I didn't buy this soybean sweet for yesterday's setsubun event (we scatter beans to the demons). I just liked the packaging very much but it doesn't look so good without the glassine paper... On 3 February many people eat Ehoumaki (a big rolled sushi) in Japan, but I made the decoration rolled sushi instead. I wanted to make it for a long time. It was quite difficult but this recipe book ichiban wakariyasui! kazari makizushi no tsukurikata (in Japanese) helped me a lot. This book is very easy to follow and lots of photos, but written in Japanese. I've just fond the other book in English by the same author, Sushi for Parties: Maki-Zushi and Nigiri-Zushi. It seems a little bit complicated, too many recipes and information, but you will learn a lot about sushi! These decoration sushi is originally from Chiba prefecture over a hundred year ago, the farmers made it for the special days and they called it Kazari Matsuri Zushi (decoration festival sushi) . We can watch them rolling the beautiful sushi on YouTube!

I've been looking at the recipe book "Mocchiri chiffon cakes, sakkuri cookies, dosshiri cakes (bouncy chiffon cakes, crunchy/crispy cookies, dense cakes)" by Shiho Nakashima. Her recipes use vegetable oil and soy milk instead of butter and cream. I was wondering if they taste good enough. It was such a good timing that my favourite blog Ichinichi Ichizen was writing about Kuromame Gâteau au Chocolat (in Japanese only) - after reading the blog, I had to bake the cakes. Banana cake and Kuromame Gâteau au Chocolat were both moist and tasty, I especially liked the Gâteau au Chocolat, it was better than the chocolate cake I had the other day. I agreed with C that cherries might also work well with this Gâteau au Chocolat, BTW, at the end of the recipe it mentions that I need some extra sliced banana for the decoration. I had some banana left, but I ate it before I read the last part of the recipe!

I've been going surfing in Kugenuma Kaigan every weekend for the last four weeks. I also enjoy finding good places to have lunch after surfing, there are a few great local restaurants in the old shopping street in Kugenuma Kaigan. Yesterday we had a nice pasta at Osteria Barca and then stopped by Chimotoya, a traditional Japanese sweets shop. This tiny old shop has been opened for 120 years. I bought their speciality Warabimochi, which had a kind of elegant brown sugar flavor: quite sweet but not too sweet, I liked it. Amazingly, the old shop owner wrote the hand calligraphy for each packaing paper. I have to go there next week too.

Last week, my sister gave me lots of beautiful asparagus she received from Hokkaido. White asparagus is still quite uncommon in Japan, I sometimes see them in a local supermarket but they are really skinny (and expensive). When I visited Germany many years ago, it was May and I remember seeing huge white asparagus everywhere: the symbol of early summer in Germany. I was so surprised at the size of asparagus! I was wondering how to cook our white asparagus, maybe pasta and soup? Then C told me that he usually eat it simply with cooked ham in Germany. So our dinner was lots of boiled white asparagus with cooked ham and some tasty bread from Le Boulanger Dominique SAIBRON. It was so good, C was very satisfied too!

Last Saturday we finally had a chance to visit a very popular burger shop Baker Bouce in Sangenjaya. It was difficult to choose one from so many choices, and I ordered 'Red Eye Bull' (extra lean meat patty, available only thirty patties a day) Cheese Burger. The chargrilled well done pate was very meaty and tasty, but probably because I've been eating like an old people these days, the melted cheddar cheese was too fatty to me. I should have ordered a simple hamburger. If this shop is around the corner (and I don't have to queue) I would love to pop in for take-out burgers. BTW I haven't came across to a Japanese burger shop which serves tasty Deep Fried Potato Wedges: less greasy, crispy outside and fluffy inside. Let me know if you know any shops.

Last month I had to cancel my visit to a famous Asahiyama Zoo in Asahikawa in Hokkaido. But I bought Shirokuma (polar bear) Sio Ramen (salt flavour ramen noodle) at Shin-Chitose airport instead. When I saw a guy carrying a few bags of this noodle at a cashier, I remember that I read the article saying 'it's a very tasty instant noodle', so I bought four bags. Unfortunately it was quite a normal instant noodle (maybe I expected too much?). The ramen noodle was Asahikawa style, middle thin (not super thin) and slightly curly. The packaging is unique, I guess it would be a nice Hokkaido souvenir.

I was walking around Touyoko Noren-gai (japanese only) at Tokyu Department Store in Shibuya, I came across an interesting sweet at Toraya, one of the oldest traditional confectionery in Japan. The sweet is called Golf Monaka (monaka is a traditional Japanese sweets), Hole in One. The size is exactly same as a real golf ball, and surprisingly it was created in 1926! When my sister saw it, she said that probably some golfers who achieved ‘a hole-in-one’ buy this as gift. It make sense! I think it will be a nice small present to anyone though. The inside of the golf ball is smooth strained red azuki paste, their bean paste is classic and always good.

I bought fresh mekabu (wakame root) the other day. I'm so happy that the mekabu season arrived! When I wrote about mekabu last year I didn't know that I should chop mekabu first, then soak in boiling water (not vice versa!) so I don't have to struggle with the sliminess, and also I can enjoy hot steaming mekabu with pleasant fresh sea smell! It's very tasty to eat it on rice with some soy sauce, my friend named this dish 'super golden special delicious bowl'. A piece of mekabu is just for one to two portions, not enough for me. I have to get more next time. The season continues until April, I'm going to enjoy it for a while.

It's been a while since I last updated, because I was away from Tokyo, I'm going to write about my trip in the next entry! Yesterday was Valentine's day. As I wrote last year, this "buying chocolate" event is really big in Japan. The basement floor of any department stores (Depa-Chika) turn to chaos, it seems bit too much to me, maybe I'm getting old... Buying luxury chocolate for herself is a new trend (it is called my choco) but I don't. I buy nice chocolate as a present for C, and I eat it together anyway! We had Mille feuille Carrément chocolat and Cheesecake Carrément Chocolat from Pierre Hermée. I also bought 75 Champs Éelyséees from Ladurée, I haven't tried this yet but I know it will be so tasty.

The first cooking I did this year was Spicy Apple and Walnut Chutney. In Japan people know Chutney as a very sweet topping for curry, but I learnt to eat it with meat or cheese, or just in a sandwich, when I lived in London. The main ingredients for this Chutney are not very sweet apples (we don't have cooking apples in Japan), onion and malt vinegar. I used 10% less sugar than the recipe, so it's not very sweet, rather sour. I didn't really know about the difference between Chutney and Relish but Crosse & Blackwell, the company that makes Branston Pickle, defines it: chutney is typically made with fruit, while relish is normally made with vegetables. I see!

In France people traditionally celebrate Epiphanie on 6 January by eating a 'galette des rois' king's cake. There is a fève, usually a small ceramic figure (used to be a dry broad bean) hidden in the galette, and whoever finds the fève in their serving becomes the King for the day. Two of us is not enough to enjoy this Galette Ispahan from Pierre Hermé, we invited our friends to join us. In Japan putting a ceramic fève to food is illegal under the Food Hygiene Act, so Hermé put one almond instead a figure, and our friend C got the almond. He became a king but actually he has to host the next party. I'm looking forward to the king's party!

There are only a few days left of this year, but I haven't prepared anything for the new year. My last week started with Bûche de Noël from Pierre Hermé, and nice dinner at La Bettola, then lots of drinks and amazing cake, and I also enjoyed very nice Christmas parties etc. What a crazy fun week! So now I have to work very hard to clean up our flat for welcoming the New Year's god. Putting up traditional new year's decorations on 29th and 31st December is a bad luck. Tomorrow is my last chance!

I'm not really into sea shells, and I never thought I would choose to eat clam chowder if there are other possibilities, until I watched a cooking program on TV (in Japanese) the other day. It was showing how to cook Clam Chowder with Oyster, I guess it was normal nothing special, but I couldn't resist. I run to the shop to get ingredients and I cooked Oyster and Clam Chowder. It was surprisingly tasty so I might say I'm good at cooking Clam Chowder from now on!

While I haven't been updating LDK, the air in Tokyo got crisper and colder every day. I think this weekend is the beginning of winter here, which means that the season for Yakiimo (baked sweet potato) has started! At a local supermarket, there are a few new kinds of sweet potatoes I've never seen before. The best one is called An-nou Imo from Kagoshima prefecture. It is very moist and sweet, the colour is orange. It's perfect for Yakiimo! It's nice to get stone baked sweet potatoes from a Yakiimo man in a truck, but I can make even better Yakiimo with this at home. I don't like gender stereotypes, but in Japan I often hear that 'women like sweet potatoes' and I guess it's true about our house...

Finally Comments work fine again! Thank you!

I was reading a blog called Ichinichi Ichizen, her mint ice cream photo looked very very good. So last weekend I decided to make my first handmade ice cream. There were two kinds of fresh mint at the supermarket: peppermint and spearmint. I wasn't sure about the difference between the two, so I tried to remember the chewing gum flavours and bought a pack of peppermint and two packs of spearmint. I thought that spearmint has a sweetish, less sharp flavour, but I'm still not sure what the difference is.

These days I've been borrowing many Thai recipe books from the library and I felt like completing my collection of basic Thai food condiments. I could buy most of them from an imported food store in my neighbourhood, but I couldn't find a light soy sauce called 'si iu khao'. So I ordered many ingredients at once from an online Thai food store. When I opened the box, there was a strong Thai restaurant smell. I was wondering where that smell came from, it turned out to be 'bai mak root' Thai Lime Leaf. Mmm I love it!

Yesterday the temperature reached 40.9 degrees Celsius in Saitama and Gifu cities, it broke the previous record set in 1933. Tokyo was also really hot, I guess it was about 36°C. People seem to eat more curry when it's hot outside, I see curry ads everywhere. At a local supermarket, I saw Curry Natto for the first time. The small sachet of sauce that comes with the natto has a curry flavour, but actually its black pepper taste is stronger than the curry taste, so it might not really be for curry lovers. Another very weird one I saw on TV was Curry Kakigori: a Japanese shaved ice dessert. The curry syrup (in Japanese) is sweet, but it also has a spicy curry flavour. I can't really imagine that and I'm not sure if I want to try...

I saw the big watermelon was selling for a reasonable price. The sign said there would be a crack inside the watermelon, but I bought it anyway, because it was so much cheaper than the 'cut watermelon' I usually buy. I carried home the heavy watermelon, it was 7.2kg, and I cut it, then I saw the inside was really broken. It tasted good, very sweet, but the texture was a little bit dry. So I cut in small pieces and put them in a freezer. On the weekends I'm going to enjoy lots of Summer drinks, probably Watermelon Margaritas to begin with.

The other day, we went to an Okinawa restaurant and they had Shima-gaff which I had never heard before. It is made with beer mixed with Okinawan sake awamori. C ordered it and surprisingly it was served with some ice cubes, and it was unexpectedly tasty! It had quite strong awamori flavour, but also it was still refreshing beer. The other drink I tried for the first time was a mixture of Shikuwasa 'Okinawan citrus fruit ' juice and Beer. It was very refreshing and I liked it! The only problem is I can't stop drinking!

It's hot and humid. I usually avoid using the air conditioning even when it's very hot, but I had to switch it on all day today. It seems like some people lose their appetite, but I don't. So I cooked tarako (salted cod roe) spaghetti for my lunch. My friend gave me 50 leaves of agricultural, chemical free shiso 'perilla' leaves, so I put lots of shiso and lemon juice on top. Recently I enjoy eating lots of lemon juice in the sauce for cold Somen noodles too. Very summery and tasty. I had about fifty shiso leaves, but only ten are left now. It would be nice to have a small shiso plant pot at home.

Today is the last day for the Mosaïc Mania at Pierre Hermé. I love the amazing combination of pistachio and griotte cherry. Cheese-cake Mosaic ¥735, Millefeuille Mosaic ¥735, Emotion Mosaic ¥735, Macaron Mosaic ¥210. I already can't wait till next year!

One afternoon last weekend, C and I went to a cool, traditional but modern, Japanese sweets cafe called HIGASHIYA SABO (in Japanese) in Nakameguro. It is not a very big space but there were no other customers, so we could relax. Usually C doesn't care about green tea at all, but he seemed very satisfied with his 'shin-cha' new season tea, which was prepared in front of us. I asked the guy working at the cafe about seasonal sweets. He brought about ten differnt kinds of sweets in two layered, thin wooden boxes and explained each one in Japanese and English. I chose 'Kuro-mitarashi' and C chose 'Matcha Blancmange'. They used expensive Koicha mathca for blancmange, it gave a very strong, good green tea flavour. The cafe opens until two in the morning, so I want to try some alcohol next time.

I wanted to order a dozen of large pretzels (brezels) from Peltier (in Japanese) Akasaka, but when I called the shop they told me that they don't make the larger size anymore. I was quite disappointed about it because the small one is kind of too crispy for me, but then they said I can order the large pretzel, double the size of the small one. Great! I took the pretzels to a German friend's birthday party and they were good! Pretzel is nice to eat like this, and put some butter or fresh sausage.

On the TV ads, the convenience store MINISTOP's new Apple Mango Parfait looked quite good. MINISTOP has a good reputation for their soft creams, but I never had a chance to try them. I checked their site to find the store closest to me. It was just behind our station - I had completely forgotten about it! Anyway, this mango parfait was good. It was simply made with soft cream, diced mango fruit and mango sauce, no whipping cream or shaved ice, I liked it (the mango sauce can be just a little bit less sweet for me).

I went to the Setagaya police station in Sangenjaya to renew my driving licence. I always get a 'gold driving licence card' because I am a good driver with a clean driving record. Well that's what they think, actually I just haven't driven for years and years! The new card has an IC chip inside, so it seems slightly thicker than the old one.

The 5th anniversary sale is held at Nakameguro Kaldi. All coffees are 50% off the price, and 10% more off at the cashiers. I usually drink their Moka Italian, but today I got lots of Toraja Mamasa beans too. It's very good coffee but quite pricey. The sale finishes at 11pm tonight, hurry!

On the last day of the golden week, I gained another year in age. C told me that I can do anything I want, so I decided to go to Pierre Hermé in Aoyama. The other day I tried Coupe St Honnoré at the fetish party and I wanted to try it again. Unfortunately it was a bad weather day, but it was worth going there. So tasty! (no photos inside the cafe) After that we moved to Brasserie IVROGNE in Ikejiri, I was always curious about this French style restaurant. It sounds like my life is all about food...

I finally went to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Shinjuku. My plan was to have a cup of coffee and a doughnut, but when I got closer to the shop, I realised that it was impossible. There was a huge queue in front of the shop, even though it has been more than two months since the opening of the first Krispy Kreme in Japan. But the guard who was taking care of the queue told me that it didn't look too bad today, so I joined the queue.

These days I eat lots of seaweed; mekabu, hijiki, mozuku,iwa-nori, konbu etc. When I went to Otaru in Hokkaido the other day, I bought Bijin-Konbu ("beautiful woman Konbu") at Rishiriya Minoya (in Japanese), a shop specialized in konbu products. It is thin cut, soft konbu with a slightly vinegary soy saucy flavour. It's not exactly delicious, but it's a nice nibble. Seaweed is very good for health, so it's OK to eat a lot. This shop has a copyrighted slogan: "After eating [konbu] for seven days, look at yourself in the mirror!". I have four more days to turn myself into the beautiful woman with the kombu belt on the shopping bag. If you go to Otaru and are interested in konbu, visit the shop. They are very nice people and their other products were tasty (healthy) too.

Last week, I went parents home and I had lots of food which I don't usually eat myself, because my mother is a Kenkou Otaku (health geek). It was tough to eat Pickled Banana (apparently it is/was very popular in Japan) and Pickled Prune. But I learnt that mekabu (wakame root) is quite tasty. Actually I'm hooked now and I eat mekabu every day!

I bought a box of Serge Alexandre (in Japanese) chocolate. Serge Alexandre is Callebaut (chocolate?) Ambassador in Belgium and winner of the 2003 International Belgian Chocolate Award. At the moment, his only shop in Japan is at Daimaru department store in Fukuoka city. But because of Valentine's day, his chocolates were available at other Daimaru branches in Japan too. I bought this at Sapporo Daimaru and it was ¥1,260.

