Nagasaki: food and Ayako's family

Links in this post go either to my pictures on flickr, or to wikipedia.

I am really not going to be doing justice to this post about Ayako’s family and the food in Nagasaki. Please forgive me. I should have written about it in March when I got back, but I just haven’t been writing. I blow. So here is an unorganized, sloppy, but hopefully mildly informative blog post.

The best thing about getting to visit Nagasaki was not sightseeing, but rather it was that it was a chance to spend some time with my friend Ayako in her home country and to meet her family! I got to see a whole other side of her this way, and it was great to see my good friend again. Meeting her family and spending time with them in their home was also very exciting for me. Not only was I happy to see her home, but I was looking forward to getting out of Tokyo and spending a good amount of time with a Japanese family on the day to day. Though I’ve had the opportunity to spend a few holidays with my friend in Tokyo, also named Ayako, and her family, my time in Nagasaki was a lot longer and a bit different.

One thing that was different visiting Nagasaki Ayako’s family was that they ate at a traditional Japanese low table (zataku) on a tatami mat, while Tokyo Ayako’s family eats at a dining room table in the kitchen. Also, for while I was staying with them, I was given a chan chan ko to wear. For me it was an overshirt reminiscent of most traditional Japanese wrap-style clothing, but short (waist-length) and very thick like a winter quilt. It was quite warm and nice.

Ayako’s family lives above her father’s office where he works as an acupuncturist and pressure point therapist. Yep, big baby about needles Shannon staying with an acupuncturist. That only got uncomfortable when I got a bad headache. But I think it all turned out okay. (Randomly, here's a picture.)

Living with her family for a week was nice and fairly easy. It was comforting to be around a family, although it did make be a bit more homesick than I had previously been, and I was more worried than usual about making a cultural mistake.

I also wanted to talk about all the fantastic food that I got to eat while staying with Ayako and her parents. Yes, I sort of took notes about this; no, I don’t remember what we ate on each day from memory!

On Monday, my first day with Ayako’s family, we had teppanyaki. This is meat and vegetables cooked on an iron (at homes electric) griddle right before it’s eaten. So you cook a little, then you eat a little. If you’ve ever been to a Japanese restaurant in the States where they cook the food on a big griddle in front of you, often performing a little show like flashy fast scary knives, (think Benihana), then you’ve had teppanyaki. We had beef, cabbage, enokitake mushrooms, etc. Yum!

On Tuesday, the electric griddle was back on the zataku because we were having shabu-shabu. It seemed very familiar to me to teppanyaki, in that you cook a little and then you eat a little, repeat, and that a lot of the food we cooked was the same the second night. That night we had pork, tofu, formed fish paste, cabbage, other greens and more mushrooms. But instead of cooking it in a little oil in the bottom of the griddle, it’s all boiled in water with seasame oil, konbu (kelp), and other broth type things. You dip what you want to cook in and swish it back and forth a few times, and then eat! Both nights we also dipped our food in ponzu sauce (I don’t know what it is, but it’s good) and had white rice, of course.

On Wednesday, we had tonkatsu and other fried goodies with white rice. Tonkatsu is a breaded deep fried pork cutlet. Very good! It’s very popular here (and understandably so) and can be found in a variety of dishes. In Kyoto, I had it with Kare Raisu (Japanese curry with rice).

On Thursday, Ayako’s mom made hamburgers. Well, sort of. No she wasn’t indulging my homesickness and making American fare, she actually made hambaga which is similar and yet different. It’s a Japanese version of hamburger patties (no bun, no cheese) that’s often served with a nice brown gravy and white rice.

On Friday, we were busy and went to mass in the evening, so we had just a quick meal of onigiri. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll redefine. Onigiri is a ball made of rice that has a nice filling, maybe of fish or omebushi (Japanese plum)—which, by the way, are way way too sour for me—and then often wrapped in crisp nori (seaweed). They vaguely resemble big, triangular, sushi rolls.

On Saturday, we (Ayako, her mom, and I) went out for champon. In Japan, it seems that every city or area is famous for many things. Most of them are something edible. (People ask me what my hometown is famous for, and most of the time I don’t know how to answer. The mountains, yeah, but Denver’s a bit to the east of those; the professional athletic teams? I guess….) Nagasaki is famous for champon and kasutera (castella). Champon is oriental noodles (like real, not instant, ramen) in a really good, very hot (it always is—the native’s often sweat when they eat these really hot, and sometimes spicy, noodle dishes; I have neko gita, the cat’s tongue, and thing’s are almost always too hot and I have to let it cool before I can eat it) broth loaded with seafood and seafood products (like the formed fish paste earlier mentioned and brushed over). It’s delicious! But, if I were to get a custom order, I’d leave some of the seafood (and products) out. But that’s just me. Because champon is famous in Nagasaki and because I was going with locals who know where the best champon restaurants are, the place we went was very crowded. Many restaurants in Japan have very large round tables. These can sit either one big party, or several small parties sharing the table. We sat at a low, round, large table where a bunch of men were just being served. Uh oh, eating Japanese food I’d never had before under pressure, again! Mostly they ignored us except for an old man who came in on alone. He wanted to know about the foreigner. Ayako’s mom answered most of his questions, and I think I got a compliment on my low table posture. I was glad, because it hurts (after a little while) to kneel and sit on your feet and sit upright. If you are a woman, you can relax and sit on only one foot with your ankles and feet pointing to one side, unless it’s a very formal occasion. (For the curious, men can cross their legs and sit on their bottoms—cris-cross, applesauce for the lower elementary teachers out there.)

Kasutera (castella) is good. It’s really good. For the 211 girls, it’s that lovely yellow pound cake that Ayako’s mom sent to her that she shared with us. Remember with the sugar crystals on the underside? For everyone else, well, it’s a lovely yellow pound cake with sugar crystals on the underside. The original recipe comes from Spain by the Portuguese. It’s sweet, but not too sweet and has a nice thick, heavy texture.

On Sunday, we went out again. This time to kaiten sushi. Kaiten sushi is a revolving/circulating/rotating sushi bar. The sushi passes by your table and you grab what you like, while a few other things can be ordered specifically. This was a good way for me to see a lot of sushi, and avoid what I didn’t like! *blushes, embarrassed* Some sushi, I really love. Most of the rest I would probably like if it weren’t so darn expensive and I could have it more often. There are a few things, though, that I just don’t want. *blushes again, apologetically*

Clearly that wasn’t all of my meals. For breakfast every morning, Ayako’s mom made us toast (with anything we wanted on top, from peanut cream, to Godiva’s version of Nutella, to jam, to just plain butter), a small salad with ham, yogurt, fresh fruit, tea, and probably something I’m forgetting. It wouldn’t be uncommon for breakfast to include rice and fish as well. But ours were rather light. Also, we went out for western food a few times as well, and one day I made chili (my mom’s recipe, full of vegetables, hahahaha to you chili-purists who fight vegetables in chili) for lunch. It was good! (phew) But, it could have been better. It didn’t get to simmer long enough, and I should have drained the meat better. But it was good. (See picture of me in the chan chan ko.)

In the end I had a very good time visiting Ayako, meeting her family, traveling around Nagasaki, learning so much about Japan, and eating such great food!

To Ayako and your family: Thank you so much for having me. And I apologize for not being more adventurous with the food I ate. I really was feeling rather homesick at the time. My apologies.