Yesterday, Rose and I went on a tour of Hachinoe City. We started out at a fish market and then went onto a Shinto shrine and then a mall.
This is Rose and our tour guide, Kuniko. Kuniko was wonderful and did a good job of helping us sample many different kinds of Japanese cuisine. We tried dried herring, herring eggs, squid ink pastries, rice (as opposed to potato) chips, and apple vinegar juice just to name a few. Our favorite, by far, was a mixture of shredded shark fin and jellyfish marinated in sesame oil. It was absolutely delicious.
The Japanese take the look of their food quite seriously. While I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of the food, it was quickly apparent that creating a pleasant looking dish is a painstaking process for the Japanese cook. This is a picture of Japanese pancakes. They fry the flapjacks in special molds that look like a fish. They were quite delicious and had a type of pudding inside the pancakes.
This is a wooden carving of the particular Shinto god worshipped at the Hachinoe Shinto shrine. This god, Hachimon, is the Shinto god of war. The tour guide was quick to point out that the many bottles of Sake at the base of the statue does not mean that Hachimon was an “Alcohoric”. These bottles of Sake were left as gifts by those seeking Hachimon’s grace.
At Shinto shrines, you can buy small pieces of paper with your fortune on them, much like a fortune cookie. If your slip of paper forecasts good luck, you take the slip of paper home and share the good fortune with your friends. If your slip of paper forecasts bad luck, you tie it to this fixture so that the gods may examine your future and perhaps mitigate your future bad fortune.
The Japanese are quite fond of trees. The boast some of the nicest plots of old-growth forests in the world…not a bad thing for such a developed society. This particular Cedar tree (in the middle) is over 400 years old. While I couldn’t make out everything the tour guide said, he said something about using parts of this tree to make a very special kind of Sake.
This is Rose and our tour guide, Kuniko. Kuniko was wonderful and did a good job of helping us sample many different kinds of Japanese cuisine. We tried dried herring, herring eggs, squid ink pastries, rice (as opposed to potato) chips, and apple vinegar juice just to name a few. Our favorite, by far, was a mixture of shredded shark fin and jellyfish marinated in sesame oil. It was absolutely delicious.
The Japanese take the look of their food quite seriously. While I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of the food, it was quickly apparent that creating a pleasant looking dish is a painstaking process for the Japanese cook. This is a picture of Japanese pancakes. They fry the flapjacks in special molds that look like a fish. They were quite delicious and had a type of pudding inside the pancakes.
This is a wooden carving of the particular Shinto god worshipped at the Hachinoe Shinto shrine. This god, Hachimon, is the Shinto god of war. The tour guide was quick to point out that the many bottles of Sake at the base of the statue does not mean that Hachimon was an “Alcohoric”. These bottles of Sake were left as gifts by those seeking Hachimon’s grace.
At Shinto shrines, you can buy small pieces of paper with your fortune on them, much like a fortune cookie. If your slip of paper forecasts good luck, you take the slip of paper home and share the good fortune with your friends. If your slip of paper forecasts bad luck, you tie it to this fixture so that the gods may examine your future and perhaps mitigate your future bad fortune.
The Japanese are quite fond of trees. The boast some of the nicest plots of old-growth forests in the world…not a bad thing for such a developed society. This particular Cedar tree (in the middle) is over 400 years old. While I couldn’t make out everything the tour guide said, he said something about using parts of this tree to make a very special kind of Sake.
1 comment:
Hi Eric. Your blog is looking good. I'm enjoying the pictures of Japan.
Bryant
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