I've known this Hokkaido Gokatteya Yokan (pronounced 'yoh-kan') since I was a kid, but I've never had a chance to taste it. A few weeks ago, I was shopping at a department store in Hokkaido, and this nice old style package design caught my eye. Yokan can be too sweet to eat for me, but this one was kind of light and delicate (but still very sweet) and nice. I've just found out that I don't need to travel to Hokkaido to buy this, it is available from Shibuya Tokyu Food Show (in Japanese) too. The one I had was a small version. 8cm long and ¥160. If you want to see the bigger picture, go to my flickr.

Last month I wrote about Geisha from Finland. For Japanese it is weird to name something 'Geisha', but the other day C saw a new Geisha at our local supermarket. It is a tuna can, and surprisingly it is made by a Japanese company! So the woman looks very Japanese. I didn't know that this GEISHA brand started in the United States in 1911, and now it expanded the market to Europe, the Middle-East, Africa etc. This Geisha is old and doing good, well, I haven't tasted it though...

I heard that double fromage from LeTAO (in Japanese) is tasty, so I bought it at Shin-Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. This cheese cake was frozen, it thawed on the journey and was ready to eat when I arrived at home. The layers of baked cream cheese and mascarpone are a nice combination. It was tasty, but it could be a little bit cheaper (or bigger). When I saw the LeTAO shop at Mitsukoshi department store in Sapporo, there were lots of fresh cakes which are not available from their website. I was very tempted but I didn't buy any in the end. I'm looking forward to go to Sapporo again, it seems like LeTAO sometimes visits major department stores all over Japan, so check the schedule (in Japanese) and try some cakes if you want. BTW, LeTAO is short for 'Le Tour Amitie Otaru' (Otaru is the city name in Hokkaido where they are based). I thought it was the place name read backwards in Japanese.

Last weekend, C and I had hamburgers for lunch at Franklin Ave. in Gotanda. I can't believe that it has already been three years since the last time. I had a Beef Burger with Tomato Sauce and Mozzarella Cheese, it's called 'O sole mio'. It was very tasty, but I think the simple burger might be better to taste the meat flavour. On the way to Franklin Ave, C showed me the steak restaurant Casarowemo (in Japanese). Their Odawara Grilled Beef Steak (200g) costs from ¥31,500 to ¥157,500! What is going on?!

It's time to eat Nanakusa-gayu (rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) again. This year, January 7th is a Sunday, so I ate it with C. I used donabe to cook with, and I added Chinese chicken stock. We ate it with some topping: steamed chicken, shirasu fish, and umeboshi (pickled plum). It was quite nice.

I went to buy some rice at the rice shop near the station, and there was a prize draw to win a shopping voucher (there are many prize draw promotions in the end of the year in Japan). I was told to pick three tickets and I opened them one by one. The tickets said ¥100, ¥500 and ¥100. I spent ¥1000 for rice and I won ¥700! The owner was as surprised as I was, and she told me that I probably spent all my luck! I got a kilo of agricultural chemical free genmai brown rice with the vouchers, and I paid only ¥50 extra. I'm going to cook this rice with black soybeans.

Our friend brought us nice chocolate from Finland. It is called Geisha! What a name for chocolate! The big sweets brand Fazer make this chocolate (they also make Tyrkisi Peber) and it seems very popular in many countries. I wonder if everyone knows the meaning of Geisha. I was looking at their site and I noticed that the package design changed. Unfortunately the Japanese-looking lady disappeared from the new package. I'm glad that our friend brought us the one with an old design.

It was already a few years ago that our friend from Germany brought this Kamillentee (camomile tea). I don't really drink any herbal tea, so this was only for our guests. But I tried one the other day and I enjoyed it a lot. I don't know if my taste has changed, or if this camomile tea is different from others. I've been drinking a lot of it and now I have only two bags left.

From 8-13 November, there was a France fair at Isetan Shinjuku departmentstore. As part of the fair, there was a talk by Sébastien Bouillet from Lyon. I heard that only forty people could attend, so I was a little bit worried, but I managed to get a ticket. When I entered the seminar room, I was the first person to arrive. Was I too excited?!

For the last couple of years I have been dreaming about macaroons from Ladurée Paris (there is a branch in London too), and I finally had a chance to try them the other days. I don't know how to thank our friends! Unfortunately macaroons don't last very long, and it seemed like we ate them after the best before date. So I still don't know the real Ladurée, but I enjoyed especially Fruite rouges and Framboise. They didn't surprise me, like Pierre Hermé does with his amazing combination of flavours, but they had very simple and good confiture. I also love the packaging. I'm not into girly stuff at all, but I kept looking at the zebra, the butterfly and the other boxes. They are so cute!

My friends brought sun dried horse mackerels (aji no himono) from Ajiro, a fishing village in Atami in Shizuoka. Making good sun dried fish require good fish (of course), good salt, good water, beautiful sunlight, and a nice sea breeze. It seems like this fish had everything. The fish was soft and quite meaty, just opposite from the one we can get in a supermarket. I enjoyed this fish with miso soup and rice (and natto) for lunch. I used to think this is an old people's menu and I couldn't have any appetite, but these days I really enjoy this kind of very very Japanese dishes.

Last month a friend from Germany stayed with us and brought some Kuemmerling for us. It's a tiny 20ml size bottle, the design is classic and cool, and of course the bottle is made of glass (I don't like the miniature bottles that are made of plastic these days). As our friend suggested, I used the bottle as a vase after drinking it. He also told us about the numbers on the bottom of each bottle: when people drink Kuemmerling at a bar, whoever has the lowest number has to buy the next round. It means that everyone has to drink at least two of these 35% alcohol bottles.

In the previous entry about Kimchi, I mentioned that Tokyo was getting cold, but I was wrong. It's getting warm, no socks again. I was a little bit worried that it might be too warm to keep the Kimchi on our balcony and next day I saw that the plastic bag around the Kimchi bottle had lot of liquid in it, even though the lid was still closed. We shouldn't have used bottles from a ¥100 shop, they looked air-tight, but they weren't. I'm thinking to order a Korean stainless steel Kimchi container or a similar Japanese one. I don't know which is better, but I will probably choose the genuine Korean boxes. It feels right.

Last weekend, we made Kimuchi (spicy Korean fermented pickle) at our Korean friend's flat. She couldn't find the Japanese versions of jut-gal (kind of fish sauce) so there are no animal protein in this Kimuchi. It wonder if it tastes lighter and fresh than usual. Yesterday was the first day that I felt cold in Tokyo this season. I finally put my socks on at home. It means the good season for hot pot is around the corner. I can't wait for Kimuchi hot pot. If you don't know Kimuchi, check my flickr.

Turrón is very popular in Spain. It is almond based sweets, made of honey, sugar, egg white and almonds. There are soft and hard type, and I bought a hard type. It was actually super hard, impossible to break off a piece by hand, so I had to use my back teeth to chew on. Very noisy. Apparently it is a traditional Christmas treat in Spain, but I don't mind eating it in all seasons. This turrón was €7.65/300g at a department store in Barcelona.

Last night we had a dinner with friends from Spain who took a good care of us in Barcelona. I got a nice present which was in a cute and little, kind of Japanese-look paper bag. When I had it in my hand, I instantly recognized it. It was a chocolate bar!

In Spain, it seems like people know how to eat tomatoes, not only fighting with tomatoes! I already wrote about a tomato dish 'Gazpacho' the other day, and today I write about a delicious Catalan tomato dish called Pan con tomate. It is very easy and tasty: Toast the bread. Rub fresh garlic over the bread. Cut ripped tomato in half and rub tomato over the bread until the bread is covered with tomato. Sprinkle with bit of salt, drizzle with olive oil. Some restaurants serve bread and tomato separately, then we have to do it ourselves. We enjoyed this dish and I tried four times in four days! I wondered what do we do about squashed tomatoes after we used, actually I thought about eating them, and our friend told us they just go to bins. I guess there are too many tomatoes in the country!

PS: You may not have been able to leave comments, but it's fixed now!

We had lots of nice food in Barcelona, Gazpacho was one of the dishes we really enjoyed. A few days ago I got a recipe for Gazpacho from our Spanish friend, so we tried to make it. It was already two in the morning when we thought about having Gazpacho for brunch the next day, but his recipe (actually his mom's) recommends letting the soup mixture rest in the fridge for five hours. We couldn't give up tasty Gazpacho, so we chopped vegetables sleepy-eyed in the middle of night! Next day, we put them in a blender, then through a strainer, then we tried to season it just like the one we had at an organic restaurant in Barcelona... and it worked! It was very tasty!

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Our friends picked us up at Barcelona Airport and took us to a restaurant called La Paradeta. This was a very very nice place, I loved it! By the entrance of the restaurant, lots of fresh fish and shellfish were on display, similar to a market. We chose what and how much to eat and how we wanted them to prepare it (boil, grill, fry). After paying the bill, we received a receipt with a number and waited at the table. When our number was called, we picked up our seafood from the counter... it would have been impossible without our Barcelona friends. I want to thank them again, Muchisimas Gracias!

The famous pizza restaurant SAVOY in Nakameguro opened a new branch near our place. The restaurant space is much bigger and their service is much friendlier!

These are pineapples from Ishigaki Island in Okinawa. I bought them ten days ago and I probably wouldn't have received them if I hadn't called the shop two days ago. We were meant to eat these pineapples last weekend with our friends, so we bought six of them. I don't know what to do now... I guess I'll freeze them and eat them as ice candy or use them for frozen margaritas.

On Saturday, I made more plum wine with a friend who couldn't come to the Umeshu event the other day. I made two different kinds of Umeshu with 750ml size bottles (the big one on the photo is my friend's bottle). One contains 280g ume plums, 336ml barley shouchu and 140g cane sugar (a little bit sweeter than the other day). The other one was made with 280g ume plums, 336ml barley shouchu and 112g pure honey. There were lots of choices of honey at the local supermarket. I chose a pricey Japanese honey at ¥848/250g, but I wonder if I would be able to tell the difference.

This year's season for making Umeshu (ume plum liqueur) has arrived quickly. My friends and I gathered at my place to make Umeshu together, just like last year. As the organiser of this event, I ordered special ume plums this year. The Umeshu will be amazing (hopefully).

It seems like many Japanese can't really get into watching the World Cup anymore (already!) because of our bad match on Monday. But I'm going to enjoy this event with German beer. I wanted to buy more German beer to taste, but lots of them were sold out. I guess I'm not the only one doing this. Even though Japan is not doing well, I want my second and third homes England and Germany to win their matches!

It seems like floury potatoes are too popular in my neighbourhood. I hardly see waxy Mayqueen potatoes anywhere. I had to cycle to a greengrocer at the next station when I really needed some, and they had to go to the back of the store to get me some Mayqueen potatoes. They told me that they didn't display Mayqueen because nobody buys them. I wonder what kind of potatoes people use to make Japanese curry or Niku-jaga without Mayqueen! The other day, I found a new kind of potato called Cynthia (in Japanese) at our local supermarket. It's from France (grown in Japan) and it was quite good! It has a waxy texture and a slightly sweet flavour. I think Cynthia will be our new friend! We can finally make the German potato salad.

On Sunday afternoon in the super busy Harajuku, I finally had a chance to go to Hachiku. It looks like a really expensive Japanese restaurant from the outside, but it is an old Osaka-style Sushi store, for take-out service only. While they prepared my sushi, I was sitting on an old wooden stool, drinking the hot green tea I had been served. It was very quiet, I was the only customer and I couldn't believe that I was next to Meiji street. Apparently there are lots of grannies in the shop during weekdays and there is also a Yotsuya branch which was established in 1924.

Last month, our friends brought SOREEN Fruity Malt Loaf from London. The last time I had this was almost two years ago. I really like this heavy and sticky raisin malt loaf. It's always hard to cut with a knife, but our friends brought one that was already sliced. I found this very useful! I'm quite confident that this malt loaf would be popular in Japan, so all people involved in food import, please consider it!

Golden Week is over! It was a five day holiday this year, but we just stayed in Tokyo. We enjoyed lots of nice food and drink every day, including dinner at LA BETTOLA bis (in Japanese) in Ginza, which is the second branch of LA BETTOLA da Ochiai, aka 'Japan's most difficult Italian restaurant to reserve seats in'. On my birthday, which was also during the holiday, not only my age increased, but also my weight. Boo!

Our friends went to Fukuoka and they bought us monaka: sweet red bean filling sandwiched between two thin crisp wafers. The traditional Japanese sweet shop Suzukake (in Japanese), which looks very modern although it is more than 70 years old, made this monaka into a cute bell shape. I probably use this bamboo box as a lunch box, Picnic season is just around the corner.

On 14 Apr, I remembered that the macarons festival (in Japanese) at Pierre Hermé in Aoyama would finish on 15 Apr. I really wanted to go there because this was the chance to eat macarons from past collections. I thought it might be too hard to choose from 24 different macarons at the shop, so I carefully selected eight flavours at home and made a reservation. On the next day, when I saw our macarons already wrapped at the cashier, I realised that my choice was quite pale in colour compared to the other macarons on display. I felt like I made a mistake, but it was too late.

We usually buy Yotsuba unsalted butter (in Japanese) but I finally had a chance to buy Calpis unsalted butter (in Japanese). You might know Calpis as Calpico, but this butter doesn't taste like that. This fine (and expensive) butter is made with the Calpis process of separating milk fat from milk. Apparently, many good French restaurants in Japan use this butter. The white box on the photo is a butter dish I bought from Habitat ages ago. It's very easy to use and I like it.

We went to 'combine', a nice cafe/bar in Nakameguro. We were expecting to drink with a view of cherry blossoms outside, but 'Prunus Lannesiana cv. Sekiyama', the deep pink coloured cherry trees in front of 'combine', were not in full bloom yet. I had tequila as my second drink because our friend bought a round. I used to drink tequila only when I got really drunk, so this was probably the first time to drink straight tequila when I was sober. And I like it a lot. It was much milder than vodka.

My sister brought me 'Morioka Reimen' (Morioka cold noodles) from Iwate prefecture. This dish came originally from Pyongyang in North Korea, but the noodles are made of wheat flour and starch instead of buckwheat flour. So the noodle colour is white and they're a little bit softer than Korean noodles. I had Morioka Reimen for the first time and I really enjoyed it, especially the chewy texture. The Morioka reimen on my picture is only half the portion, so it's hard to see where the noodles and soup are...

C went snowboarding in Nozawa Onsen (hot springs resort) in Nagano, and he brought sweet steamed buns called Onsen Manju from Masutaya shop. After he bought this box, he heard that the Onsen Manju from Fukiya shop (in Japanese) is very well-known, so he brought three more Onsen Manju (they have three different kinds of buns) from Fukiya. Nice job! The both of them were good but I prefer the one from Fukiya, it was not too sweet but strong flavour. There are more shops selling Onsen Manju (in Japanese) in the area. They look almost same, but I wish if I could try them all!

The F1 season started. For me, it means spring has come finally. I'm impressed if you can tell who is my favorite driver from looking at the cookies!

Recently C enjoys cooking for us every weekend. He learnt nice pasta dishes, and they are very tasty. I guess we don't eat my improvised pasta anymore! Yesterday C cooked for us as usual, but he also made handmade pasta from scratch. I'm so pleased!

I think rhubarb is getting a little well known in Japan. I sometimes see it selling at an international supermarket. My first rhubarb experience was in London, I couldn't believe how sour it was. The other day I was shopping at Kaldi (in Japanese) and I found rhubarb compote made by Bonne Maman, unfortunately it was a little bit different from what I remembered (anyway it didn't go well with french toast). If fresh rhubarb is available from any local Japanese supermarket, I would like to make rhubarb crumble and eat it with custard.

I bought cakes from Pierre Hermé for the first time and they were incredibly good. I've never been this excited about cakes before! I felt stupid for thinking that Hermé is only famous for macarons.

I cooked Honey Torrijas from Josep Barahona Viñes' recipe book called pica pica pintxos! (in Japanese). It's a Spanish version of French toast. This recipe needs coconut milk and we soak the bread in the egg mixture for more than an hour. Japanese coconut milk seems quite thin, so I chose coconut cream. It gave a strong flavour, so it wasn't a bad choice. I had the last slice with sprinkled powdered sugar instead of honey and I preferred it. But it couldn't be called Honey Torrijas anymore...

I had cod and anglerfish nabe at my friends' house. The tiny salmon nabe set is part of the Winter Hokkaido Campaign, it came with Sapporo Black Label. It is already about six years ago, but I really loved Sapporo Black Label's tv ads with two cool Japanese actors, Etsuji Toyokawa and Tsutomu Yamazaki. But I prefer to drink Yebisu or Kirin lager beer...

