Japan Exchange, outgoing, post #6

     The theme today is food, particularly (but not exclusively) breakfast...
    
     I will start with a local delicacy that I had never eaten before: junsai.  You buy it in little water-filled plastic bags, at the market.  I would write the word supermarket, except that in Noshiro it's not very big.  Anyway, the little bags look like they should have little goldfish swimming around among the fronds of tiny plants.  However, that is not the case.  One just buys the little bags and brings them home.  The next time I saw them, the plastic bags were gone, but the little plants were in soup bowls with little cubes of tofu.  My host, Harata Sensei, told me that junsai tends to be a little bit neba-neba, that is slimy, but that it's better with soup.  So I tried it.  And it's definitely neba-neba.  I couldn't eat very much.  I don't like nattou, either, which is very neba-neba.  I gave up, shame-faced.

     So when I got back to school I met the biology teacher and asked her about junsai.  She told me that it is the bud form of suiren, the water lily plant.   This makes me feel better, I must say.  The water lily is also known as the lotus, a plant important for its beauty but also for its meaning in Buddhism.  It grows out of the mud, up through the water, into the light and the air, like the soul rising out of the material world, up into the atmosphere of enlightenment.  Beautiful, isn't it?

     OK, so back to breakfast.  In Japan, you have a wide range of choices at breakfast.  Some Japanese people wolf down a roll and coffee, just as many of us do, but traditional Japanese breakfast can be a feast.  Miso shiru soup, for example, with tofu in it and green onions, is standard.  A grilled fish is standard.  Rice, of course, is usually made fresh that morning in a suihanki rice cooker.  Salad is a common item at breakfast, which I love.  And often there are leftovers.  This morning at Harata Sensei's home we had kinpira gobo, which is carrots with burdock root, often prepared with some kind of minced meat.  And maybe fruit or yogurt. 

     Breakfast of Samurai.

     I hope our students are enjoying their breakfasts as much as I'm enjoying mine.