our house, I've never felt like such a tourist in my whole life! Here are just two of the many shots, the first one taken at the shrine next door to our house, and the second one is of the shrine from the road looking all snuggly.

For a non-photographer like myself though, it's impossible to capture the scene and those special magical moments. I found these photos quite disappointing, and even going outside the next day was a let down. It was nothing compared to the way I'd remembered it in my head. I just kept thinking, surely it was so much more beautiful than this! I even started the think that I imagined it all, that it was just a big pile of frozen water and nothing to have been so excited about in the first place.

Today however, we happened to end up in an art gallery in the nearby town of Yanaizu, a gallery completely devoted to the work of a print maker called Kiyoshi Saito. He was born in Aizu Bange in 1907 but moved to Hokkaido when he was a still a small boy. Later on when he came back to visit his hometown, he was totally blown away by its beauty and began making a series of prints of Aizu. He was still making prints of Aizu in his late 80's - today we saw over 100 from the Winter in Aizu series. With these he was able to achieve what I was trying so unsuccessfully to do a few days ago in my shutterbug fever. He got it! He captured the magic! The prints are beautiful. But even better than that, they show the landscape looking just the way I felt that I had first seen it. On the hour or so in the car on the way home, the landscape around us transformed itself; the houses, mountains, trees and rivers becoming Kiyoshi Saito's Aizu, and again I was able to see everything that was beautiful about it. I'm so happy.

Winter in Aizu (100) Mishima 1992

Winter in Aizu (46) Oishida 1981

Gourmet Porridge Chef

Porridge is the greatest winter breakfast food ever. And gourmet porridge is even greater still! I find straight oats a bit tough going, so these days I usually add fruit along with a cinnamon stick and a few cloves. Apple is yummy and are bananas scrummy (heh!); actually most things have been fantastic. But by far and away the winning combination, newly discovered this winter, has been persimmon. I'm astounded by it's wonderful-ness! Cut it up and throw it in with the oats and by the time they've cooked, the persimmon has achieved optimum texture. It's not too soft, and it's not too hard. Just perfect. It's also an excellent baby breakfast! Have I impressed you yet? I hope so.

Snow!

Check it out!!! It's been snowing a little bit every day since Monday, but it really got going last night. I've read in books and heard people talk about how quiet snow is, but it was kind of special to experience it for the first time. It's amazingly quiet, except for when a big pile of snow crashes down off the roof. It sounds just like an avalanche, very exciting as long as you're not standing underneath it at the time. Y. and I spent a lot of time shoveling snow today. It was fun because it was the first day, but I wonder how we'll feel after 3 months of it?

If you're wondering how the Matatabi's going, it's not at all. Y. was late at work, and our neighbour says he can't come over without a chaperon. After all, what would everyone think?!

Making things with Matatabi

This is the latest exciting thing in our lives. Not the gumboots, although they are quite exciting too, special ones for winter, please feel free to admire them! The really exciting thing though is the matatabi, actinidia polygama or silver vine propped up in the doorway. It grows in the mountains here, and is used for making baskets and all different types of colanders for vegetables and rice. Matatabi products are amazing to use because they're strong yet flexible, last forever and as an extra bonus are also very pretty.

Our 76 year old neighbour is forever telling me he can do anything. As much as I hate to admit it, he's actually not too far off it! He's one of the very few people around here who still knows how to make rope from a certain kind of tree bark. He makes beautiful traditional lanterns. And of course, he makes baskets and colanders with matatabi. He's been promising all year to teach us when winter came, and so here we are, matatabi step one!

I must admit rather sheepishly that so far I have done absolutely nothing to contribute to this project. Then again, seeing the state Y. was in after the trip into the forest to cut the vine, I'm a little bit glad I was stuck at home with the baby! He was a wreck after trying to keep up with our neighbour in the forest, even though at any other time he totters unsteadily about the place. We should never underestimate these mountain folk!

Anyway, the first step is to strip the bark off. These are just shavings, but I thought they were still relevant.

Next you cut it to size, and soak it in water for a few days.


We've still got a lot more of the vine to strip and cut, and the plan is that the three of us (the third being our neighbour, not the baby) will do as much as we can this evening. I'm really excited!