There are some famous food shops in Yutenji where I live. The two curry restaurants, the bakery which opens at midnight, the tiny Chinese restaurant and the Yakiton (grilled giblets on skewers) restaurant called Chuuya, all shops are very unique. It sounds very strange, but Chuuya opens at 15:30 and closes around 19:00 because they ran out of food. I finally had a chance to go there the other day.

These are herbs and spices from a German brand called Fuchs. I fell in love with the great graphics when I saw them for the first time at C's parents house! I bought them bit by bit every time I traveled to Germany and C's mother sent me some, so I have quite a collection now.

Today is Kagami-biraki, I took the Kagami-mochi (sticky rice cake New Year decoration) down. It's meant to be broken by hands or with a wooden hammer (not with a knife, because cutting has a negative meaning in Japanese), but the Kagami-mochi was so hard, looked like a dry heel, and I decided to use the microwave. It seemed much easier than using hands or a wooden hammer. Oh, I did use a knife to scrape off some mold on the Kagami-mochi. I guess it's allowed.

Yesterday morning (just before noon), I had Nanakusa-gayu (Rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) and I took off New Year's pine decorations 'kadomatsu (simple version)' from the front door. I've been keeping this old tradition every year since we moved to Tokyo. Unfortunately a suzushiro (Japanese white radish) in a handy seven herbs pack from the super market near the station, has almost gone off, but I made quite nice Nanakusa-gayu with a bit of white miso, and I enjoyed eating it with tasty umeboshi (pickled plum) which was from my sister.

Happy New Year! I've been just staying at home during holidays, but I was very busy. I guess it was because I decided to invite many of our friends for a traditional Japanese new years dinner. It was crazy but fun! I wish you all an exciting 2006.

Yesterday, we were invited to a Christmas dinner at our friends' place. I wish I had taken a photo of the whole turkey.

I think the best Udon (wheat flour noodle) we can eat in Tokyo is Katokichi' frozen Udon from a supermarket. A few months ago, my friends brought us dried udon noodles by Mino noodles factory (in Japanese) from Kagawa prefecture. It seems like these hand kneaded noodles were dried out naturally and I've never seen these before. And the interesting thing was these noodles have to be cooked for 25 minutes!

On Thursday afternoon, we went for shopping at a snowboard shop and Apple store etc, then we watched snooker on cable TV with pints at an Irish pub before going to see Peter Jackson's three hours and seven minutes long King Kong. This is what C wanted to do for his birthday. For dinner we went to YanKuq (in Japanese), an Italian restaurant in Roppongi which our friend A recommended. When we arrived there, the waiter took us to their basement bar because there were no free tables. We had a free cocktail in a nice bar.

After I finished reading It Must've Been Something I Ate, I decided to make chocolat chaud (hot chocolate drink). The recipe in the book is based on a recipe the auther received from Pierre Hermé, so I was very excited. I used my favourite Lindt chocolate (70% cocoa, which was recommended by the book) and Dean & Deluca's cocoa powder from Holland, which I bought at a super sale.

Yumiko Kano, who publishes vegetarian recipe books, recommends wheat miso from Hatsuyuki-ya (in Japanese), and I ordered white and red wheat miso. On their website it says that 'the miso is made of Hadaka wheat from Ehime prefecture, soybeans from Saga prefecture, and natural salt. No artificial additives, no alcohol' and '21% less sodium than standard'. I was thinking to myself: 'It sounds very good for my health, but it might not be very tasty'. But the miso soup I cooked with the red miso was good. It was quite sweet though.

It's good for us to eat unpolished brown rice, so I went to a local rice shop to choose. The rice bran contains an agricultural chemical, so I told the shop owner I wanted agricultural chemical free rice. He told me that Koshihikari brand from Ishikawa prefecture has a good flavour, so I chose it. It costs ¥750/kg, almost double the price of Koshihikari brand from Ibaragi prefecture, which we used to eat. It sounded like I wouldn't be able to cook tasty sticky brown rice without a pressure pan, so I asked the owner to polish 70% of the bran away in the end. It seemed like too much polishing...

Last week I was in Omote-sando, so I went to Pierre Hermé and bought some Macarons. It was a tough choice. In the end, I chose Macaron Arabesque, Macaron Églantine & Marron, Macaron Olive, and Thé Earl Grey. To avoid unneccessary arguments with C, I bought two each of everything.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to Roppongi Hills to meet up our friends, who haven't seen for a while. We had coffee at the cafe, but I didn't realised that it was Rojak (in Japanese) by IDÉE. I felt the atmosphere was bit different from the one in Aoyama. One of our friend ordered hot herb tea, and it came with a wine glass. It looked cool, but it was too hot to drink from!

The other day I bought a new flavour of 'pino' ice cream (in Japanese), chestnut flavour. When I opened it, I found a distorted star shaped pino inside! I've never seen it before, so I was a bit happy to take a photo, but the probability of having a star shaped pino is 13.333333% (in Japanese). It doesn't sound very unusual! I realised that I quite like the flavour in light brown colour, such as chestnut, almonds, coffee and soybean powder etc. I think the best pino is the one with almond chocolate which is only in a multipack pino.

On Sunday afternoon it was beautiful weather, so we packed some food and drink and cycled to Komazawa Olympic Park. But when we arrived there, the sun was gone and it was very cold! We saw many colourful girls outside of the indoor playing field, it was the 5th All Japan Cheerdance Competition. We went to inside to have a look, but it cost ¥2,300 to get in and they didn't allow anyone to take photos inside. Boo!

Last night, The Naked Chef came to me. I always thought that Jamie Oliver was a little bit annoying so I never dared to try his recipe. But C prepared a nice dinner for us using one of his recipes.

When we wanted to have a good-bye dinner with our friends (this was also about two weeks ago!), we came across a nice-looking restaurant called INDIGO (in Japanese) near the hotel where our friends were staying. It looked French or Italian but it was California cuisine. Their food was great. I ate much too much!

We finally went to the Mexican restaurant La Casita (in Japanese) in Daikanyama, which was recommended by M. When I cooked Mexican food at home this spring, I used a recipe book (in Japanese) by the chef of this restaurant. It change my knowledge of Mexican food, tasty!

As I wrote yesterday, our friends came to Tokyo from London via Kyoto. They brought nice foods from London and Kyoto, thank you! I had asked for Ajari-mochi which is a great Kyoto specialty: a mochi based cake with sweet red bean filling. I especially love the outside. I haven't had this for more than five years.

I received a big box of HacNine (in Japanese) apples from home. HacNine are not very sweet apples, but compared to the ones from two years ago, this year's apples are sweet enough. It's sad that they use styrofoam as padding, not straw anymore.

Our friends from Europe left Tokyo. It was so nice and I felt sad that they had left, but my friend from the neighbourhood offered us many sanma again! It was good timing! It was nice to cook at home after a long break. Last year, I made sanma sashimi, but our friend suggested Sanma Rice, so I tried to make it. I had never eaten Sanme Rice before, but it was nice. The fattiness and bitterness of sanma go well with with ginger. We spent lots of time having nice food and drinks with our old mates, so I will make new entries about that later.

Yesterday our friend from the neighbourhood suggested lunch at pophot, a creperie in Gakugei-daigaku. I had a Galette with Egg, Cheese, Mushroom and Chorizo, it was sooo good! The outside was crispy with a slightly burnt cheese flavour and inside was very juicy. It was a perfect lunch for a beautiful sunny Sunday! When it gets colder I wil try a very sweet-looking Crepe.

P.S. It is open from 12-5:30pm and 7-10pm, closed on Wednesday.

I've already written an entry about Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts last year, but this time, it's in a super big box! Our friend bought this at the airport. There are two bags of 450g inside! It must have been very heavy to carry, thank you T! I think this is the most disgusting food I like. The very colourful parts are too sweet and the black liquorice parts seem like rubber to Japanese people. So it's probably not a good idea to choose liquorice as a souvenir for Japanese people. I love eating this, but I'm not so keen on the pink and blue tablets. So I was very surprised to see a Japanese model eating these tablets in a Nissan March ad! Well done, Ms Model!

We tried Norwegian Gudbrandsdalsost brown cheese for the first time. It doesn't have a strong cheese flavour or saltiness, instead it tastes quite sweet, a bit like caramel. It also reminded me of peanut butter a little bit.

We got some cheese from Denmark. It was wrapped with nice blue wrapping papers (so Scandinavian to me!), so cute! And they smell a lot, that's how it should be! I wish it was easier to buy fresh smelly cheese in Japan!

The other day, I went to Nakameguro with my friends to walk around and we went to a cafe, a sushi restaurant and the pachinko shop which appeared in a Hollywood movie scene, and we finished with Frozen Mango Margarita. At the sushi restaurant, our friend ordered boiled octopus tentacle sushi. Great! I wouldn't try it. After he ate, he was shocked about the price (it was only ¥63), not about the taste or texture!

If I go on a trip, eating the local food is one of the things really look forward to and we had lots of nice Hokkaido food. Hokkaido is very famous for crab, sea urchin, salmon eggs, abalone etc. Even though we both don't like them much, it's hard (or expensive) to find the same quality in Tokyo, so I ate those foods. I still didn't think that they were great... but I enjoyed eating salmon, sweet corn and Mongolian mutton BBQ, and drinking Sapporo Beer!

When we were staying in Sapporo, we decided to go to a coffee shop called 'koe' ('voice'), about which I read (in Japanese) on Sapporo blogger Kakako's Shin Nichijo-teki Henteko Catalogue. The coffee shop looked very unique from the outside, so we were hesitating a little bit, but we found out that the shop owner was a nice middle-aged woman and the shop had been open for 40 years.

I haven't updated LDK because we were on a late summer holiday in Hokkaido! After returning to Tokyo, we went to the Tokyo Oktoberfest in Hibiya. We arrived there around 5:30pm, and there were massive queues for the sausage stall and the German beer stall. It was approximately 30-50 minutes of waiting time. How can we get drunk if we have to queue like this? I gave up queueing and went to the Asahi beer stall, but Löwenbräu was sold out, too. We had Japanese beer at the German beer festival, how sad! But C seemed to enjoy it, so it was OK. In Munich, strong ladies dressed up like this and carrying lots of big beer glasses come to all the tables to sell beers. How wonderful!

On the weekend, C went to a local bakery to get breakfast. He told me (he lied to me) that he thought he had bought an Olive and Camembert sandwich, but it was a Blueberry and Cream cheese sandwich! The combination of blueberry, cream cheese, ham and pastrami was quite nice! This bakery is owned by Gastronomy Research Laboratory Co., Ltd.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a crazy thunderstorm just as I was about to leave our flat. I had an appointment, so I couldn't wait for long. So I gave up and went to vote in the lower house elections at the local elementary school. I was soaking wet. My umbrella didn't really help! I hurried to Harajuku and met up with C and C's friend. It seemed like the rain had gone, but as soon as we arrived at the main building of Meiji Shrine it started raining buckets, so we stayed there for quite a while. It was kind of nice and beautiful.

It's fig season. I love figs, no matter how it is cooked, but I think eating fresh figs in season is the best way of eating. C hates dried fig, because of the texture and the sweetness. So he refused to try this fresh fig and ham. But after his first bite, he realised how fresh and juicy it is! See, I told you it will be so delicious!

I've always been planning to go there one day: the Ramen Kazuki (in Japanese) noodle shop, Keanu Reaves' favourite ramen shop! When we were doing shopping for our mountain climbing trip, we decided to go to this shop for lunch. I ordered "spicy miso ramen", it was very spicy and hot, so it's hard to describe the flavour. But their straight type noodle was very good. I will probably try salt flavour next time. I forgot my digital camera, so I used my mobile phone to take a photo.

Last night I went to see our friend K at an izakaya in Nakameguro. K ordered 'Tonsaki' without knowing what it is, and we found out that it was a boiled pig's stomach! It was sliced and served cold, with lots of sliced onion, and ponzu soy sauce. I didn't want to try it, but once I had the first bite, I ate quite a lot! K and I talked about climing Mount Fuji for almost four hours. We decided that we will climb the mountain on Sunday if the weather is great. I can't believe how brave we are!

The last few weeks have been very very hot in Tokyo. Do I sweat a lot because I drink a lot? Or vice versa? This is like the chicken and egg question! Anyway I take lots of liquids, usually two cups of coffee and about two liters of water every day (plus some beer sometimes). I drink tap water from Brita with lots of ice cubes, or nice refreshing sparkling water.

On Sunday, we visited the Nakameguro Summer Festival, where 23 teams were taking part in a Yosakoi dance competition. I didn't know much about Yosakoi dance, apparently there are only three main rules: Each team has to have less than 150 dancers. While dancing, each team has to move forward and keep the Naruko Castagnettes in their hands. Each team can arrange their music, but they must use the Yosakoi Naruko Dancing Theme. At the end of August, there will be a festival called the Harajuku Omote-sando Genki Festival Super Yosakoi. That sounds crazy.

I visited a photographer friend's exhibition at Ginza. Before going there, I went to SAKE SHOP FUKUMITSU YA and chose a present for him. I also had Sake-kasu Icecream at the bar in the shop. I wanted to try the soft cream version which I saw in Tamagawa-Takashimaya branch, but the Ginza branch didn't have it. The sauce which came with the ice cream was seven years matured Kuro-Mirin (Black Mirin). The flavour was very complex and hard to describe, but very nice. I think the concept is kind of similar to using balsamic vinegar as a sauce for fruits or ice cream. I bought sake wrapped with a Japanese kitchen cloth (tenugui) as a present for my friends and they were very happy. Yeah!

We saw the Sumida River fireworks last year, but we were quite far away. So this year we tried to see the Jingu Gaien Firework Festival (in Japanese) properly. We arrived at Gaienmae station around 6:30pm, there were so many people. It was annoying that a man shouting with a megaphone shouted 'Please, do not stop here! Keep moving!'. He was the only one who was super noisy and it was not necessary at all. Do not put a loud speaker next to our ears! We walked to Aoyama, and there were lots of people at CI Plaza Square. We decided to sit with them, but after the fireworks started we realised that it wasn't a good spot. Lots of people tried to find a place with a better view, but we stayed and chatted and drank beer while watching the top half of the fireworks. Maybe next year I want to see it from inside the Jingu stadium.

On Sunday late afternoon, I told my friend that we will make frozen margarita with our new blender, and our friends turned up with fresh pineapples and kiwis . C has been making quite a lot of frozen margaritas these days, but he never made one with pineapples. So it wasn't a perfect frozen margarita unfortunately... I guess we should use less pineapples next time. After drinking at our place, we moved to a local Yakitori (grilled chicken on skewer) izakaya. I've been hearing that their Tomato-maki (tomato wrapped in pork) is so good, and it was actually tasty, but Shiitake mushroom-maki (left on photo) was even more delicious!

It's so hot today in Tokyo! C has gone to Fuji rock festival in Niigata in the rain, I wonder if it's hot there too. I didn't feel like cooking with gas, so I just ate sandwiches. I put some grilled red pepper from yesterday, and feta cheese (mozzarella is better for this sandwiches but I didn't have it!) and also some tapenade which I made myself yesterday. My friends told me about tapenade very recently, and I absolutely love it! I had the similar sandwiches yesterday. I had additional grilled aubergine, without feta cheese in it. It was so good!

My sister visited me this afternoon. She brought lots of souvenir from Thai, and also some fresh blueberries. She received blueberries this morning from her friend who is having a vacation in a countryside! I've never had fresh blueberries this much before, because they cost a lot in Japan. I thought about topping them on a custard tart, but I decided to try them just as they are. They were sooo fresh and sooo good! I felt like my eyes became healthier!

This morning I remembered that a famous noodle shop called Yakumo (in Japanese) in Nakameguro will close down by the end of July. I thought it might be too late, but luckily today was the last day! I ordered 'Tokusei Wantan Men (Special Wonton Noodles)': chinese noodles with shrimp and meat wontons in hot soup. I enjoyed the meat wontons more than the shrimp ones. A new shop will open on Yamate street some time in August.

C and I went to Yakuzen Curry&CAFÉ Ka・Ku・Ra (in Japanese) in Nakameguro. Yakuzen is an ancient Chinese style of medicinal cooking: mushrooms and vegetables are used to treat infections, tumors, stomach ache, dizziness etc. I chose a dish that was half Kakura curry (12 different vegetables and fruits, 27 spices and traditional Chinese medicinal herbs and spices) and half Black Curry (lots of black colour ingredients which helps control active oxygen) with vegetable topping on top of grain rice. (I think it was ¥1,000 for this selection). It was tasty, but we both thought that something was missing, probably because my friends recommended it so I expected too much. Or it's because we went swimming before eating, maybe the portions could have been a bit bigger? They had "sweet", "hot" and "extra hot" versions of each dish. We chose "hot" and wished we had chosen "extra hot". Maybe the food was to subtle for my junk food taste buds?

