Category Archives: Japan

Godiva, Yildiz Holding & Giri Choco

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The thing is, with many boxes of chocolates, you do know what you’re going to get, provided you read the box. So pay attention, Forrest.

We found a 10.9 oz. box of Godiva chocolates (27 pieces) at a warehouse store for a significant discount to that brand’s normally high prices, so we brought it home. Considering those high prices, this is a rare treat. Sure, Godiva’s really good chocolate, but so are other brands at less than premium prices.

We’ve been eating one piece each after dinner, six pieces all together so far. I’ve had the milk chocolate ganache bliss — hard to argue with a name like that — and dark chocolate coconut. Mm.

Godiva Chocolatier, incidentally, hasn’t really been Belgian in a long time. The Belgians sold it to the Campbell Soup Co., of all companies, almost 50 years ago. More recently, Campbell sold it to Yildiz Holding, a Turkish conglomerate. The brand has about 450 stores worldwide, including more than 100 in China.

While finding that out, I also discovered that Godiva has been taking out ads in recent years in Japan against the practice of giri choco, the popular custom of Japanese women giving chocolate to men, often coworkers, on February 14. A nice example of cross-cultural WTF, but you run into that kind of thing a fair amount in Japan.

As far as I can tell, Godiva doesn’t have a beef with the practice per se, it was merely trying to annoy a Japanese competitor, Black Thunder, which seems to be popular for giri choco. I don’t have any experience with that brand, though the name amuses me. Seems it came to the market after I lived there.

Kinkaku-ji 1990

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Thirty years ago, I spent much of my first summer in Japan wandering around the Kansai, the part of the country focused on the Osaka-Kyoto-Nara-Kobe megalopolis. On August 18, 1990, I sent a postcard featuring the Kinkaku-ji to San Antonio. This is the card. I never made such a good image of the place. Or any image that I remember. For much of the time I lived in Japan, I had no camera.
Dear Jim,

My latest trip to Kyoto took me here… It’s a Zen temple. The gold color is gold leaf. The only thing the postcard doesn’t depict are the swarms of tourists behind the pavilion, each with a camera….

Dees

This is actually the Kinkaku, the Golden Pavilion (kin means gold), which is a major part of the large Kinkaku-ji temple complex (ji being a suffix meaning temple), which is formally known as Rokuon-ji.

Everyone sees the Kinkaku-ji. It’s like taking a look at Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower. That happened to be the first of a number of times I went there on a day trip, usually in the company of a visitor from the U.S.

The Golden Pavilion is often mentioned in the same breath as the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku-ji, gin meaning silver, also in Kyoto. That too was a place to take out-of-towners.

Nori

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Usually I do my own scanning, but in this case, I figured — what’s the point? A fellow named John Lodder posted this image on Flickr under a Creative Commons 2.0 license, meaning I need to give him credit and link to the original site — which I just did. It’s a close-up of nori.We always have nori around the house. It’s used for wrapping edibles, especially to make homemade sushi, which we do fairly often. Not as artful as prepared sushi, but a lot cheaper and just about as good. More finely shredded nori is a garnish.

Nori is seaweed pressed into sheets. That much I’ve long known. I decided to look into it a little further, and discovered something I never knew, which always makes my day: the story of the reinvention of nori and, indirectly, sushi.

Seaweed has been harvested and processed into nori in Japan for centuries, but right after WWII, the industry was in dire straits.

“Despite becoming a staple food of the Japanese, the basic biology of edible seaweed species remained almost completely unknown until [the late 1940s], when pioneering British scientist Kathleen Drew-Baker saved the country’s nori farming industry,” Gastropod says.

“In 1948, a series of typhoons combined with increased pollution in coastal waters had led to a complete collapse in Japanese nori production. And because almost nothing was known about its life cycle, no one could figure out how to grow new plants from scratch to repopulate the depleted seaweed beds. The country’s nori industry ground to a halt, and many farmers lost their livelihoods.

“Meanwhile, back in Manchester, Dr. Drew-Baker was studying laver, the Welsh equivalent to nori. In 1949, she published a paper in Nature outlining her discovery that a tiny algae known as Conchocelis was actually a baby nori or laver, rather than an entirely separate species, as had previously been thought.

“After reading her research, Japanese scientists quickly developed methods to artificially seed these tiny spores onto strings, and they rebuilt the entire nori industry along the lines under which it still operates today. Although she’s almost unknown in the UK, Dr. Drew-Baker is known as the ‘Mother of the Sea’ in Japan, and a special ‘Drew’ festival is still held in her honor in Osaka every April 14.”

I’m not so sure about that last line. I might have missed such a festival when I lived there — Osaka’s a large place — but other sources, such as a longer University of Manchester article about about Dr. Drew-Baker and nori, tell me the festival is in Uto, Kumamoto.

There’s a memorial to her in Uto, seemingly at a place called Konose Sumiyoshi shrine, which could be confused with Sumiyoshi Taisha (Grand Shrine) in Osaka — within walking distance of where I used to live.

