Today we had a few flakes of snow, which is all the main part of Kyoto normally gets. The outlying areas, especially up in the mountains, can get heavy amounts – one of Anthony's school friends couldn't make it to school today because of the snow in the mountains. A couple of years ago, we did get several inches of accumulation, which made the Heian Shrine quite pretty.

One sure sign of winter in Japan are the snuggies that you see appear on trees in the late fall. These komomaki straw mats – wrapped around the trunks of pines and [...]

Dipping into my photo archives back to last February, I've been wanting to write about our visit to Ichiwa in north-western Kyoto, a thousand-year-old family-run purveyor of aburi-mochi (あぶり餅 – "lightly grilled mochi"): grilled kinako mochi on skewers.

Mochi is basically cooked sweet rice that's been pulverized into a sticky, gooey paste. Kinako is flour made from roasted soybeans.

The family started business in the second year of the reign of the emperor Chouhou (長保２年), which would place it square on Year 1000 of the western calendar. 1,008 years and 24 generations of history later, it's currently run by Mieko [...]

Anthony overheard the word "culture" (bunka – 文化) during a conversation between me and Fumie, and asked what it meant. It's a difficult concept for a five year old, but I tried to explain a bit, then gave the example that one doesn't wear shoes at home in Japan, but they do in America.

He thought about it for a bit, and as it set in, he said in the most incredulous tone of voice: "they wear shoes inside the house?"

I said yes.

His reply to that was the single word "why?", but if only I could possibly convey [...]
View full post »

While on our trip to the Amami Islands in the south of Japan, we came across all sorts of odd plantlife. Well, odd to us, that is. This orange pod thing came in all shapes and sizes, and looked like some kind of aloe-like plant:

In looking it up now, I see that it's not an aloe-like plant, but that is aloe, just not the non-flowering Aloe vera I was used to seeing occasionally in pots while growing up.

This next grassy-type-puffy thing was a weed found pretty much everywhere...

Beside the road at one point we came across some [...]

For dinner this evening, Fumie prepared udon – thick noodles – which reminded me of our trip last month to Takamatsu (Kagawa Prefecture, Japan). That area is known for both its udon production and consumption, with something like a bazillion times more udon shops per capita than Tokyo has McDonald's and Starbucks combined.

We got a recommendation from a local for a good shop, and were not disappointed, as we could watch the noodles being made from scratch.

The process starts out with the chef kneading wheat flour, salt, and water into a big ball, and letting it sit for [...]