I had a great dinner at friends' place tonight. Thanks! Everything was so delicious! My friend prepared a herb-grilled White Croaker (Ishimochi in Japanese). I thought I had never tried White Croaker before, but it seems to be used for kamaboko (fish cake). So I probably tried this fish without knowing it. I bought dessert at Waraku Beniya (in Japanese) in Tamagawa-Takashimaya (in Japanese). It is a traditional Japanese sweet (wagashi) shop produced by Mr Tsujiguchi, the patissier of a very famous cake shop called Mont St. Clair (in Japanese) in Jiyugaoka. The shop assistant smiled and recommended gelée. She said that it was recommended by a celebrity on TV yesterday. So we chose Yuzu-Strawberry, White peach, and Passion Mango. The mango one was very good! The others were too boring.

My sister gave us some Mango pudding called Gohoubi Rich Mango Purin (Your Rich Mango Pudding Reward). It was seriously very rich! It contains lots of fresh cream, so it was more like Crème Bavaroise than pudding. It was very tasty but I prefer eating mango itself. I like eating dried mango soaked in yoghurt overnight. Eating fresh mango is nice too, but not ¥100 canned mango. They don't have any flavour.

Last Saturday my sister, mother and I went to a farm to pick some edamame (soybeans). My sister and her husband are one of the owners of the edamame farm. They have only 15m length of ridge, and they don't work to maintain the farm, but they can pick edamame anytime. Unfortunately this year's edamame seemed smaller than 2 years ago, but it was tasty. The farm was huge and there was a Japanese leek farm on the left. This nice scenery is located just 30 minutes from Tokyo by train.

On the next day that I stayed at my sister's place, I cycled to Zopf (in Japanese), which is known as one of the best bakeries in the Kanto area. It was only 8am! I usually wake up around 9:30am, but my sister said there might be a queue if we leave late, so I tried my best. But the bakery opens at 6:30 am, and their cafe on the top floor opens at 7am, so I wasn't that early. I was thinking of the kids song which goes like "the people who wake up the earliest in the morning are the bakers".

Yesterday was my sister's birthday. My sister, my mom and I went to Ginza for shopping, and we had lunch at Wako. We had lots of food and wine, and continued shopping after. It wasn't my birthday, but mom also bought a kimono belt ('obi') and a bracelet for me. Lucky! Mom and I went to my sister's place to stay overnight.

Last night, in the rain, my friend brought a durian to our place. She was given it by her friend and I had told her that I really want to try it, it worked!. I knew that durians have a strong stinky smell, but I had no idea how to eat them. I researched them on the internet and found scary information like '...died from eating too much durian' and '...lethal combination of durian and alcohol'. I called some other friends to come around and we decided to try the dangerous fruit. I wore my durian T-shirt for the occasion.

The outdoor swimming pool at the Meguro Citizen Center has opened on July 1st. Yesterday wasn't that hot, but C and I went there to go swimming. The water is much clearer than at our gym and the pool is 50m long. Very refreshing! After swimming, we had lunch at combine by Meguro River. We wanted to eat a bit more, but they had only light snacks. But we liked the place.

I'm hooked on Wo Wen's recipe books, especially Wo Wen no Oishii yo! Uchino Gohan, it's the greatest. (Thanks for the recommendation, M!) All the recipes are simple, easy, lots of vegetables, and very homey. Also, her combinations of ingredients are very creative, some of them sound a bit weird, but I was satisfied every time after I followed her recipe. Today, I cooked 'Chicken wing with Hijiki seaweed and Wakame seaweed Curry' from her book. I've never seen curry with seaweed, but it was very nice. I guess Hijiki seaweed doesn't look very attractive (the Wakame seaweed had softened and disappeared) but it tasted good and is very healthy. The curry had the full scent of the sea! Summer is almost here!

It's hot! It seems like everywhere in the temparature is over 30°ree; today! I cooked cold tomato and broad bean pasta for lunch. Our local supermarket didn't have Capellini (Angel hair), so I used Sala-Spa instead, which is 1.2mm spaghetti, recommended for salad. And unfortunately I caught a cold, maybe because we've been keeping the windows open at night. We are having a wedding party on a Yakatabune boat tomorrow, but I've got a sore throat, runny nose, fever and dizziness! Oh no!

I bought broad beans at a local supermarket. The offer was 'put as much as you want in a bag for ¥398'. So I carefully layered beans in a bag and ended up with quite a lot of beans (it was 1.3kg)! I could have put at least three more beans into the bag, but I thought that I shouldn't be too greedy. The usual way of cooking is to take the beans out of the pods and boil them, but I just cut off both edges of the pods and grilled them. Nice to eat with salt. It's so delicious when the beans are still hot, but not very impressive if they get cold. So don't grill too many. I still have lots of beans left, I might try to cook some Capellini (Angel hair) with tomato and broad beans!

The Organic Cafe will be closed down very very soon! So we went there yesterday afternoon, and I had a nice Organic Cafe Sandwiche. This is probably the last time I eat this (Oh no!). It's very sad that we lose the nice cafe where we could pop by on our bikes and we could enjoy huge portions of weekend lunch. Hopefully they open a new Organic Cafe somewhere in Nakameguro!

I still had some ume plums left from yesterday, so I made another Umeshu (Ume-liqueur) with vodka this time. Now I have five bottles of Umeshu (from the left to the right: two bottles from 2003, 2004, and two bottles of 2005). Just after I've finished my Umeshu business, our friends popped in with some nice food. The yomogi (Japanese mugwort) bagle from MACOU'S had a real yomogi flavour. It was quite nice.

On Monday afternoon, four of our drinking mates came to our flat to make Umeshu (Ume-liqueur). But we took a long time for lunch before making Umeshu. It was a very hot day, so we decided to eat cold somen noodles. We bought two different brands of somen noodles from a supermarket, to see how different they are. We also tried to tie a piece of string around the very end of a noodles portion, to keep them together during cooking. This is very expensive restaurant style (although cherry decoration is very cheap restaurant style!). I've never tied noodles before, but it was so fun to feel tied noodles in water. I just don't know what to do with an end part!

It's the season for buying Japanese plums to make Ume-shu (called Ume-liqueur or Plum Wine in English). The Ume-shu I made with vodka last year was very nice, I might try to make it again this year. Or Kokuto (brown sugar) Ume-shu, which I had in a bar the other day. It was nice, but I don't really know how to make it. I could use either brown sugar Shochu or actual brown sugar instead of crystal sugar. As I was searching the Web, I found Kukuto Umeshu (in Japanese) by Honbo Shuzou Co.,Ltd (in Japanese). It's additive-free and at 720ml ¥1,240 it is much cheaper than making it at home. I googled more and found an amazing Japanese lesson page!

Rika Yukimasa's recipe for Almond Tart from Dareka Kuruhi no Menu (in Japanese) is great. C loves it and he always requests that I make it again soon, just after we finish the last pieces. So I was quite proud of that tart, but C baked it yesterday. Oops, now he knows that it doesn't require any skill to bake it! His tart was good, the filling was chewy (do I usually overbake it?), maybe better than mine!

My favourite interior shop TRICO has moved to a new location, changed its name to mYwaY, and opened yesterday. The new shop is in CODAN Shinonome Canal Court, which is one of the new housing development projects in the Tokyo waterfront areas. It is hard to imagine that these areas (Toyosu/Shinonome/Tatsumi) used to be suburban industrial districts. By the way, TRICO's Harajuku branch STOCK BY TRICO is still in the same place.

This is a 100ml bottle of lime juice which I bought in a German supermarket. It's so cute that the product information is on a leaf-shaped piece of paper attached to the bottle. The pale tone of the orange and green colours is also very nice. I just realised that it is best before June 2002! Actually, I remember that it cost just 66 Pfennig (DM 0.66), which is only about ¥45! Very cheap. Prices seem higher since they changed to Euro, so it's probably more expensive now.

C came back from his another trip last night. He brought Dried Kiwifruit Slices, Kiwifruit & Feijoa Jam, and Kiwifruit & Chocolate Cookies. It is very obvious that he has been to New Zealand. Many Japanese (including me of course) love well known local food products, so his choice was spot on! C is an omiyage master!

Maison Kayser is one of the best bakeries in Paris, and I bought their bread at the Shinjuku branch in Isetan department store. Their bread is good, especially the simple one rather than the fancy pastries (to me). Everytime I see the word of 'Maison Kayser', I just can't stop thinking of 'Kayser Soze'. It was a great film!

I didn't know that a corn snack called Umai-bo (means 'a delicious stick') has a Natto flavour. It is very unusual flavour for snacks but I had to try it, as a Natto lover! I couldn't taste of Natto, because of the strong Japanese 'Karashi' mustard flavour (we put some mustard to eat natto). But it had a Natto smell! I also had a slimy texture in my mouth, just like eating real natto! What does it make slimy?!

Yesterday was the last day in Tokyo for our friend N. I took C and N to my recent favourite bar Ebisu 18-ban. Our friend A joined us and we moved to our local izakaya. We wanted to go home early but it was 3 am when we got home! As usual! Today I felt a little bit hangover... I think N is arriving at London Heathrow Airport soon.

I've heard that the Chinese Home Cooking Restaurant Saika in our neibourhood is very good. And finally we had a chance to go there. It is a very small restaurant which has only four tables, and it's always super busy, but we didn't need to wait this time! Lucky! Everything we had was very good. I seriously want to try all their menu one by one!

Yesterday, after we went to a home party at our friend's flat, birthday boy N said he wanted to eat Sushi, so we went to Nakameguro to eat Sushi. But he liked An-Kimo (monkfish liver) with Ponzu (citrus sauce) the most, rather than Sushi! For his birthday, I got him a necktie and pre-ordered Macaroons from Pierre Hermé.

My birthday was on the 6th of May and N's birthday was on 7th, so our friend A kindly organised a birthday party for us. It was such a bad weather, but twenty friends gathered at AALAWI (in Japanese) in Ebisu for us! Thanks! It sounds a little bit strange but since I turned thirty, it always takes me a while to figure out how old I am. I'm very happy about the birthday party, but the fact that we have lots of great friends makes me even more happy! I love you everyone! And thanks for all the presents too!

We went to El Dorado again. My favourite beer, Bohemia, was sold out, so I had Dos Equis instead. The owner recommended Tecate, which is served in a can with a slice of lemon and some salt. I like the design of the can, but it's too easy to drink, I prefer a stronger taste. Our table football skills are still terrible, but I was happy when the owner told me that I have some talent.

We had a picnic near Tamagawa-dai park. It was a little bit windy but very nice hot, summery weather, and we had the first Pimm's No.1 of this year. I cooked and brought Chinese sweet and sour cucumber pickles shaped like a snake, but they were too sweet! Oops! But the Zuke Katsuo (marinated bonito) Sushi turned out to be quite nice. And I have to try to make the Spinach Quiche dough a bit thinner next time.

On Sunday, I went to a flea market at Togo Shrine. It had a nice and peaceful atmosphere after walking in Harajuku, which was super crowded because of Golden Week. There were mainly Japanese antiques, such as old kimono and furniture, and also some film posters from the Showa era. I was surprised to see that almost all customers were non-Japanese people. It seemed like the sellers were used to have foreigners as customers, so they used a bit of English to tell the prices. After 2pm they started to clear their shops, so it's better to visit earlier.

We went to El Dorado, a Colombian ＆ South American Restaurant that we discovered the other day. I really enjoyed the Mexican beer called Bohemia, Brochetas de Pollo 'skewered chicken with onion' and their homemade chilli sauce. The salsa music and the great dance of the Colombian owner made me almost forgot that we were in Tokyo. I think we found a nice place to have a drink for the coming hot summer season.

In Japan, Baumkuchen is the most well-known German cake, we can find it in any supermarket. But it sounds like it's not that common in Germany. The small town of Salzwedel is famous for its Baumkuchen, but it's not easy to find in other places. C came back from his trip and brought an authentic Salzwedel Baumkuchen. It seemed a bit dry - probably because it was freshly cut from a large cake, then wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon. It was in a tin, but I guess it wasn't airtight. C said that the dryness is nice when we eat the cake with (unsweetened) whipped cream. The proper way to cut the cake is to carve layers from the top, so it might take a while to reach the chocolate part.

Yesterday I found a nice recipe book in the library. It is called ’Bio Farm Matuki’ no Yasai Recipe zukan (Bio Farm Matuki’s encyclopaedia of vegetable recipes). We both love meat and fish, so I don’t think we will become vegetarians. But these days I’ve been thinking to eat lots more vegetables, and less meat. This recipe book has simple and easy recipes, and also unique recipes such as Grilled Onion with Honey and Coriander Seeds or Roasted Hakusai (Chinese Cabbage) in Anchovy Sauce. They all look good!

Our good old friend will visit us soon, and he asked me if I want anything from London. I was searching for some nice new food products, and I found the interesting news. I thought that it was a news on April Fool's day, but it was a new from 8 March. It is a real story!

I found a new flavoured natto at a local supermarket. Actually the natto itself has a usual flavour, it comes with a pickled plum flavoured kurozu (black rice vinegar) sauce. On the package, it says mizkan in quite big print, so I thought that it was a collaboration between a natto company and mizkan. But the natto was produced by mizkan! I didn't know that they produce not only the condiment products, such as vinegar. The black vinegar sauce in a natto box has a pickled plum flavour which reminded me of Ume-shiso dressing (and quite artificial), maybe nice for making cold natto pasta in Summer. It also could be much less sweetness, and I have to admit that I prefer soysauce for natto! When I was going to eat natto with avocado and some sesami seeds, C called me from Germany. He told me that he was going to eat a pastry for a breakfast (was it cherry on it?). Mmmm, I want to go to a bakery in Germany!

On Friday night, I went to see the Autumn/Winter collection at bali barret in Omotesandou, and I bought a silver chain necklace. After that, my friend and I walked to the hair salon where my friend M works. We just wanted to say hello, but I suddenly thought about getting a haircut. While I was getting a haircut, my other two friends, who also went to bali barret, came to see us, so we decided to have a dinner together in Ebisu. When we were at Izakaya, more friends joined us and the four of us became the six of us! After the dinner, we moved to the Spanish style standing bar, and three more friends arrived! Around 1am, I was wondering about the closing time, and one of my friend said 'do you think we choose the bar which closes early?'! We left the bar after 3am and I believe that some of them continued drinking in Ebisu! I love all my drinking mates!

My friend from a neighbourhood asked me if I was up for a cup of coffee. Yes, I was! So I suggested a cafe Margo (in Japanese) near the station, but it was closed! It shuts from 3-6pm everyday. There are not many choices around the area, so we ended up going to a little cake shop. Inside the shop, there were lots of dreamy pastel colours and flowery stuffs, and I could imagine that some middle aged Japanese women misunderstand that is the English style! The shop also selles lots of other things, and it makes a little bit strange atmosphere, but their hand made cake was good. It had the nice mixture of the French + Japanese sweets.

Last week I gave up buying macaroons as gifts, so I chose KIHACHI (in Japanese) to buy some kind of biscuits. At the cake shop, I asked the assistant which cake will last long, and she said 'what we have here all should be consumed within 10 days'. Well, it wasn't really true though! I was bit annoyed by her, but I couldn't resist not buying 'green tea dacquoise' , which has a really good reputation. We tasted them, and C said it was very good. I think it was nice but the butter cream was bit too heavy for me. If someone gives me this, I will be happy to eat it, but I don't know if I buy it again for myself!

The other day, I wanted to get macaroons from Pierre Hermé in La Porte Aoyama (in Japanese) as gifts, but their macaroons have to be consumed within 4 days. It was shorter than I expected. I went to Dalloyau instead, because their macaroons last for 14 days, but they told me that the weather is getting warm these days, so I should keep them chilled. I gave up buying fragile macaroons as gifts, but I bought the colourful macaroon called frais basilic which is vailable only in April and May, pistachio, framboise and café for us. ¥150 (73p) per macaroon.