One more thing about nori, at least around here. Our dog likes it. Loves it. One of her favorite things to eat. That has some practical uses, too: any pills the vet prescribes go down a lot easier when wrapped in wet nori.

Bonito Flakes

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A staple of Japanese cooking, bonito flakes look a little like pencil shavings, but are more delicate. We always have them around the kitchen, in packages large and small. The empty package I scanned is Futaba brand bonito flakes.
“Bonito is a kind of tuna, and Katsuobushi is dried, smoked bonito,” Japanese Cooking 101 says. “Katsuobushi is often used as flakes shaved from a piece of dried fish…
“Katsuobushi has a smokey savory taste that is a great accent for many Japanese dishes. Because dried bonito is packed with lot of umami (savory taste), it is perfect for making dashi (fish broth) with which is a crucial component for Japanese cooking. Katsuobushi also can be used as is, sprinkling on simple vegetables to give a deeper flavor instantly.”

I knew it first from okonomiyaki, an Osaka and Hiroshima specialty sometimes called a Japanese pancake, a term that describes the shape of the food, but misleads about everything else important: taste and texture. Okonomiyaki includes flour, eggs, shredded cabbage, and a choice of protein, and topped with a variety of condiments — especially a brown sauce we call okonomi sauce, and bonito flakes.

Bonito is also good eating as a regular fish dish. Especially in Shikoku, and even more especially in Kochi prefecture in the southern reaches of the island. I encountered it at Cape Ashizuri in ’93.

“The minshuku [was] our accommodation for the night, and completely fogged in. The evening meal made up for it by being excellent, especially the bonito sashimi,” I wrote about the visit.

Kashiwa Mochi

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We don’t always acknowledge Japanese holidays, but sometimes we do. This year for Children’s Day, formerly known as Boys’ Day, we ate kashiwa mochi, which is a thing to do on Children’s Day. The holiday is better known in this country for its carp streamers, but we don’t happen to have any of those. (Oddly enough, my mother had three that used to hang in the garage. I don’t know what became of them.)

Kashiwa mochi are rice cakes filled with red bean jam and wrapped in oak leaves. The ones we ate came in the package to the right. The small kanji characters say Sakuraya, the brand name, while the larger hiragana characters say kashiwa mochi.

You’d think it’s a product of Japan, but no. It’s domestic, possibly made by a bakery called Sakuraya in Gardena, Calif., and distributed by the Japanese Confection Inc. of College Point, NY. The package, and the Internet, isn’t clear on those points.

The red bean jam is mildly sweet, as red bean jam usually is, but the mochi rice cakes weren’t as sticky as I’m used to eating around the New Year.

Though not that sweet, curiously enough the first ingredient listed for the confection is sugar, followed by rice flour, red bean, sweet rice flour and potato starch.

As befitting its sugar content, it’s almost all carbohydrate, with no fat of any kind and only a touch of protein. No sodium, either.

Toward the end of ingredient list is “salted kashiwa leaf,” that is, the oak leaf. Not edible, but nice to look at. It also wraps the mochi, giving you something to hold it with.

Jidori Chicken

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Jidori chicken apparently isn’t new, but I miss things. In 2004, the Wall Street Journal said: “Jidori is exactly the same thing as free-range chicken — but it sounds more impressive in Japanese. ‘Free range is a word that if you put on the menu, it’s out of style,’ Johan Svensson, chef of Riingo in New York.

Today I spotted “jidori” on a package that Yuriko acquired at the northwest suburbs’ main Japanese grocery store. Helpfully, it also said “free range,” as well as offering the kanji for the term: 地鶏. Literally, “ground or earth chicken.”

Nice to learn. Even better, the package contained chicken hearts. That conjured up an image of carefree, happy chicken hearts lolling around the lone prairie.

Been a long time since I’d had any chicken hearts. Usually, or at least in my limited experience, a few are packed along with gizzards, which we don’t eat all that often because they tend to be overly chewy. Hearts, on the other hand, are only a little chewy, and with a good sauce, good to eat.

Mm, Grits

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There are two kinds of grits in the house. As far as I know, people aren’t hording grits these days, but I haven’t shopped for them since before the pandemic, so who knows.

To the left, the brand I’ve eaten for years. The standard. The go-to. Often the only brand at the grocery store. Easy to make, best eaten after only a few minutes for cooling. Some add butter. I usually add honey, but not always.

To the right, a brand recently acquired. The texture is slightly different, but not enough to put me off of it. Takes longer to make. Naturally, the verbiage on the package tries to make a virtue of that necessity: “You’ll have to hesitate before you eat quick grits again,” it says. Naah.

The standard grits package tube lists the following as ingredients: degerminated white corn grits, plus iron and various vitamins, which are added in the processing. The new grits bag merely lists white corn. Made me wonder if the hull and germ have been removed, which seems essential to grits.

Note this handy definition at Culinary Lore:

Hominy: An endosperm product made from corn, made up of starch, with the hull and germ removed.

Grits: Ground hominy (usually coarse).

I checked the nutrition facts on the new grits package, and indeed it seems that whatever vitamins might have been present in the hull or germ aren’t there, so I assume they aren’t there either.

