Spanish food at Barcelona

Breakfast at the cafe near Sagrada Familia; we ordered Gaspach, Empanada and capchinos.

Shrimp salad with bread. Tapas seems like side dishes or appetizers and most of Tapas are served on the bread.  This restaurant serves it separately.

This is a combo dish; a beef steak, sausage, French fries, sunny side, and salad.

Oysters from the market.  We went the restaurant near the Boqueria market.  Everything is very fresh!

Everybody knows Paella.  Well seasoned steamed rice and fresh sea food make it literally delicious.

This is common style of Tapas; topping on the bread.  They are well fitted with beer and wine.

This is veritable paella. Beans make it sweet and pepper makes spicy.  Good combination of vegetables.

These are fast food types of Tapas at Barcelona Airport.  Fried squid ( a dish at the top) is very close to the Japanese one.  Even quiche tastes good for beer.

The works by Gaudi at Barcelona and Mallorca

Gaudi is a very famous architect with Sagrada Familia, under constructing in more than one hundred years.

It will be completed in2026, ten years later from now.
Besides Sagrada Familia, Gaudi produced the Park Guell  and the Casa Mila apartment in Barcelona,  and designed the sacred canopy in the Cathedral at Mallorca.

The Guel Park was originally produced for the resident use, however, the design of houses and monuments were so advanced and unique that no one lived there except Earl Guell and Gaudi.  

So, it was donated to Barcelona city as the Park Guell after Earl Guell passed away.

The picture below is Casa Mila, the apartment for Mr. Mila, located in the center of Barcelona.

It is said that this building has no straight lines and that people at that time had negative feelings because of the unique design, then it was called "La Pedrera" (a quarry in English).

Nowadays, it is the museum of Gaudi's architecture.

The last Gaudi's works I visited and saw were the Sacred Canopy and the stained glass in the Cathedral in Mallorca.  This Cathedral is famous with the night view as well.

Views of cherry blossoms

Some pictures show scenery of cherry blossoms; Soki Soba (typical noodle at Okinawa) with cherry blossoms, a train with cherry blossoms and the view of the cherry blossoms belt from a station near my place.
Everybody enjoys cherry blossoms in everywhere at this time in Japan.

Spring has already come?-- the temperature in Tokyo

Since the last January, temperature has been moved up and down irregularly for a while.
I found the temperature comparison chart of Tokyo in this year with the average in 30 years.
Here is URL; weather report site at city of Tokyo.
http://weather.time-j.net/Stations/JP/tokyo

Bold lines refer to the temperature of  this year, while thin lines refers to the average hi or low temperature in the past 30 years.
This chart shows that both highest and lowest of this year are mainly above the average of high and that of low in the past 30 years and this year is warmer than usual.


Flowers and trees start to bloom and seem to tell us  spring has come.

Girls' day

March 3rd is called " Hina Matsuri", the feast of girls' day.

This day, however , is not a national holiday, although Boys' Day, every 5th of May, is. 

To better understand why this is so, let us take a look at the history of ancient customs in the aristocrat era of Japan, so that we can understand why such unfairness happened.

More than a thousand years ago, only five days in the Lunar Calendar were regarded as feasts and were celebrated in accordance with ancient Japanese customs; January 7th, March 3rd, May 5th, July 7th and September 9th.  Those 5 days used to be holidays for ancient Japanese people; gender was never a issue.

It was only in the Edo period, during the Tokugawa Shogun regime, that the emergence of the Samurai class made somewhat radical change in the holiday celebration.
March 3 was originally referred to as Day for peach and eventually became known as Girls' Day.

On the other hand, May 5th became a day for a strong worrier, the Samurai.

Clearly we can see a distinction of gender at this point. Both dates were considered holidays and celebrated separately.

After the Tokugawa Shogun era, the Meiji regime changed the calendar from the traditional Lunar calendar to solar calendar and at the same time, holidays were reassigned.

Boys' Day and Girls' day were combined to one holiday as Children's Day on May 5th.

See the following URL.  (Sorry, this site is written in only Japanese)
http://www.mataro.co.jp/cpu/column/theme01/column06.php

Valentine's Day in Japan

February 14th is a globally popular day as St. Valentine's day for the sake of his death for lovers.

These days, many lovers gift something attractive to each other as the expression of their loves and some of them propose to marry them.

Japanese customs on the Valentine's day are formed in a several ways; 

(1) Girls give chocolate to boys whom they try to confess their love,

(2) Women give chocolate to men among their office, as a ritual.

(3) Boys have to give something back to girls on March 14th, in each case.

These customs have begun in 70s and it is said that chocolate companies promoted such events as girl's giving chocolate to boys, but I am not sure.
Akio Morita, former CEO of Sony Corporation, used to tell that he promoted those customs, so that Sony Plaza  could sell chocolate a lot, but no data shows this, either.

Whatever the reason is, it is exciting day that many boys are expecting to get chocolates.

The last day of 2015 and a New Year 2016

The new year coming event this time is a little different from usual due to  mourning period.

(Some may know my mother was dead on August, 2015)

I didn't do anything special, even not writing new year cards, but have just worked on cleaning my house, especially the fan at kitchen,  waxing on the floor, sweeping the bed side.

It is one of traditions in Japan for whoever is welcoming a new year to take noodles at the last day of December.

Ramen noodle at lunch, the upper picture, Soba noodle with tempura (fried shrimp and fried vegetables) at night, the bottom one

The New Year 2016, we visited my sister-in-low's home and had lunch with my wife's mother and my three sons.  It is not so often to get together with three sons due to their jobs and things to do, but this year, fortunately they were all available.

In the pictures below, crab is not common food as a new year dish but red snapper is common.
There is some old saying that red snapper is a special fish for some celebrations.
Phonetically, red snapper is called "Tai" in Japanese, and delighted or blissful means "Mede-Tai", so that "Tai" inspires "Mede-Tai" and refers to "delighted" or "blissful".

I wish the year 2016 be delighted for those who read this post, and peace be with you.