On Saturday, our friends couple brought a Takoyaki kit. I remember that my mother bought a Takoyaki griddle when I was a kid. We used it only a few times, and never again. Our griddle was meant to be put on a cooker directly, maybe our griddle was too small for our cooker, so our arms could get hot from the flame easily. The one our friends brought was the electric one, and it's very easy to make tasty Takoyaki, using Takoyaki Mix (in Japanese). I think this is a good snack for a drinking party. It might be a little bit of work for a chef but not too much. M+K, Please visit us with a Takoyaki kit again. I'm keeping the champagne for you!

On Saturday, lots of our friends, including their two little sons came to our flat. I always wanted to cook Mexican, not Tex-Mex. So I carefully followed the recipe book called Miryoku no Mexico Ryouri (Fascinating Mexican Food) and I first made Salsa Mexicana on Friday. The vegetables on the picture are for 1kg of Salsa, but after I peeled and seeded the tomatoes it didn't look enough for 1kg of Salsa. So I decided to use seven tomatoes in total (about 1.3kg), but it turned to only 846g of Salsa! After leaving Salsa overnight, the onion flavour is not too sharp anymore and it was nice refreshing salsa.

Until recently, eating blue cheese with honey was one of my personal favourites. C and I tasted Castagno (in Japanese) (chestnut) honey at a shop called Labeille (in Japanese). I wasn't sure about it because its flavour is very strong, but C loved it so we bought a small glass. The description at the shop compared it to the slightly bitter taste of chestnut skin (between the chestnut shell and the nut). I don't disagree, but I have to admit that I got a bit sick of it. Oh well, we thought it's really nice honey so we bought a big jar for our friend. I wonder if he likes it. Apparently this honey is also good for baking cakes.

Yesterday, C came back from India. His face has tanned! On the airplane, on the way back from Delhi, he got SAUNF SUPARI (it says AFTER MINT on the back side of the sachet) after the meal. SAUNF is fennel seeds, and SUPARI is betel nuts, the seed of the betel palm. Apparently fennel and betel nuts are good for digestion, not only fresh breath. I've never heard of betel nuts before, but betel nuts are chewed by over 200 million people world wide! Even kids chew nuts and it sounds like the habit has several damaging effects on oral and general health.

Häagen-dazs launched Maccha Kuromitsu Crispy Sand (in Japanese) on 7 March. This 'brown sugar syrup chocolate' coated 'green tea flavoured ice cream' between crispy wafers was out of stock everywhere until last week. Maybe this was their market strategy? This is my second one this week, and I might buy another one today! C said that the colour of chocolate is not very appetizing. Does it? It doesn't really matter to me, because it's tasty!

My friends and I went for shopping in Harajuku and Aoyama area. The day started with nice springy warm weather (with lots of pollen!), but it suddenly became very windy and rainy in the afternoon. Cold. It reminded me of London's weather! My lunch was nice Pumpkin Croquet Sandwiches (¥750/£3.72) at Caffè@Idée (in Japanese). I also had Caffe Mocha.

I went to a restaurant with my old friends. The restaurant is called 'Suzume no Oyado', set in a love hotel area in Dogenzaka, Shibuya. It used to be a geisha house, so it has a unique atmosphere. They serve Okonomi-yaki, Monja-yaki and some other grilled dishes. Their menu was a little bit unusual, like Camembert Cheese Monja! We had Curry Monja, Natto Okonomiyaki, Beef Muscle Okonomiyaki, Pork Kimuchi Okonomiyaki etc. Every dish was great!

Our good old friends from London came to Tokyo, so we went for drinks last night. They told us that they attend a wedding ceremony in the next morning, but we kept drinking until quite late. I wonder if they are OK! We went to Murakami Seisakusho ☞ Sankichi Bar ☞ Kushiwakamaru ☞ The Lobby at Claska. Some things I want again about last nights were: Sankichi Bar when Mr. I is working there, Tanuki (Stuffed Shiitake Mushrooms on skewers) at Kushiwakamaru, and a huge square ice cube in my drink at The Lobby.

Yesterday was White Day. C brought Marusei Cheese & Biscuits by Rokkatei, I really wanted to try these after I read the entry on Shin Nichijo Henteko-dou Catalogue (in Japanese). They came in a special wrapping for White Day, but I think the original one is much more beautiful! I keep them cool in a fridge, and I'm looking forward to eat them later. He also gave me Manjari from Esprit de Paris (in Japanese). It was moist and rich chocolate cake with some walnuts. Very good! Valrhona Manjari bitter chocolate (64% cocoa - A blend of Criollos and Trinitarios cocoa beans from Madagascar) is used for this cake.

I found a beef fillet in our fridge, so we had beef steak and red wine for lunch. I fried a fillet with lots of sliced garlic, and we built steak sandwiches. It reminded me of enjoying weekend pub lunch in London. After we finished the big meal, I thought that I should have used the Le Creuset square grill (24cm). When I saw it on sale for ¥5,000 (I think the original price was more than ¥10,000), I was very happy to get it. But I don't use it very often. And I didn't know that Le Creuset makes a new product called Panini Press (the US price is always much lower than the Japanese price). When I make Panini with my square grill, I just use a spatula to press the bread very hard from the top!

I hardly ever go to Kanda, but I was there yesterday, so I decided to go to the famous soba (buckwheat noodle) shop called Kanda Matsuya (in Japanese). Just after I ordered Goma-Soba which comes with a goma (sesame) flavoured dipping sauce, Curry-nanban (noodles in curry soup) was served to the old man next to me. His hot noodles looked very good! Actually I should have ordered normal soba, and tried their traditional Tokyo style strong dipping sauce (salty and darker in color than in Western Japan). There were lots of old men over 60 years old, sharing the bottles of beer and eating nibbles (not eating noodles!). I don't know if they were classmates or they became friends because of this shop, but they seemed good mates. When someone entered the shop, they said 'Hello! Take a seat here!' and started conversations like 'do you know Hama-chan's home address?'. This shop was established in 1884. In 2001, the old two storey wooden building was selected as a historical building in Tokyo (in Japanese). By the way, there are two doors, the entrance is on the right side and the exit is on the left!

C went snowboarding in Niigata last weekend, and he brought Koshihikari manju for me. Koshihikari is the name of rice. They are baked buns, using wheat flour and Koshihikari brand rice flour, with bean paste filling. The wrapping paper is meant to look like a straw rice bag, it looks very cute and tastes alright. He also brought a bottle of Sake. Although he asked black cat (very good courier company called Yamato) to carry all his snowboarding equipment, I was wondering why he brought such a heavy gift for me. And I realised that I said 'Niigata is famous for rice, so they have lots of good sake brands too'. He remembered that! Great! He perfectly understands the omiyage culture!

My sister, who lives in Chiba visited me last weekend. She brought bread from Zopf (in Japanese) in Chiba. Zopf is one of the best bakeries in the Kanto area, and I always wanted to try. Thanks!

I borrowed the book Chocolate + Sweets x Wrappings (in Japanese) by Ricca Fukuda from the library. My friend showed me this book last year, and I remembered that there was a nice recipe for chocolate pate. I thought it would be a good Valentine chocolate. But the picture page of the recipe was ripped! I couldn't believe it!! Anyway, I still could read the recipe: just add marshmallows, oreos (without cream), salted roasted almonds and dried cranberries to melted chocolate, and let the mixture set in a mould. It was very easy to cook and it looks very artistic!

Yesterday, we went to a sushi restaurant with our friend M. She ordered Toro-taku which I'd never heard of. It was Toro (fatty tuna) and Takuan (pickled daikon radish), and I found that it was nice to have two different textures in my mouth. We got a fresh wasabi root for free, and it came with a sharkskin grater by Chojiro which I've always been wondering if I should buy or not. They use the huge one, but I think the smaller one looks better.

Our good friends moved to our neighbourhood on the weekend. I'm very happy about that! Just an hour before we were going to dinner with our new neighbours, I realized that we haven't eaten anything and we were starving. I asked C to cook Red Wine Risotto. It was very good (not because of I was super hungry). Cooking risotto with Japanese rice is quite difficult, because rice becomes sticky very easily. But this risotto was perfect al dente! I heard that Carnaroli rice is good for risotto. I need to get some for the next time. But I prefer to buy Carnaroli from Carluccio's, especially if they are the same price!

We were invited to a dinner party on the weekend, and we had lots of great food. I've never tried deep fried olives before, and they were very tasty. I also tasted an anise flavoured liqueur called Goldwasser. It has 22k gold flakes floating in it. Gorgeous! But it was too sweet to drink straight for me...

I baked German red wine cake (Rotweinkuchen). It tastes a bit like Glühwein (hot wine), so I guess this is a winter cake. I doubled the amount of the recipe (in Japanese) to fill up my huge mould from Nordic Ware. So the cake looks better than last year, especially from the side. It's higher! But I'm not sure about the taste. I think my oven is not big enough to bake this amount of cake. I'm going to take this huge cake to my friends without tasting. How brave!

It is passion fruit this time! Kitkat has collaborated with the famous posh pastry shop LE PATISSIER TAKAGI (in Japanese)! I can see that the Valentine's Day battle is now in full swing at every store in Japan. This Kitkat has quite a strong sweet and sour citrus flavour. Nice but not so special. I thought the package design is super disgusting! LE PATISSIER TAKAGI is well-supported by wealthy ladies in the Setagaya area. I can't belive that the patissier also made a HELLO KITTY box, which cost ¥53,600 (£276)! How silly! KITTY turned 30 last year, is she a grown up posh cat now?!

When I was a kid, I used to cut my tongue on candy. I still feel a bit uncomfortable eating candies sometimes, but I needed some cough drops for my sore throat. I found German mints called OLBAS in our first aid box. I remember that C bought it in Germany. I put one tablet in my mouth and a childhood memory came back to me. It reminded me of an old mint candy called calumin (I didn't know that it means calcium + mint) by Meiji confectionery company. I used to eat it a lot, always had it with me on school excursions, but I haven't had it for more than 20 years now. Anyway I'm so surprised that it's still available in shops. I've never seen it though...

C came back from a snowboard trip in Hokkaido. He brought my favourite Marusei Butter Sand (Japanese) by Rokkatei. They are biscuits with a filling of cream (made of butter and white chocolate) and rum raisins. It's similar to Raisin-wich from Ogawaken (Japanese), but I prefer Butter Sand, it has a stronger, richer flavour. The package design is also very beautiful. It was designed in 1906 for Marusei Butter. C also brought our usual strawberry and potato crisps with chocolate coating from ROYCE' (Japanese). Too many sweets! Yeahy!

We enjoy hot wine in Winter as I wrote before. Last month, C' mother kindly sent us some GLÜHfix (spice mix in a tea bag). We warm up red wine with a spice bag (never boil!) in a pot and add some honey. Yummy. We can also buy granulated glüh wine mix but it doesn't seem tasty somehow.

When I went to Precce in Nakameguro, I bought Hiyama Natto (fermented soy beans) from Hiyama in Akita prefecture. This natto is hand-packed in straw in the traditional way. The bean has a chewy texture and very nice flavour. It was the first time for me to eat natto in straw, but it tasted like the natto I used to eat when I was a kid. I made avocado natto and ate it all. C really hates Natto. He hates about the smell but also about the styrofoam natto container. I've never thought about it that way.

C came back from a business trip via Nagoya city. Nagoya is famous for uirou (steamed cake made of rice powder) and I asked him to bring green-tea flavour uirou for me. I haven't eaten it for several years. When I sliced it my memory of Uirou flashed back. It always annoyed me to slice because it's wobbly and sticky. Actually I used to hate it. But it was nice. The sweet factory Aoyagi Uirou use a frog and willow for their logo, because willow sounds almost like uirou...

I bought seven herbs from a supermarket (same as last year) and cooked Nanakusa-gayu (rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) to be in good health for the new year. But we've caught a cold already. Anyway, in Japan, we eat porridge when we are ill.

The Tenshin Amaguri (sweet roasted chestnut from Tenshin) is a Yokohama China Town classic. There are so many shops and stalls selling sweet roasted chestnuts. It seems like the prices are pretty much the same everywhere. I usually avoid pushy street vendors, but we saw some chestnuts for sale in front of the modern Jo Gen Ro restaurant. C also loves sweet roasted chestnuts, so we decided to check them out.

On Christmas eve, we went to China Town in Yokohama. Well, I know China Town has nothing to do with Christmas. We had dim sum at Saikoh Shinkan (The site is in Japanese, but the restaurant has a menu in English). There were lots of dishes I wanted to try but the waitress pushed Famous Fried Shrimp Rolls really hard as her recommendation. I thought she might just want to get rid of the dish, but I ordered it, because I couldn't say no! But it was the best dish among our lunch plates of the day. Thank you the tip!

On Wednesday we went to a Mexican restaurant in Ebisu. It was great. We will go there again and again, and I might try to cook their dishes at home.

The other day, when I was waiting for the modem, I baked German Christmas cookies. Last year I baked 1, 2, 3 times. But this year I did everything at once. I made dough on the first day and shaped and baked on the second day (and it was less than last year). I expected 2-colour cookies to be very difficult but they look quite good. I was planning to build a Christmas tree with cookies, but I postponed that to next Christmas! I couldn't be bothered. I bought 100 little packets of silica gel (desiccant) from Cuoca (Japanese only) but it seems like I didn't make them air-tight enough and they turned from blue to purple. I can't use them anymore.

Our friends brought Münchner Weißwürste (Weisswurst), Munich's famous products. To eat white sausage with sweet mustard is very Munich. We can often see the blue and white diamond pattern on sausage packaging. This is the pattern of the Bavarian flag. I guess I wouldn't wear this apron in Germany, but I wouldn't mind cooking sausages with this in Japan. On the picture, the reddish brown one next to the white sausage is dried sausage. Tasty! The pig on the plastic shopping bag from a butcher is so cute. Isn't it cruel?!

This Nutella jar can be used as a drinking glass. Our friend brought it from London about five months ago. It comes with a plastic lid, so I like to use it as a container, not as a drinking glass. It's a good size to keep red ginger, and the jar shape is actually very nice. I wanted more Nutella jars, so I asked my friend who came from London last month. Sometimes the jars have some patterns or cartoon characters on them, but I didn't know that Doraemon, a Japanese anime character, was on Italian jars! These days Nutella can be found in local supermarkets in Japan because it is imported and sold by the big Japanese company Kewpie, but I haven't seen this nice glass version yet. I hope they start to import this type, too.

It's December. The weather is getting colder every day, but it's still quite warm here in Tokyo. To create a Christmas atmosphere, I hung a Christmas tree from the ceiling and bought C's favourite HARIBO gummi candies. It's a Christmas version! Gummi Bears are very easy to purchase in Tokyo. I guess that means they are quite popular in Japan, although I don't really like them. But I think all Germans enjoy gummi candies very much. When I went to a supermarket in Germany, I was surprised to see many shelves stocked with different kind of gummi candies. Outrageous!

On Sunday night, our drinking mates gathered at a dining bar in Hiroo to celebrate our friend's birthday, one day late. I like this bar, but there is one thing I'm not sure about. They have a dish called Taraimo salad. Yes, it sounds like the Greek dish Taramosalata (a creamy, pink cod roe paste), but it's not the same! It's boiled potato (called IMO in Japanese) dressed with cod roe (TARA) - even the basic ingredients are the same! It's very confusing, but at least they don't use exactly the same name. I shouldn't be mad.

I found Kit Kat flavoured with Uji-matcha (green tea from Uji). It is only available this season. The green tea flavour is quite nice, considering that it's a cheap confectionary. The other day we enjoyed green tea flavoured Häagen-Dazs ice cream. And C liked green tea flavoured Hi-SOFT but we can't find them anymore.

Our friends from London left Tokyo for Kyoto today. Kyoto is a great place, I want to go there too. Last night, we went to a sushi restaurant in Nakameguro again, enjoyed our last dinner in Tokyo. C's cousin from Germany is here for his business, and he joined us. salmon is my favourite sushi these days.

On Sunday, we had dinner at Matsugen in Ebisu. It was a modern soba restaurant. I guess our friend T and Y chose this very stylish place! We had 'Soba no Yakimiso', a grilled mixture of miso paste, buckwheat grain and vegetables. We had it with cucumber. Very nice.

Long time no update! We had a busy weekend. Our friends from London are visiting us with their baby! On Friday night, we went to a tofu restaurant called Kyo-tofu Fujino in Maru buil. Thanks K to organize this dinner! We had lots of tiny tofu dishes. The soy milk soft ice cream was a dessert, it was quite nice. Actually now I remember that I had the same soft cream and okara (tofu lees) cookies at TO-FU CAFE FUJINO in Roppongi Hills. I didn't realise that they are owned by the same company. We can buy tofu products from their tofu shop (Japanese).

