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family style by Takumi Ono | July 29, 2008
My mother was the first to take maternity leave and return to work at the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare.
When my parents found out that they were going to be parents in 1971, Japan was still enjoying the rapid economic growth that started in 1955. “I didn’t even think about quitting my job,” my mother said. “I can’t remember if it was common in Japan back then, but I was actually the first woman in my office to return to work after giving birth to a child. How long was the maternity leave? It was probably a total of six weeks before and after the birth.”
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fish stories by Taichi Kitamura | July 14, 2008
Desserts and cold beverages using green tea have become popular in America. Green tea ice cream has been a staple at Japanese restaurants for a long time, but recently, even Starbucks has tried serving green tea frappucino. It’s a nice option to have here in America for someone like me from Kyoto, where green tea is the dominant flavor for many sweets.
Amatou is a type of café that serves Japanese sweets. There are many such cafes in Japan, especially in Kyoto. The menu typically features items with matcha, which is the fine-ground young green tea traditionally used in the tea ceremony. Although green tea ice cream is also common there, the typical dessert is often more traditional fare such as matcha shiruko — mochi balls in green tea and azuki bean syrup — or my favorite, uji kintoki, which is a bowl full of shaved ice topped with vibrantly colored green tea syrup and azuki beans (see the photo).
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fish stories by Taichi Kitamura | May 19, 2008
The red banner on the side of the road read “brakku basu ryori.” Largemouth bass cuisine has come to Japan.
I saw a few banners like that as my friend and I were driving along the shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. I came to realize that largemouth bass, known in Japanese as brakku basu, is now being promoted as fish for eating in the area surrounding the biggest lake in Japan. I learned that the fisherman’s co-op, which is similar to a state fish and wildlife department in the US, is trying to promote “catch and keep or kill” by buying the bass from the anglers.
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family style by Takumi Ono | May 12, 2008
My grandmother in a black suit with my mother holding my hand and my father holding my brother at Sumiyoshi Shrine. We celebrated Shichi-Go-San, a popular traditional event to pray for the longevity and health of three- and five-year-old boys and three- and seven-year-old girls. I was three when this photo was taken by my grandfather.
My paternal grandmother, Sumie Ono, is a funny character. She took deep pride in her work as a treasurer at a local post office and enjoyed working with numbers until her retirement at 64. She received a high-school diploma by completing the curriculum in a distant-learning program when she was in her late 60s. She took care of her mother-in-law, who passed away at the age of 99, and she used to hike and run a lot until she injured her knees running in her late 70s. She taught me how to use the abacus and is still good at numbers at the age of 83, even though she suffers from dementia. But she usually kept her true feelings under wraps and became the very affectionate grandmother whenever my brother and I were around.
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a little chin music by Bruce Rutledge | May 5, 2008
Political analyst Minoru Morita was a fixture on a Fuji TV morning news program until several years ago. He would appear clad in kimono and deliver his erudite political commentary, which was typically laced with ancient proverbs and historical observations. But Morita, now 75, was also a harsh critic of the once wildly popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. While the rest of the media fawned over the “lion-maned” prime minister, Morita had a different interpretation:
“In my view, Koizumi was the most irresponsible and frivolous prime minister in Japan’s postwar history.”
Not one to mince words, Morita went on TV in the late summer of 2005 and called the dissolution of the Diet by Koizumi “unconstitutional.” Here’s how Morita describes what happened next in his upcoming book, Curing Japan’s America Addiction:
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fish stories by Taichi Kitamura | April 8, 2008
Forget sushi and ramen noodles — the Mega Mac is hot in Japan. Ever since the beefed up version of the Big Mac with four patties and an extra slice of cheese was introduced to the Japanese, McDonald’s Japan has enjoyed a major increase in sales, up 11% in 2007 to $3.5 billion.
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family style by Takumi Ono | April 3, 2008
A photo of my grandmother and my mother in front of their house in Ashiya in 1948.
When my maternal grandmother, Sugayo, passed away in 2001 shortly after 9/11, my mom told me not to fly back to Japan for the funeral. “I don’t want to be worried about your safety on an airplane flying back to Japan.” I understood my mother’s concern and decided to stay in Seattle, but I had a hard time with the fact that the grandmother with whom I shared some girlish secrets — secrets I couldn’t even tell my own mother as I was growing up — was no longer with us in this world.
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a little chin music by Bruce Rutledge | February 29, 2008
In case you missed it, The New York Times featured the latest fad from Japan — cellphone novels — on its front page recently. The gist of the piece was that cellphone novels republished as books have begun to dominate the best-seller lists in Japan. Five of the 10 best-selling novels of 2007 were originally cellphone novels. Twenty-one-year-old cellphone novelist Rin’s first novel sold 400,000 copies last year. “My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” she told the Times.
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fish stories by Taichi Kitamura | February 19, 2008
I am a big fan of the Iron Chef TV series. When it was first aired in the 90s in Japan, my mother used to videotape every episode and send it to me in America. I learned a lot from the show, especially how to use different ingredients that I had never seen in the kitchen where I worked. The show helped me become a better chef.
The most infamous moment of the show, however, was when Bobby Flay stood on top of the cutting board and challenged Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto.
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family style by Takumi Ono | February 18, 2008
A snapshot from the New Year’s feast at my cousins’ house when I was 4. My dad is in the middle smiling with me sitting on his lap.
My dad must be getting to the stage where he looks back and wonders if he has done the right thing or made the right choices in life. Once in a while, he voices his subtle concerns about the seemingly small but important choices he made for me and my brother. Over a dinner my mom and I prepared when we visited last November, he asked us whether he did enough to teach us the importance of good food.
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