J-BLOGGERS - jibtv

By Alisha

     Winter is cold. Winter is especially cold when you live within a culture that still doesn't prioritize home insulation. Heaters of every variety - electric, gas, oil - are purchased in droves throughout the season and mountains of sweaters, coats, and woolly socks go out for sale. While I take advantage of all these winter survival strategies, I also like to integrate something that warms me from the inside out rather than from the outside in: food. In America, winter food consists of roasted meat, sweet pies, mashed potatoes, and chicken soup. Here, what has quickly become one of my favorite cold-weather dishes is a food with many variations that is known by just one name: nabe.

     In a nutshell, nabe is Japanese soup. Stick a bunch of ingredients in a pot, add some water, put it on some heat for a while, and eat it when it's done. There's not much more to it than that. There seem to be no real rules for nabe (unless you're a stickler, I guess), but there are variations in nabe names based on the ingredients used.

     There's yose nabe, where you can literally choose anything you like and put it in the soup. Then, there's kimchee nabe (shown pictured), which uses Korean kimchee as a base. This makes a spicy, warm soup, and you can choose your preferred level of spicyness as you go. Additionally, there's chanko nabe, which has traditionally been eaten by sumo wrestlers. This is typically a high protein, high calorie soup. There are many different kinds of nabe - everyone can create their own favorite.

     The cooking pot itself is called a nabe. Typically a heavy ceramic pot with a lid, it's filled with the ingredients and placed over a burner. The burner is often a portable one that can be used in the middle of a table. Once steam begins emerging from the hole in the lid of the pot, your food is probably about ready to eat.

     Nabe is eaten by taking the bits you want to eat out of the pot. This means that everyone gets to choose their personally preferred pieces. Each person has their own individual bowl and can take whatever they like. It's very much a communal dish.

     Leftovers (of which there were many, with this particular pot) can be refrigerated and reheated. The pictured kimchee nabe was reheated with a little water the next morning. Egg and rice were added to make a tasty breakfast!

Nabe is fun and easy to make. It's a wonderful winter dish that is great for sharing. There are many, many different recipes to try, or you can simply make your own! Regardless, enjoy - you're in for a treat.

By Martin Faynot

By Spring Day

     I've been living in Japan over a decade and last week, my mother came to Japan for the first time. It wasn't planned months in advance as most travel in and out of this isolated island is. Her husband was sent to Tokyo on business and she tagged along.
    
     I was so excited and so nervous. She'd be in town for a week. Where do I take her to eat? Could she handle squid on a Popsicle stick or parts of her sashimi still swimming in the tank? Which temple or shrine should I take her to and what do I tell her when she asks me why they're important? Thank you Wikipedia! I studied Japanese history in university but I never could remember which Daimyo did what or why Jomon pottery resembled chubby, alien gingerbread men. As far as I am concerned, Japanese history is: build a temple, burn a temple, build a temple, burn a temple, build a temple, burn a temple... Then somebody discovered concrete and said, "Let's use this everywhere!"

     Fortunately, Mom proved to be easy to please. We went shoe shopping. I had forgotten that as I was growing up, all of our deepest conversations occurred while shopping. This turned out to be the case in Japan too, only the conversations went much deeper as we felt safe from anyone around us understanding our English conversations. My mother's arms flailed, her nostrils flared and her eyes welled up in tears as she described the current family drama that I've (happily) been missing out on this year. The shoe clerk that was knelling on the floor helping her try on shoes looked alarmed as she asked me, "Is it the shoes? Does she hate them?" I told her, "No, it's not the shoes. They are lovely. We're just having a private conversation in a very public place."

By Alisha

     Tokyo is a cool place to be. We've got food, history, entertainment, and all kinds of stuff to see. Living in Shinjuku I see a fair number of tourists wandering around and taking pictures during the afternoon. These groups are usually couples or families. Then there are the tourists I see when I'm on my way home at night. These pods of people are usually groups of three or four college-age Western men strutting down Yasukuni-dori on their way to Kabuki-cho (a notorious red-light district). For both of these groups Tokyo has something to offer. While these groups do not emerge exclusively at one time of day or another, they do highlight something I find very interesting about this city: night and day in Tokyo are as different as, well, night and day.

     Walk down any street in the afternoon - a back alley or a giant intersection like Shibuya's scramble - you're likely to see plenty of foot traffic. Stores are open, everyone looks fresh-faced. Mom and Pop shops sell their wares while chatting with friends from the neighborhood. Morning/afternoon Tokyo has a very charming appeal, especially in some of the less-traveled areas of the city.

     Wait around for a few hours, though, and you'll see the landscape change right before your eyes. Lighted lanterns come on in front of restaurants. Neon signs flicker into bright beacons. Shutters fall on family vegetable stores, and signs come out in front of bars and eateries with handwritten messages to customers scribbled hastily on them in chalk. Places you didn't even notice existed in the afternoon suddenly become glaringly obvious at night.

    It's a cool change. To be fair, some people are more suited to morning or evening activities. I have always been a more late-afternoon/evening person myself, which means a 2PM brunch is my preferred first meal of the day. Watching the city gradually, almost imperceptibly come to life in the evenings is still amazing to me. I get goose bumps when my train pulls into Shinjuku station at 9:45 PM and I see the glittering lights of the city center.

     While night time Tokyo and its variety of entertainment options may not be for everyone, it's worth experiencing once at the very least. Just don't let any hosts or hostesses convince you to come to their place. Unless, of course, you've got a fat wallet and a taste for adventure.

By Thatjapanesegirl

This is my first blog here on J-Bloggers. I would like to talk about something that I've been wondering about for a long time, because I finally figured out the answer for that.