I ordered two different kinds of udon noodles from a website: 'Kyu-kyoku no Sanuki Udon' (Ultimate Sanuki Udon Noodles) and 'Sanuki no Yume 2000' (Dream of Sanuki 2000). They are made and sold by a noodle factory called Hinode Seimenjo (in Japanese), in Kagawa prefecture. Sanuki Udon factories usually use Australian wheat, but 'Sanuki no Yume 2000' is made from 100% locally produced wheat flour. We had both at the same time to compare the taste, but we couldn't tell the difference. They were both too delicious! The Hinode noodle factory opens their little udon shop every lunch time, only for an hour. I wish I lived in Kagawa!

A few days ago, I cooked too many dried chick peas. Adding these peas to salad or soup gets a bit boring, so I made hummus for the first time. Hummus is from the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, but it's easy to buy it at any supermarkets in London. I used to eat it very often, spread on toasts, or used as a dip with crackers or freshly cut vegetables. But I won't buy it from a supermarket since tasting my own home-made hummus! It was very tasty and easy to make.

I didn't have my digital camera handy, so I used a mobile phone camera. It doesn't look good, does it? But it was so tasty!

A friend from London is staying with us. We asked him to bring Bertie Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts. I was scared to eat this sweets for a long long time, and I finally tried them a while ago. They were not that bad. As I wrote before, almost all Japanese people can't handle this flavour. I hated it too. It was about 10 years ago when I first realised that licorice is very popular in Europe. I thought that Eupopean people have a crazy taste bud. And now, I'm starting to understand their sense of taste, which some Japanese might call 'bad taste'! I tried to build Harry, Bassett's character, but gave up after making the legs. I guess I need some glue or sticks. Oops, I put the pink & black candy on the wrong side.

The other day, C went to Seijo Ishii supermarket (in Japanese), and he bought Pim's by French company called LU (made in Belgium). Yes, this is Jaffa Cakes! We can finally buy Jaffa Cakes in Japan! I think this is the best Jaffa cakes I ever had. The good things about this cakes is that the embossed logos are on the chocolate, which is less sweet and more than others, so cakes won't stuck on top of each other. I want to thank Ryoka Japan for importing foods from all over the world.

Yesterday, we went to Nakameguro with a friend. We first went to Yodakinbo, where they serve Miyazaki cuisine. We had charcoal grilled Jidori (locally grown chicken) with garlic soy sauce and bit of Yuzu Kosho (a chili pepper paste mixed with Yuzu citrus fruits). Miyazaki food looks very tasty, I want to try Hiyajiru next time.

Today, I was shopping at Tokyu Store (supermarket) and found Hakata no Hito by Nikakudo. This is a mini baumkuchen filled with sweet red beans, a local and very minor specialty of Fukuoka Prefecture. I believe that nobody who lives outside of Fukuoka knows about it. I used to live in Fukuoka City for 13 years, so I still remember the TV advertising song, even though I haven't heard it for more than 15 years. The packaging design is still the same.

Yesterday, I went to Finland Cafe which opened for only four weeks at SPACE FORCE in Nakameguro. I really wanted to try the lunch (80 plates a day) by the Finnish embassy chef. Tomorrow is the last day for Finnish lunch. I arrived there 15 minutes after the opening time, but the cafe was already almost full. People didn't care about the rain. The waitresses were wearing nice shirts.

On Wednesday, 22 September, we arrived at Kochi station at 19:40. After we checked in to our hotel, we went straight to an Izakaya that I found in my guide book. Kouchi is very famous for Bonito fish, so we had lots of tasty bonito dishes! The Katsuo no Tataki slices were huge and had lots of sliced garlic on top. I couldn't believe it! The Shuto mayonnaise sauce, which came with Deep Fried Bonito, was very interesting. Yum yum yum... Sake please!

Back to the Shikoku trip report: On 22 Sep, Sep, we took a JR train from Takamatsu to Kouchi. But we decided to get off at Kotohira station to visit the famous Kotohira-gu shrine (aka Konpira-san). The song 'Konpira fune fune...' is very well known (someone made an English version! great!). It was raining a bit, I was out of breath and sweating, but we managed to climb up 785 stone steps to the main shrine, and 583 more steps to the back side shrine. It was so tough, 1,368 steps in total! But it was nice to see the great view from the top and to receive a goshuin. On the way back, there were some school boys on a training run, they cheerfully said 'hello' to us, but I bet it's sooo hard to run up (it was also a race!) those stairs, and say hello to everyone they meet.

I found roasted sweet potato ice cream at a local supermarket. The wafer is shaped like a sweet potato and the ice cream inside tastes (just a little bit) like a roasted sweet potato. I prefer real sweet potatoes, but this ice cream is a funny product. Soon, we will see cars selling stone roasted sweet potatoes in the streets. It's an autumn and winter speciality in Japan. (They are different kind of sweet potatoes, a 100 times sweeter than the ones we can buy in Europe)

Our friends from London visited our flat with their young son. We never had a baby at our place before, and I was wondering if our furniture is safe enough (the corners are too sharp?), but no problems at all! The second family (mom, dad and son) arrived later. Lots of laughs. They are both about a year old, so they don't know anything bad yet, very sweet. After a while, when the babies seemed a little bit tired from playing, the third family (mom, dad, daughter and son) arrived. They liked each other, and went kind of crazy. An amazing kids power!

I want a big breakfast on the next day of drinking late. We haven't had an English breakfast for quite a while, and I prepared it on Sunday morning. There are not many Japanese who love this breakfast (especially beans), in the same way as not many non-Japanese people enjoy Natto, Raw egg and Grilled fish in the morning. Well, I like either way! I found out that Kewpie/Aohata produces canned Pork & Beans in Japan. This Pork & Beans tastes exactly same as any baked beans in London, except that the beans are a bit too soft. I like baked beans but I wonder how Kewpie/Aohata can sell this product in Japan. I hope it won't be discontinued item...

We invited our friend for dinner (cooked by chef C) at our flat, in return for the dinner at his flat the other day. We thougth about cancelling this dinner because of the big Typhoon No.22, one of the most powerful to visit Japan in years, was attacking Tokyo. But when our friend visited us, it wasn't even raining much. I guess C went for shopping when the typhoon was very close to us.

According to a Kirin survey for people in their twenties, their favourite drinks are beer (28%), cocktails (25%), chu-hi: shochu highball (17%) etc. Beer is losing popularity: in 1998, 43.5% preferred beer. And, surprisingly, wine dropped from 21.5% to 5.9% in the same period! I guess I can't go drinking with people in their twenties...

Sanma (Pacific saury fish) are at their best just now. On Sunday, there was a 'Meguro's Sanma Festival' on the East side (Shinagawa-ku) of Meguro station. I wanted to see lots of people queue for 6500 of free chargrilled sanma (donated by Miyako city in Iwate prefecture), but I couldn't go there because of my work. There is an another Sanma festival on the East side (Meguro-ku) of Meguro station next week (pdf). They grill 5000 of sanma from Kesen-numa city in Miyagi prefecture. 'Meguro's Sanma' is very famouse phrase although there is no sea in the Meguro area. That's because of an classic Rakugo (a Japanese comic story telling).

Yesterday, I had peanut sprouts for the first time at my friend's house. They were very big (almost same size as vegetable sticks) and more fresh than normal bean sprouts. It was nice to eat with miso dip.

I bought Carincho by Morinaga. This chocolate covered biscuit had been on the market from 1976 but it disappeared in 80's. And Morinaga reproduced this again after 20 years time. It's not tasty at all, but I love the package. It is also very nostalgic to me. The guy called Muki muki man (strong muscled man) was on the advertising.

My friend invited me (or maybe I asked him to invite me) to watch the Olympic games with an unbelievably huge screen. It was nice. And I also had a chance to meet the guy who I know only from his blog. I brought a Greek drink Ouzo but I guess some people hates this because of the strong anise flavour, not good for liquorice haters either. It was nice to watch Ouzo turns milky white colour after pouring it over ice cubes (or mix with water). To enjoy Ouzo, we need a little something to eat with it.

I went to a sushi restaurant in Nakameguro to meet my friends and their son, and their friends from Germany. I haven't seen their son for five months, and he has grown up a lot! I was happy to see their son was rolling towels nicely.

It's hot! I need spicy food and beer! I went to a Thai restaurant called Mai Thai in Ebisu with my friend. Unfortunately there were lots of young people in the small restaurant. They were super noisy and we couldn't even have a conversation. Their Tom Yum Goong was mild to me, I want a more punchy flavour. I want to go there again when there are not so many young guys. It was only 11pm when we left the restaurant. We moved to the next place on a long summer night.

Yesterday, I came across some plastic Bigot's bread boxes in front of a little supermarket near the Nikuman shop on Meguro street. I was happy to see them because I thought that there are only 2 shops selling their bread in Tokyo. In the supermarket, there was a little bread section, they had 7-8 kinds of Bigot's bread. But they were wrapped individually in plastic bags, and didn't look very nice to me. I bought only Canelé. It was so delicious!

Today, I took the opportunity to refresh myself. I swam for an hour in a swimming pool, and I went to the famous Nikuman (meat bun) shop Meguro Gojuuban on Meguro street. There were only 4 choices of steamed buns (although there were many kinds of chilled buns for take away) and I chose Natsu-man (Summer bun). I sat on a little bench in front of the shop, and enjoyed the bun. Without the shop people telling me, I wouldn't have known that it was a mixture of Kimuchi (Korean pickles) and Yakiniku (Korean BBQ) dipping sauce flavour. Next time, I want to eat Yasaiman (vegetable) or Gomoku-nikuman (bit of veg, meat etc). Yakisoba-nikuman (stir fried noodle) sounds good too.

I didn't know that the package of natto (fermented soy beans) from Takano Foods has changed to the summer version; National High School Baseball Championship Series. It is very unusual to use blue for a natto package (usually in warm colour). I remember, in winter time, a daruma was on a package to pray for passing an exam. Maybe their target customers are mothers who have school kids.

I already wrote about Jaffa Cakes before, but this time, I tasted five different maker's Jaffa Cakes. However I don't particularly love this sweet, this is the one of the most popular sweets (from supermarkets) in London, and I want to find the best Jaffa Cakes. Thank you dear my friends for providing me the research materials!

My friend told me that she tried a brezel the other day and that she didn't know how tasty they are! Yesterday she gave me some bread (brezels and cheese baguettes and croissants) from Peltier in Akasaka and asked me what I think of them. It was very tasty! Thank you! The bakery is French but they make their brezels with Laugen (Caustic soda solutions), German style. She told me that the large size was sold out - those must be super good.

I had things to do in Shinjuku today, so I checked the Okinawa event at Isetan Shinjuku department store. I was surprised to see lots of energetic elderly people at a department store in the morning. Anyway, I had Okinawa soba at the little shop. It was OK but I think I have to be in Okinawa to eat this noodle somehow. I have to go back there. By the way, these Okinawan colour chopsticks were too slippery to eat noodle!

The other day, I bought an instant Okinawa Soba noodles. I didn't have anything (like roasted pork or fish cakes) I can put in noodle, but I couldn't resist myself. I cooked, sweat loads, and I've just finished eating it. But... it was disappointing. I guess I can't expect an instant noodle to have a genuine flavour, which I experienced in Okinawa. I hope I can eat nice Okinawa Soba at Isetan Shinjuku department store. There will be many little stalls from Okinawa.

When I went to London a few months ago, my friend K let me stay at her place (thanks!). And I tried the English sea salt from Maldon in Essex for the first time. It is salty of course, but no bitterness, quite mild. The small white crystalline flakes (hollow pyramids shapes if you are lucky) that crush very easily between fingers. I don't need a salt mill. It works best on the simple food, grilled meat/fish, baked potato and also salad. Apparently, many well known British chefs, like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson (She married Charles Saatchi in 2003!) chose this Maldon salt, and it seems popular everywhere in the world, not only in Britain. You can buy this salt at DHC (skincare, makeup and healthcare products mail order company in Japan).

When I turned on the TV yesterday, I saw the natural food store where I always buy some carrots for my salad. At the shop, the TV presenter was very happy to drink Marusan's Mineral Doujan 180ml ¥80. It is a soy protein drink, contains some malt extract too.

I bought large orange tomatoes at our local supermarket. I've seen small yellow tomato but never in orange. They looked like Kaki 'Japanese persimmon' from the back (by the way, I didn't know that Kaki is called Kaki in Germany too). The tomato was not jucy enough, maybe because it didn't have much seeds? It might be good for cooking but I didn't like it personally. My favorite tomato is mini (but large-ish) tomato. They are good for eating and also making tomato sauce.

A loud thunder woke me up this morning. It's been very hot - more than 30°C these days, so I'm glad that it rains today. When it's too hot, we eat cold noodles too often. Not much bread. Well, I never lost my appetite for German bread though. My favourite breads are boiled in Laugen (Caustic soda solutions) before baking. I think the twisted shape brezel (called Laugenbrezel) is very famous. It is so different from the American pretzel, a brezel is quite big and very moist inside and a crunchy outside. Eating brezel with unsalted butter makes a great combination for the rock salt outside. Yum! The round shape, the long one, some cheese on top, there are many kinds of Laugen bread. If you go to Germany, please try some freshly baked Laugen bread!

I went to a press conference in Harajuku for SOUND X VISION 2004. The work by Cornelius x Groovisions is really nice. When the GAS SHOP was still in Nakameguro, I bought groovisons' DVD GRV1778 which is very cool, but I like the new one even more, because of the story.

Recently, C has cooked dinner every Sunday night. It seems like he's really enjoying. Yesterday's dinner was Gnocchi with Smoked Salmon Cream Sauce. All of the dishes he makes are more stylish and tasty than what I do. I was going to take a photo of the gnocchi, but C told me that we should eat before it gets cold. Well, you are right. But I wanted to take some photos! When C left the table for a few second, I had a chance. And! In my hurry I dropped the camera on my plate. But the gnocchi became a cushion for the camera and the plate and they were safe (and gnocchi too). I'm sorry that I ruined the dinner! I hope C will keep continue to cook on Sunday♥

I love cooked soft boiled eggs from Naomi Takayama's recipe book. I cook these eggs somtimes. But I boiled the eggs too long this time! I want to eat them with coriander but that's quite expensive in Tokyo, so I use thinly striped Japanese leek instead.

We went to Niagara for curry. I chose dry curry this time, but I think the normal curry is better. The lady from the restaurant told me that Niagara appeared in magazines in England and Hong Kong, so they have lots of customers from there. After we ate our dinner, she showed us many magazine articles about Niagara, including a big article in a Japanese railway magazine. It has been 22 years since this curry restaurant opened.

We went to a yakiniku (barbecue) restaurant for dinner with our friends from London. When we were grilling the fatty pork, it caught on fire. We missed the right timing to eat it and it turned to bacon...

It was announced yesterday that the rainy season has started in Tokyo area. C and our friends went to Asakusa in the rain, and C brought ningyo-yaki (doll-shaped Japanese cakes) home. There are lots of ningyo yaki shops in Asakusa (in Japanese only), but we always buy ningyo-yaki from Kibun-dou which established in 1891. I like the design on the bag. If you are not very keen on sweet red beans, get one without filling.

I haven't eaten ramen (lamian) noodle for ages. The roasted pork fillet on noodle was quite fatty but nicely grilled. They use thin and straight type noodle. I had soy sauce flavour, I want to try salt one next time.

Today is my first home-made Ume Liquor's birthday. Yesterday, at midnight, we had the 'opening day' celebration after being matured in the bottle for a year. It was super good! I should make some this year as well.

I was walking around Harajuku-Omotesandou area with my friends from London. We decided to eat some Japanese food for lunch and chose a little place where they serve curry and a set meal. The inside looked like an old karaoke-bar. I'm not going to mention the quality of the food, but the middle age ladies who served us were nice. It seemed like there were only regular customers who are young single men probably working at shops in Ura-Hara (back side of Harajuku). Maybe they look for a taste of home?

I went to a French restaurant in Toranomon for a girls’ dinner. The bouillabaisse was so amazing! We ordered 2 portions of bouillabaisse for 6 of us, but we could have ordered three portions. I was a bit disappointed about the waiter who served 8 bowls from a pot, not 6...

