A happy new year, 2017

The year 2017 has come and I wish peace and happiness be with all of you.
We had a new year party at my sister-in-law's home with niece and her fiance.

              

OTOSO (the picture left above) and OZONI (the picture right above) are typical food and drink for the new year ceremonial day.  OTOSO is somehow ritual drink made from rice wine with herbal medicine.

Tastes and ingredients of OZONI are different regionally, so each family has own OZONI recipe.

The picture above shows OSECHI boxes.  There are variety of foods.  Interestingly, they are all preservable, so that house wives can be supposed not to be busy with cooking all the day.

Typical ceremonial food for celebration in Japan is a Red Snapper or a Spiny Lobster.  Unfortunately, we are not able to get a red snapper and a spiny lobster is very expensive, then, we had a taraba crab this year.

You can find the article explaining the hidden meaning behind Osechi Boxes in URL below.
http://savvytokyo.com/osechi-ryori-hidden-meanings-behind-japanese-new-year-food/

Autumn seems back again

This week is a little warmer than usual.

I saw the scenery just like that in autumn.

The buildings in those pictures are on Mita campus of Keio University in Tokyo, established in 1858.

Highest and Lowest temperature in November

 

The temperature of November in Tokyo has been moving largely, in the way that some days much higher than average or much lower than average.  Especially, on November 24th, it was snowing and the lowest temperature was almost zero.

Usually, the southern low pressure zone causes the rain in Tokyo area,  in addition to this, the cold air goes into the zone this time, then we had very early snow in November this year.

The weather forecast predicts it will be colder in the first week of December and warmer in the second week.  

Snow on the ground in November

Yesterday, unusually it was snowing and covered on the ground.

I have never seen snowfalls around here in November.  I heard that the last snowfalls in Tokyo in November was in 1962, 54 years ago!

Autumn in the neighbourhood of my office

Autumn has been here and Tuesday seemed to be a Indian summer.

Thanksgiving day is cold just like a autumn day.

November 24th will be as cold as a day in the winter, and temperature will be from 0(zero) to 3 (three)  degrees celcious. 

Some leaves change their colors in red, yellow and orange, but pine trees don't change the color.

We can see Mt. Fuji from the building where I am working.

Equinox and Sweets

Unfortunately, I missed to post this topic 

last month, then it already seems an obsolete topic but let me post.

From September 19th to 25th in this year, Japanese people call this period "Ohigan or Higan", meaning the other side of the ocean dividing alive and death.  According to Buddhism, it is said that we may easily communicate to our ancestors or those who had passed away during this period.

Japanese Ryokan and Foods there

I stayed one night at Japanese traditional hotel, so called "Ryokan".
It locates along the beach and it has "Roten Furo"(a open-air hot spring water bath) on the roof with nice ocean view.
( Actually, it is the gulf view; Mikawa gulf is rich with many sea creatures and we enjoyed a lot of seafood in dinner.

The dinner is typical "Ryokan" cuisine, a soy source based boiled snapper, a grilled shrimp, slices of abalone, octopus and vegetable pot, snapper rice, etc. including a dessert dish.

Snapper rice is the picture below; topping sesame, wasabi and dried sea lettuce, then pouring the special soup for snapper rice.

The breakfast is also typical Japanese style: a bowl of miso soup, porched egg, marinated vegetables, dried fish and some salad.