Anyway, grits and I go way back. As long as I can remember, because my mother made them and I assume her mother did too, though I don’t have any specific memory of grandma’s grits. I learned to make them myself early on.

I also learned that somehow, most restaurants that offer grits serve an inferior version to what you make at home. How is that? Occasionally, though, I find superb grits away from home. For instance, years ago in Mexico Beach, Florida, I had wonderful cheese grits — at a place probably destroyed by Hurricane Michael a year and a half ago.

When I moved to Chicago in the late ’80s, I was glad to find grits in the grocery stores, despite being well north of the Grits Line. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how many Southerners, black and white, have migrated to the region over the decades.

Grits aren’t available in Japan. At least they weren’t 30 years ago. We gaijin ordered it by the case from North America, which we then split up. (PopTarts were ordered the same way.) I remember serving them at my apartment in Japan to a Scotsman who also lived in Japan. He liked it well enough.

“Porridge, is it?” he said. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Can porridge be made from corn? Maize, that is. Seems yes, or maybe, since porridge can be any grain, though I think it’s usually associated with oats and not de-germed corn. Porridge isn’t part of my dialect anyway. Growing up I never heard anything outside of children’s stories called porridge, such as what the Three Bears prepared for themselves and Goldilocks pirated.

Yuriko had no notion of grits growing up and still doesn’t care for them. Lilly took to them in a big way, but Ann did not. Different children, different tastes.

Telegram From Japan

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Most indoor spaces are off limits for now, but we’re free to wander around outside for the most part. So what happened today? It snowed. Still, I’m sure I’ve seen more people walk by my house than usual, some with dogs, some without.

Thirty years ago, I boarded a flight in San Francisco bound for Tokyo, with the intention of living in Japan for a while (but not Tokyo). That’s what I did. Occasionally I think for moment, did I really do that? But it doesn’t take much to remind me that I did.

Not long after arriving in Tokyo, but before I left for the Kansai, I went to the main post office in Tokyo and sent a telegram. I had never done that before, and I haven’t done it since, and never will.

A Mailgram, actually. So no uniformed representative of Western Union arrived at my mother’s door. Even by 1990, they existed only in increasingly old movies. The text went to the United States, maybe Middletown, Va., where it was printed and then mailed to her.

Christmas Cake

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Christmas cake isn’t much of a holiday custom in the U.S., though it is more so in Japan, in as much as Christmas gets attention there beyond a modest amount of decoration and KFC. Actually, I don’t remember any to-do about KFC on Christmas in the early ’90s in Japan. Maybe it’s really a Tokyo thing — that’s often enough mistaken for the entirely of Japan by gaijin observers. Or maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I digress. Yuriko made a Christmas cake this year.

Much chocolate, a healthy serving of cherries, and, you’ll see, a few dashes of edible gold. It’s so good it’ll hardly last until Christmas.

Space Ghost, Osaka Winter & Anticipating Australia

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Not long ago, I dug up a letter I wrote in Japan, dated December 8, 1991. At the time I was preparing to travel to summertime Australia. I’m impressed by the references to obsolete things: VHS, travelers cheques, international land-line calls that need to be scheduled.

The other day, in an unusually listless moment, I decided to watch the Space Ghost tape you sent. As I mentioned, I only had the vaguest memories of that cartoon, and none at all of Dino Boy. There’s nothing especially remarkable about either… SG seems like it was a pretty minor effort, slapped together without regard to originality, a sense of humor, or more than the rudiments of the art of animation. In short, dreck. Ditto for DB.

Today I was off, and some of the time I was at home, cleaning up and re-arranging the furniture a little. I went to the grocery store early in the morning and rode my bicycle around the park late in the afternoon. The day was cool and cloudy. Almost pleasant. This time of the year in Chicago would already be down-coat weather most days, but Osaka makes up for the fierceness of its summers during its mild winters.

I can’t remember that I’ve told you about the upcoming trip. The ticket and visa are squared away, and the itinerary is as complete as I care to make it. I bought some Australian dollars the other day. Some Australian travelers cheques, actually.

I’ll call you from Australia on Saturday, Dec. 28 your time. It may be a little earlier or later than usual, owing to differences in time zones, and my location on that day. I might be on the west coast by then (Perth), or maybe not. This time of the year, the east coast (Sydney) is 17 hours ahead of U.S. Central. They have daylight savings too. I believe Western Australia doesn’t have DST, so that would put Perth only 14 hours ahead of Central. Regardless of my place, I will try to time the call to fall between 8 to 10 your time. It is possible that I will be in transit at that time, in which case I will call 24 hours later.

I’ll also try to get a letter to you in the mail, perhaps after Christmas. And a few postcards from various places. If you have anything to mail to me, remember that Dec. 20 is the last day I’ll pick it up in Osaka for three weeks.

I was pretty hard on Space Ghost. That was before his revival in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which I’ve only heard about, never seen, but which seemed to give him a new fan base. At least, that’s what I assumed when I saw a reveler decked out as Space Ghost at the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in 2006.

I don’t care. It was still a substandard cartoon, product of the ’60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon mill.