I think the most popular birthday cake for kids in Japan is strawberry shortcake (sponge cake with cream and strawberry filling and strawberries on top!). In London, sugar icing cake is probably the popular one. I was amazed when I saw a Barbie printed with icing for the first time! I heard that inside of the sugar icing is fruit cake and that the icing outside keeps the cake for a long time, so it's not only for decoration. I never tried it and I haven't even seen anyone eating it, but supermarkets sell so many kinds of icing cakes, so I think they are very very popular. But I prefer cakes with lots of cream. Come to think of it, I remember a celebration scene from the film Godfather, there was a big sugar icing cake. Don Vito Corleone didn't want to eat it though.

I had The Fruity Malt Loaf SOREEN in London. It used to be my favourite. When I had it for the first time, I thought the taste and the texture were similar to Japanese sweet. It reminded me of brown sugar flavour. But now I think it's not really like that. Anyway I love this, especially the gooey texture. After a few (or bit more) pints at a pub, our friend G told us to show us the proper way of eating it. Slice the loaf about 1cm, and spread butter (it was same as mine!). It's also nice with unsalted butter. It is sticky and quite difficult to cut, so prepare a good knife. 220g, £0.69 (¥139).

Sometimes, baked beans are introduced to Japanese as one of the bad British food, but I think they are nice. Heat baked beans in a saucepan, and pour hot beans over buttered toast and top with very strong extra matured cheddar cheese. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper. Serve hot. Cheese and pepper are very important, because of the tomato sauce is quite sweet. I don't want to have this for my dinner but nice for a late breakfast on the next day of a heavy drinking party. It is also nice with potato, of course. Heinz Baked Bean in tomato sauce, 200g tin, £0.31 (¥62). Reasonable.

When I went to the East end of London, my friend K saw a nice old (since 1862) Pie & Mash shop, and we agreed to have a try. Because, the shop wasn't empty, they sell an East end speciality jellied eels (which I've never seen), and we saw a certificate of the 1999s Golden Pie Dish award by the window. And the pie was... super disappointed!!

I used to go to this little cafe in soho. I'm glad that it still exists. This is one of the few places in London that I feel like eating cakes. I had a cup of cafe au lait and an apple almond tart. £5.20 (¥1,045). It seems like prices have gone up in London.

In Japan, there is lots of reasonably priced tasty food, but I haven't found any good orange juice yet. POM juice (my childhood favourite), Minute Maid and Tropicana (I tried 2 different types) are not good enough. I miss Tropicana Sanguinello 100% Pure Squeezed Red Orange Juice which I used to buy in London. Maybe I will plan an orange juice tasting party, to find the best juice in Tokyo.

Yesterday was a little bit cold because of the rain, but the other day the highest temperature was 24.7℃ and I suddenly thought about a British summer drink PIMM'S No.1. It is a gin-based liquor with herbs and spices, bit bitter but sweet. I didn't drink that often when I was in London, but I feel like I'm missing it. I ordered a few bottles online, and I received a packet yesterday. After a dinner, C saw a bottle and he started to make a cocktail for us. Yesterday wasn't summery enough to drink it but it was nice. We didn't have any cucumber so we put strawberries instead.

I found mint flavour TimeOut at a ¥99 shop. I used to eat the original blue TimeOut in London. I was surprised to see it, but then I found out that Cadbury Japan exits since 1978. Unfortunately it's not very popular in Japan, but I've seen Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate at our local supermarket. Kit Kat and Polo mints are long time favourites in Japan. Maybe some people don't even know that they are originally from UK.

I used to drink a lot, my friends called me 'a sieve' (so that alcohol doesn't stay in a stomach!) sometimes. But the mesh of a sieve has blocked, I can't drink much anymore. I love beer, and also I drink wine, gin and vodka. I want to start drinking Japanese sake too. But I don't like Japanese distilled spirits 'shochu' which is very popular in Japan. I can't drink whiskey and brandy either. My husband started to drink Maker's Mark with our favourite Wilkinson since we moved to Tokyo. For a bottle recycling, we have to take off the red plastic seal. It's a bit of work.

This candy is called 'ito-hiki ame (pick a string candy)'. There are different sized/flavoured candies on strings. When I was a kid, we could buy this at a newsagent. Pay ¥10 (5 pence) to a shop owner and pick a string carefully. It's almost impossible to get the one you want. I knew about this candy but I've never tried it. I found Fruits biki (pick) by Kose in a wholesale shop, and I bought a box. I opened it when we had a cherry blossom viewing party the other day, but kids were the only one who ate those candies. Everybody knows it's not so tasty...

I bought this soft cheese spread because of the lovely package. I was surprised at the size of a box. It is exactly same size as a Japanese '6P' cheese box. 6P cheese is just a little thicker. It says Made in France, but there are only English and Arabic on a box. 8 portions (140g)/¥198 (£1)

The other day, I bought lebkuchen (German spice cake) at an international supermarket in Shinagawa. Lebkuchen is a typical Christmas sweet in Germany, and I tried very hard to find it last Christmas. I can't believe that I found this now. But I shouldn't have paid the full price for it. It is like that they trying to get rid of unseasonable Halloween cookies without discount! It has to be at least half the price!

Our favorite bread from the bakery near our local station is called something like 'fermented natural yeast for a long period (with) beurre'. We love the moist texture and the denseness. I seems bigger than before but it just rose, and lots of air bubbles were inside. This happened too often and it was at the end of last year that I was wondering if I should tell them or not. I haven't told them yet, and the bread is still airy. I guess a (part time?) baker or an oven changed but it's been 3 months already. Try harder!

My sister brought dried mango from Philippine. She said 'It's not that special but this is the most common and popular souvenir'. I wasn't very keen on dried mango but... It was so good! Very special!! I finished them all in 3 days. I tried Japanese dried mango from the local supermarket but it was totally different .The mango from Philippine was much softer and sweeter and it was yellow, not orange (I should have taken a photo). The scent of mango spread in my mouth. It was almost as juicy as fresh mango. It could be tastier than the fresh one actually! It seems like I can buy the most popular branded mango in Philippine for ¥350〜/100g in Japan. I want to try some. I also like dried Japanese sweet potato. Do I like dried food?

Yesterday, our couple friends brought baby Ikanago 'Japanese sand lance' boiled in sweetened soy sauce. It was given to them from their home in Hyogo. Thanks! The ginger gives a good punch to the taste. It was so delicious with plain rice. But I think it won't attract many non-Japanese people because of the looks...

My husband came back from Hokkaido. He brought the white chocolate sweet called 'yuki ya kon kon' (means 'Snow! Come to us') which has raspberry jam and cheese cream inside. This is a new product by Rokkatei, my favourite confectionery company in Hokkaido. They sell this only in February and March. It melts like snow when I touch it! It is very sweet creamy cheese cake chocolate. I think it's a little bit expensive for ¥600 for 6 pieces. But I still like Rokkatei.

I finally got Tyrkisk peber (Turkish pepper) the other day. (see my old entry about Liquorice.) My sister' friend brought them from Finland. I don't know how to thank her! It is so good, at least to me! I tried to make Turkish Pepper Candy shot, just adding crushed 2 candies to 150cc of vodka. I left it until the candy has dissolved, and I tried a shot... Something went wrong! It tasted like medicine. The one which my Norwegian friend made was much sweeter and darker, I think. I should have added some suger?! Anyone got a good recipe?

After I finished my little business in Roppongi today, I tried to have lunch at German bakery MENTPHYS (J only) which I found on the internet the other day. But... the shop was gone! No!! I tried other bakery good day for you ROPPONGI (J only) instead. But... it was shut! Doh!! They got many cake orders for White Day and too busy to open the shop. In the end, I went to Roppongi Hills (which probably never goes down well with me somehow) and I had an aubergine and tomato sandwich at IDÉE CAFFÈ. The filling was nice but the bread wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I feel like shopping around Tokyo for good German bread (J only).

My husband is snowboarding this weekend again. I decided to have a dinner/drink with my female friends. All foods were tasty and good with beer! I loved a grilled tuna and leak on a skewer. My friends keep their own bottle of imo-jochu (traditional Japanese distilled spirit made of sweet potato) called Seikou Udoku (means 'work in the field in fine weather, stay at home reading when it is wet', in other words, 'a relaxed life style without bothering by anything') at the bar and I tried a glass. I usually don't drink Shochu but this was very smooth and easy to drink. We wanted just one drink in the second bar but... stayed until 4am, as usual. The last topic was that we are finally old enough to appreciate our traditional Japanese culture such as Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) or Japanese Martial Arts. I feel like learning Ikebana at sogetsu school.

The local supermarket near our flat sometimes offers 500g of plain yogurt for ¥100 (50p). It is very good price. It makes me feel that I should buy one, and I always do. I sometimes forget to eat it and realize that "best before" date has almost expired! Yesterday was the same situation again and I tried to make a kind of quark (recently a Japanese company sells quark, but it is a little bit different from the original one) or is it called yogurt cheese? This morning I was happy to see it but it was very sour! I tried with Lyle's golden syrup (pure cane sugar syrup). It would be nice with biscuits, and also mixing with potato salad.

We had a dinner at Italian restaurant near our flat last night. It's not on a perfect location but it seems quite a popular place. Only 2 young lady cooks are working there, it must be hard work for them when it gets crowdy, even it is a small restaurant. We don't go there all the time but it's nice that the owner says 'thank you, as always'. After having a nice dinner, we walked to claska for the Valentine's event. Came home after 3am.

We went to Nataraj in Aoyama to have dinner with our friends. They don't use any meat and fish, vegetables and beans are the main ingredients and natural yeast for Nan bread. Everything was so GOOD! I decided to share ice cream called Kulfi with my husband, because it didn't sounds that interesting to me. But it was soo GOOD! It tastes like condensed milk or Chai (spiced tea), very thick and rich texture but also very firm and hard to stick a spoon. Well, if you don't know what I'm talking about, have a try. I would definitely go back there again.

I know Chocomint flavour from ice cream or candy but I found biscuits with this flavour the other day. ANNA'S CHOCOLATE MINT THIN from Sweden. As you know from the name, it is very thin, only 3mm thickness. But it has a strong combination of Chocolate and Mints taste, even I put only one in my mouth. Also it was a real bargain! ¥350 (£1.79) for 2boxes. I got Orange flavour too. It is available in a wide variety of flavours, such as Ginger, Blueberry, Lemon and Cappuccino etc. It seems like you can buy them in London too.

Last Sunday, we went to an Italian restaurant near our flat. The pasta and desert were good but I think the organic vegetable salad with liver pate was the best. It was nice to bite raw radish! There are only 5 tables and a few seats near the counter. Nice and cozy.

C went to Shibuya to buy a new game soft, and came home with nice bread. It was DEAN & DELUCA! I was being a zombie from Saturday' party but woke up completely! What a great breakfast + husband!

Last night, we went to a home party at friend' flat. I decided to buy cheesecake from JOHANN which is too famous among the cake lovers, because the host doesn't drink! I was worried about it might be sold out soon, so we left our flat in the early afternoon, went for a walk to Nakameguro. Meguro Ginza shopping street is a normal local shopping street but there were so many people in front of TOKION shop the day before. It was crazy! We decided to have breakfast (it turned out our lunch and dinner) at Organic Cafe. I chose Organic Cafe Sand wich come with nice heavy dark bread. It was very nice but also bit jealous of C' chicken and bacon in Triple Decker Sand!

When I eat Udon (wheat flour noodles) at home, frozen Udon is the best for me (except a present from the special district!). Just after a minute of cooking, noodle is perfectly al dente, slightly resistant to the tooth. It won't be like this if I use fresh noodles. Can't fool the frozen food! I always keep some stock in our freezer but I bought more because it was 40% off at the local supermarket yesterday. When I left the cashier, I saw a bargain info for tomorrow. It said 'frozen Udon 50% off'. Doh!

I bought Kina-Choco Kurodaizu in Hokkaido. They are soybean chocolate coated black soybeans. So good! I love soybean flavored chocolate (which is very unusual). I remember that my sister used to like a soybean chocolate coated ice candy when she was a kid. I found other soybean chocolate recently, but I didn't like the rice cake inside. I think soybean chocolate is kind of similar to the peanut taste. I used to love REESE'S pieces too. It's very sweet peanut butter flavored chocolate but a little bit salty. I wonder if I can find it in Japan.

I see that WILKINSON' ginger ale is the best one for me, after all. It's very spicy, almost like drinking a pure ginger juice, but very nice to mix with alcohol. I can't buy other brand' ginger ale anymore.

C got a rare present from his friend. It was a smoked sturgeon (mum of caviar). Although I thought it would be like a smoked salmon, it was completely different. The meat was quite firm and fatty (not greasy), maybe because of sturgeon breed in a very cold place. Compared with smoked salmon, it was a meat rather than a fish. The slice was also thicker and smoked more than salmon. I squeezed a lemon on it, grinded black pepper and put on a buttered bread. Delicious.

We say that eating Nanakusa-gayu (rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) on the seventh day of the first month of year keeps illness away from us (also ease the stomach after New Year's too much drink & food). I bought a handy seven herbs pack from a super market and cocked porridge for breakfast. Apparently, people believed that young herbs' vitality in winter exorcise bad spirit. My father always mention this phrase in front of porridge, 'Seri (dropwort), Nazuna (shepherb's purse), Gogyou (cotton weed), Hakobera (chickweed), Hotokenoza (cotton sow thistle), Suzuna (turnip), Suzushiro (Japanese white radish), these are the seven herbs.' I didn't know that this phrase was in a book called 'kakaishou' which was probably written in 1362. And people started to eat Nanakusa-gayu from Heian period (794-1192). It is an old practice.

On Christmas day, my mum booked a table for us at a German restaurant in Sapporo (by Japanese people). Would it be same as his parents reserve a table at a Japanese restaurant which is run by German people in Germany?! Oops...! But I didn't need to worry. It was a genuine German restaurant. I think C was very satisfied. My parents were overpowered by a tall beer glass which was about 25cm high and a massive portion of the sautéed pork though. My Schnitzel (beef cutlet) was also dangerously huge (I ate all!). I recommend their sausages, they were good.

We came back from Sapporo yesterday evening. I feel quite tired. On the first day of the new year, we started with Otoso (sake flavored with herbs) in the morning, ate Ozoni at breakfast and a bit of mum' Osechi (specially prepared New Year's food) after. I haven't had this proper Japanese style' New Year for a long time. I like it! Today, we woke up late, did our first visit of the year to a temple and a sports gym. I enjoyed mum' Osechi + rice ball for dinner by the side of C eating bread + Parma ham...

Just before we came to Japan, I bought this Kalamata olive oil from a Greek grocery where we used to buy custard tarts in London. 3L. The shop assistant recommended to buy 1L in a glass bottle, but I always wanted to buy one in a big tin. I realised that we need more than a year to finish 1L of olive oil, so it will take nearly 4 years to finish this?! I separated the oil into a 500ML bottle and kept the tin tightly sealed. I hope it doesn't continues to oxidize!

We had long dinner at Naulo Bhanchha in Shibuya. Very cosy, nice restaurant. All the curries we ordered were not too spicy, so I could enjoy the flavor of ingredients. I liked the fried bread which was very very slightly sweet. The name reminded me of kind of a doughnut, but it was more like between nan bread and pancake? I will order fried bread again!

You might say 'Are you still baking cookies?' I know... this is the last one. I made spiced cookies decorated with icing. It was quite a work. What? There is something? You mean this?

I wanted to use a different recipe for Kokosmakronen (coconut macaroon) from last year, asked C to find a Gernman recipe. We chose a recipe which needs marzipan. C had to help me a lot (thanks!). They were superb!! Crunchy outside, chewy inside. It was a great idea dipping into a tempered chocolate. We didi it!

I baked Weihnachtsgebaeck (christmas cookie in German). I should have baked for St. Nikolaus day which was 6th Dec, but I completely forgot about it. Kids in Germany hang socks outside of their room and they find treats in their socks in the morning. I wonder if they buy new socks for St. Nikolaus day?!

We went to a German pub Bernd's bar in Roppongi. This pub was on the list of German restaurants/pubs I have to go in Tokyo. It was very genuine but.. it was a bit expensive for me! We didn't stay long and went to Ebisu. Good to be home!

I rarely see this FUJI mineral water in a shop. What a great graphic. It's only 15 years since I started to buy mineral water (we didn't have any problem drinking tap water when I was a kid), but this company started to sell water since 1929. I wonder who paid for drinking water 70 years ago, they were hotels and restaurants. And it is an official water of summit conference in Japan. 380ml (plastic bottle) ¥50 at a sale.

I couldn't believe my eyes in a shop. This is the cracker made by Maeda confectionery company. I didn't know it is still exist, and I've never seen this before. This cracker is very well known because of their TV ads in 60's. And the famous phrase is 'AtariMaeda no Cracker'. Atarimae! (Of course!) and Maeda (company name) were combined. Yes, it isn't funny at all, but everyone (not me + my family) used this phrase instead of 'Of course' to make their friends smile. Anyway, my generation is the last one to know about this.

My sister brought some rice crackers of Niigata prefecture (Japan's no.1 rice producer). I've never seen crackers called 'Kinako Mochi (rice cakes covered in soya bean powder)' which has soyabean powder sprinkled on a rice cracker, and the powder is ultrafine. Maybe using Wasanbon (fine-quality Japanese sugar) mixing with kinako? It has delicate sweetness.

According to TV last night, in order to have a strong body which doesn't catch a cold easily, it is important to have lots of saliva in our mouth. I went to a convenience store to buy dried ume (japanese plum) . It was sweet and salty, but strange taste. I think it contains an artificial preservatives. Taking lots of salt isn't good either. Apparently, it is effective enough just looking at the photograph of a pickled ume and get lots of saliva, without eating something sour. But pickled ume doesn't make C' mouth watery. Not enough 'ume' experience yet.

The strawberry chocolate from Rokkatei (confectionery company in Hokkaido). Chocolate coated freeze-dried strawberries. I'm not so keen on it (I prefer Butter-sand) but C is very fond of it, so mum always bring it when she comes to Tokyo. She brought a huge box of the chocolate once, but a small box is a good size to appreciate it little by little. There are white and cream (milk) chocolate coating, and the white one is far better than the cream one! By the way, we can't compare with the one from MUJI for the taste.

My mother came to see me after a long time, we asked my sister to come along and went to a russian restaurant СУНГАРИ (sunggari) in Shinjuku. It was nice and quiet restaurant. Actually I had a stomachache but we had a course meal + another dishes too!

Last September, I was very happy about Pret A Manger opened the first shop in Tokyo. But I haven't been there yet. I finally went to the one (13 shops in Tokyo at the moment) in Shinagawa today. The interior of a shop is exactly same as London's. It's really good to see you, Pret!

We had dinner with a friend @ a Spanish restaurant in Koenji. We had olives, Escalivada (marinated grilled veg), Jamon Serrano (ham) etc. with hand made buns. I haven't had smooth and fruity (but sometimes I think it is bit too watery) Hoegaarden (Belgian white beer) for a long time. The owner of the restaurant is very funny.

I was invited for lunch at "Meidai Tonkatsu KATSUKURA Kyoto Sanjo" in Roppongi Hills today. I had a "Yuba (soy milk skin) croquette and Fillet pork cutlet" set meal. The croquette was like a béchamel croquette and nice! It seems like that they want to appeal this restaurant is from Kyoto, they had to say "this tea is from KYOTO", "these are KYOTO style pickels". I was a bit surprised that when the waitress started to explain about the sauce etc. like a machine gun. Don't they speak more gently in the main Kyoto Sanjo restaurant?!

This might be one of those strange foods for Japanese people, but we cannot talk about British food without mentioning Branston pickle. Diced root vegetables are pickled in a kind of sour worcestershire sauce. Keep your face away from a bottle when you open it, otherwise you might be choked by the strong vineger smell. It has a strong taste of iworcestershire sauce, it is hard to say what kind of vegetables are inside. But it is nice to put a little bit on sandwiches. It also matchs well with extra mature cheddar cheese. various companies (site in J) are making it in Britain. My bottle is almost empty but I found the recipe for Branston, I might try making some.

We also asked to bring these herrings from Germany. Bismarckhering and Rollmops. Bismarck-hering are unskinned herring fillets that have been cured in a mixture of vinegar, sugar, salt and onions. Rollmops are herring fillets wrapped around a piece of pickle, preserved in spiced vinegar. It is as sour as my mouth waters just by watching it. It's nice to eat on a fresh bread with butter. Bismarck hering in potato salad is one of the Christmas dishes from C' family, so we are going to save it till Christmas.

Our friend brought us a tin of maple syrup from Canada. It is about a business card size and looks like some oil inside! The orange and gold color is very lovery. On the back side happy kids are in a horse-sledge with a snowy mountain. Christmas version? Or always with this design even in summer?

We need glühwein in winter time. It is called mulled wine in UK and hot wine in Japan. We had the first glühwein of this season (not winter yet in Tokyo though). I usually use GLÜHfix（glühwein spice mix in tea bags) which I bought from Germany but they have run out finally. So we bought glühwein in a bottle @ an off-license yesterday. It was only ¥1,000 for 1L. I was bit worried about the wine which might be cheap and bad quality (probably ¥600 in Germany?). But It was nice (good job for the spice and sweetness), I'm looking forward to a real winter!

I caught a cold. My throat + ears hurt, and I got a runny nose. It had been so warm and I was wearing only T shirts. But it's definitely getting colder everyday especially at night time. Yes, it is surely November now. It's better to drink hot tea with honey rather than coffee for my throat. I found an un-opened box of apple tea. I bought this from a ¥99 shop and didn't expect the quality (even the name is qualitea...) but it was quite nice actually. It said pure ceylon tea from Sri lanka.

We had Imonikai by Futako Tama river. I've never heard about Imonikai before but it seems like it is quite well known in Tokyo too. Our neighbour was having Imonikai with a massive pot. It was warm enough to wear only T-shirt today, and there were many people eating + drinking by the river.

I received a packet of apples from home. These apple are called HacNine which is a cross breed of Fuji apples and Tsugaru apples. My parents became a owner of an apple tree in a fruit farm a few years ago, they go to pick apples every year in this time. Because of this year' bad weather, apples are so sour! But somehow the taste made me nostalgic feeling.

We went for dinner at yakiniku. I'm not a big fan of shellfishes but I enjoyed scallop yesterday.

We asked our friend to bring German sweet Salzige Heringe (salty herring). This liquorice shaped like herring and outside is a little bit salty. Not many people knows about liquorice in Japan and unfortunately all my friends (who I insisted to try one) absolutely hated it. It is called kanzou (sweet herb) or licorice here and used with medical supplies, such as medicine or throat candy.

I read about the high quality Takumi burger from Mos burger ages ago. Each shop serves only 10 of these burgers a day. I thought it could be nice because it's Mos burger (not McDonald's!) but it is still a trial promotion and they don't serve @ all shops yet. And today, I found Takumi burger by accident! I completely forgot about it though! It was ¥640 with cheese.

We asked our friend to bring extra mature cheddar cheese from England. It's soooo delicious! This perfect saltiness and rich flavor is absolutely superb. When we slice this cheddar, the sections of cheese is kind of crumbly. I like that.

After eating @ yakitori restautant Momotarou, C took us to the bar Icho (ginkgo). As soon as I entered to the bar, I noticed that I wouldn't fit in. I think some businessmen (who doesn't need to ask his pocket money to his wife) come here to have a quiet time.

We saw Prime Minister Koizumi speaching @ Shibuya. He was saying something strange but my friend said even more strange! "with this distance and my short sights, he looks like Richard Gere" Nooo! I haven't been to this old and friendly hidden sanuki style udon (wheat flour noodle) restaurant. We both ordered shrimp tempura udon for lunch. It was massive portion and oishiiii!

We went to Iroha-sushi in Nakameguro. Because of the low price, I always forget that they serve very delicious sushi. I like that the sushi rice is still slightly warm. We love you!

Yesterday, after walking around Harajuku - Aoyama area, we went to Akihabara the electric town. After that our friends took us to a Yakiniku (korean barbecue) restaurant. We had to wait for an hour but it was delicious. But I will recomend to book a table is you want to eat @ Tokyo-en!

Autumn! The Nikuman (steamed bun with meat) season started. The other day, at a sauna, I overheard old ladies chatting about 551 Nikuman from Osaka. Apparently, very tasty. They are handmade and sold in direct selling shops. Yeast of the dough ferments rapidly so they sell only steamed one. There is also a possibility that a yeast die, they do not make freezed one (we can buy it online. They put pressure on a steamed Nikuman, and refrigerate it quickly by a special machine ). If you want to eat freshly steamed one living in Tokyo, go to TAKASHIMAYA department store in Nihonbashi. There will be a 551 stall from 29 Oct - 4 Nov!

C received a German souvenir from his colleague. It was chocolate from DALLMAYR the high-class foods store (like FAUCHON in paris or FORTNUM & MASON in london) founded in 1700 in Munich. Ummmm...deeelicious! Absolutely gorgeous!

Okinawa soba, Koregusu sauce, Shikuwasa juice and Awamori. So many things I wanted to take home. But! We decided to come back here to eat those okinawa stuff. It's better to eat Okinawa food in Okinawa. Well, we might go to a Okinawan restaurant in Tokyo though...

I found the restaurant on a tree in the guidebook, so we went to see that. The big tree stood out even from a distance. No way!

We had a fuit mille feuille before noon. Well, it was a beginning of a wedding anniversary, kind of. We had no idea where to eat a dinner, and I asked a tourist information center. They told us to go to the sky lounge bar "dream" (what a name!) which is on the top floor of a hotel so that we can command a whole view of the East China Sea. However, buildings in Okinawa were quite low...

I had an unexpected reunion with Kibinago (banded blue sprat) @ a fish shop. It is a small fish (about 6cm long) but a silver line on the body is amazing. When I was a kid, I loved kibinago' sashimi which was prepared by hand and arranged nicely on a plate. Unfortunately, I don't see this fish in Tokyo. I didn't know that vietnamese fish sauce Nuoc Mam is made from kibinago.

Today's best food was chicken kara-age (deep fried chicken) from izakaya Nakaya. We enjoyed okinawa soba with a bit of koregusu (small red peppers soaked in awamori).

I wanted to try Okinawa Soba (noodle) in Okinawa. We walked around and finally found very okinawan restaurant. The outside was very hot so we ordered cold Okinawa Soba. It comes with refreshing shikuwasa (okinawa' citrus fruit, similar to calamondin) flavored dipping sauce.

Niagara is an amazing train-themed curry restarurant near our house. We had dinner there last night after coming back from our holiday.

We went to the yakitori (grilled meat on a stick) restaurant Torishige in Meguro. I ordered too much because I was so hungry and didn't think enough. Sorry, everyone! We walked home to help our our digestion. By the way, it became so hot like summer again.

I ate black natto for lunch today. (because you mentioned it, Mr!) It was 4 years ago that I saw this black natto for the first time, and I enjoyed so much. A each bean was about 2cm and they had a strong flavor and quite chewy. But this brand' black natto was not that good. Disappointed.

I LOVE MARMITE. I don't eat everyday but sometimes and suddenly, I need it extremely. The best way of eating marmite is spread thinly on buttered toast. Yum! It said the suggested serving is 4g for adults on the bottle, and I measured how much I'm using. It was 8g. Ooops, dangerous? We enjoyed this marmite on toast or chips with lots of malt vineger after drinking alcohol in London, like people eat ramen noodles in Japan. Everything is carbohydrates, no wonder. You can buy it here (japanese only and super expensive!). It is also good in the morning of a hangover. Just like today...

Last night 11:50pm, on the way back from a film, we found a bunch of people standing in the dark. What were they doing? Hmm? Queuing for THAT bakery?! I have only seen this bakery open when I took the last train home (after 1:00am) and every time there were only a few buns left on the shelves. During daytime, they don't sell anything and the shutters are half-closed. I thought they might be a bit lazy. Never thought about people queuing for it. Last night's scene caused us great excitement. We went to the convenience store to calm down until the shop opening at midnight (hard to believe!).

We went to a supermarket together and Carsten bought a maccha (ground japanese green tea) flavored cornflakes by Kellogg's. Limited edition. I ate them with milk and surprised. It wasn't bad at all (not delicious though). It was like drinkig maccha milk. I found it was too sweet but there was surely the scent of tea. There are many sweets with a maccha flavore but this is entering a top 3 ranking. A maccha freak Carsten can assure it. I wanted to say that this reminds me of a rice cracker coating with a sugar of a green-tea taste but when I started to say "this is, you know, taste like..." Carsten said "Like grass!" straightaway. ... Really?!

I went to the restrant in the downstairs of my friend's flat for lunch. The ex sumo wrestler Wakashouyou who was the elder fellow pupil of Wakanohana and Takanohana, is a cook and the owner of this restaurant Tour de Paon. I had a cold tomato cappellini (thin "angel hair" pasta), my friend had a maguro-no-zuke-don (marinaded tuna' donburi). The all lunch menu was ¥900 with salad + drink. We got the league tables of sumo wrestling for this comming tournament (it has just announced on 25th!). Nice one. It was because of my friend has been a passing acquaintance with the waiter and finally she entered the door! We should go there again to eat proper sumo wrestler' dish Chanko nabe.

My sister gave me 40 iced coffee bags(?) by Brook's coffee on a very sunny hot day in July. We love coffee but didn't drink much iced coffee during a cold summer in Aug. Since last weekend, finally Tokyo' real summer has come back and I've been enjoying this coffee again. By the advertisement it is emphasizing only its value though, the taste is quite good too. And this nice strange appearance! After seeing such "designs", I always have to think how many meetings they had untill they reached agreement!

On 3 Jun 2003, I made umeshu (ume liquor or plum wine) for the first time. In June, the umes for liquor were selling everywhere in Tokyo and I bought two different kinds of ume plums to taste the difference. Nankoubai from Wakayama (1kg=¥1,280) was expensive, but the red cheeks are very cute. I also bought ordinary green ume plums from Kanagawa (1kg=¥880). It's a shame that I missed the green plums which were sold for ¥500 earlier that day! I have to wait for at least a year before I can drink it.

I asked my friend to bring the Jaffa Cakes from London (They looked a bit tired from a long journey). When I was a kid we had a same sweet in Japan but it seemed slightly different. Our jaffa cake had a cookie base instead of a spong cake and orange jam on the cookie was very thick. The chocolate on top was quite thick but thinner than the jam. And me and my sister absolutely hated it (especially the orange jam)! I wanted to try this cake with my grown up taste buds once again. And... It was kind of nice and disgusting, bit of both, and I liked it! I started to understand why England's World Cup hopes depended on Jaffa Cakes Last year!

I went to THE cake shop Matterhorn in Gakugei daigaku. While they were wrapping the cake + cookies for me, I saw the sign on a cake display saying "Please take them free" and there were some skins of cream puffs (without cream inside)! Weird! Getting some crusts of sliced bread from a bakery, tofu lees from a tofu shop and lard from a butcher are very familier things to do though... and I asked for a bag (6 puffs in it). Is it just my imagination that a woman sneered at me?!

It's getting very hot and I thought about making barley tea. The scent of wheat all over the room and I remembered a child's time and got very nostalgic. My mum made lots of tea for us in a summer time. We had to wait tea in a kettle get cool down and put in a fridge... Apparently barley tea is the oldest tea in Japan. Aristocrats were drinking barley tea from the Heian period (794-1192) before green tea descends. It seems effective against Natsu bate (weariness from the summer heat).

I baked pretzel (brezel) with my friend yesterday. What a fun! My husband C cooked sauer kraut and potato salad. Yum yum! Our guests also seemed happy to eat german food. I got some eulogies for prezels: "This is a original (genuine) taste" (by my GERMAN husband) "It's better than the one I had in germany" flattering? I need to be trained myself.

My sisiter turned up with lots of green soybeans "edamame". She picked them up from a field this morning." Yum〜. I boiled beans quickly just before al dente which you might call al dente of al dente. My sisiter surprised at the hardness of beans but I love it. I can enjoy the real flavor with having a chew. broccoli, asparagus and cold wheat noodles "hiya mugi" everything has to be lightly boiled. When I order nagahama ra-men, noodle has to be ... of course bari-kata (means super hard).

Last night, I baked a cake using a recipe from Dareka kuruhi no Menu by Rika Yukimasa (This was my mum' recommend!). Using quite a lot of whisky and leave a cake at least for 2 days. I hope the cake will be matured enough for this saturday' party!

We came back from a countryside in Fukushima yesterday. There were no gas, no electricity. We could see a firefly. Everything was amazing!! On the way back home, I bought a fukushima' well known cake mamado-ru by Sanmangoku. It was OK but not so special...