Baked Goods

Unfortunately, we don't have an oven, so I am largely at the mercy of the local bakeries when it comes to getting a baked-good fix. That turns out to work fine for the most part since the local bakeries are far more skilled than I am anyway.

Note how much cuter their baked goods are. That's a Totoro クリームパン (Cream Bread). He's made of delicious sweet bread with cream filling. They also do turtle shaped Melon Bread (which is a kind of sweet bread with a cookie coating that is cut into a square pattern. No melon is involved.

We also recently started frequenting the bagel place just down the street from our apartment. Bagels are still hard to come by in Japan. You can find them occasionally at bakeries, but they don't seem to be as popular as other bread products here. Dense breads in general seem to lose out in Japan. In any case, the lady down the street is making a heroic effort to spread bagel goodness to all. The only problem is that they really require work to eat. Her recipe results in a light weight bagel with a armor of rubber. My jaw hurts after eating one. So why do I keep eating them? Because they're DELICIOUS. She rolls local flavors into the middle of the bagel roll that are inspired. Today I had sesame sweet potato. I also like the pumpkin gratin and curry bean bagel. She has a lot of sweet bagels, too. Chocolate, maple, yuzu. All of them are delicious - you just have to psych yourself up for the work involved in eating one. If she could combine the amazing flavors with a better texture, these would be unbeatable bagels.

She has also recently added homemade old fashioned walnut donuts. Those are just awesome.

FInally, every Wednesday before swing dance I stop for a quick dinner at Vie de France - a local bakery chain. Like most shops in Japan, Vie de France has their regular favorites alongside seasonal specials. Some time at the beginning of winter, the seasonal special was a yuzu cream pastry. Yuzu is a kind of citrus that is popular this time of year. Its not at all unlike a lemon, but it has its own unique flavor. The pastry was a light yuzu flavored cake with cream in the middle. I love yuzu, so I thought I would try it. While eating this creation it suddenly occurred to me that this was a Twinkie. That realization led to a second epiphany: Twinkies must be lemon flavored cake. This had never occurred to me before. They were just yellow and tasted like Twinkies.

Honestly, knowing that Twinkies are lemon cake doesn't make them more appetizing. Knowing that my yuzu cake tasted like a twinkie? Also not appetizing. This is one yuzu creation I'll be passing on from now on.

Yuzu Pringles, however, are awesome.

Getting ready for Christmas

In spite of at least one Christmas party offer, Russell and I decided to play it low-key for Christmas this year. We are hanging around the apartment with a pile of snacks browsing the Internet and attempting to play D&D with only two people. I'm a monk.

We have a neat little stack of Christmas presents - thank mostly to my mom. We are also taking breaks here and there to clean the apartment. By real Christmas we may even have the house sparkling.

As I'm sure I've posted before, Christmas is not really a holiday in Japan. The commercialized version of the holiday does make an appearance. There are Christmas trees decorating lobbys all over the city and shopping malls are decorated with poinsettias and snowflakes. "All I want for Christmas is You" is playing at most venues also.

But how do people in Japan celebrate Christmas?

I suspect I already shared the story, but I'm dusting it off because I like it so much. When asked the above question, my co-worker got a confused look on his face and said,

"What do you mean? We celebrate it like everyone else. We give presents and eat Christmas Cake."

The presents is usually only true if children are involved, but the traditional Christmas Cake does seem to be a central tradition of the holiday for most Japanese people. The traditional Christmas cake is a sponge cake with whipped cream frosting and strawberries on top. Not at all unlike Japanese birthday cakes. Apparently the tradition was first introduced by, as you might expect, a cake shop wishing to drum up business. The Christmas Cake took off and I haven't met anyone in Japan yet who realizes this is Japan's unique contribution to the holiday. For a month in advance you can pre-order your very own Christmas Cake from grocery stores, convenience stores and cake shops around the country. Its big business.

And as long as we're introducing our own traditions, we really must tip our hat to Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC has capitalized on the vague notion of a Turkey at Christmas to offer special Christmas buckets which include roast chicken legs, a salad with marshmallows on top and, you guessed it, a Christmas cake. Theirs is chocolate this year, though. A bucket for two will run you about $50. If you want a whole roast chicken, you're looking at $75. They usually sell out, so people order in advance. Other department stores, grocery stores and convenience shops sell roast chicken at more reasonable prices, but KFC appears to be the gold standard.

We play with the idea of a KFC Christmas every year, but we just cant pay that kind of money for something we know is going to upset our stomaches.

Instead, this year we bought a fried chicken platter from the grocery store for $10 that did an equally good number on the tummies. Salad for the rest of the week for me!

Update: If you're interested in the contents of the tray pictured above, pop a couple of Tums and keep reading. There were: chicken nuggets, french fries, crab croquettes, fried shrimp in a chili sauce, tempura shrimp, garlic roast chicken, sausages, karaage chicken and an egg surrounded in some sort of fish cake, boiled and cut into quarters. I'll be honest. It was not a good idea.

The Trimming of the Ginkgo

It seemed to stay relatively warm (not warm, warm, but fall temperatures) late this year. The leaves didn't start turning until late november/ early december. The trees just really got down to losing their leaves in the last couple of weeks.

Though they were not remotely bald yet, it was ginkgo trimmin' time for the city. Many of the city roads are lined with ginkgo, which turn a bright yellow color in Fall. (they also drop rather stinky gingko nuts before the leaves go). Every winter, the city trims the limbs way back leaving a very sad looking row of nubbed off trees and a very stark feel for Winter. The ginkgo naturally recover in spring and shoot out a wide canopy of limbs once things start budding again.

Today, the city workers had the less than easy-looking job of trimming back the trees in spite of the full fluff of leaves covering them. There were mountains of limbs and yellow leaves in the street. You could see the branches of the untrimmed trees shaking around, but you couldn't see the worker up in the canopy cutting the branches. This is the first year I've seen them trim while the leaves were still relatively full.

Tomorrow is officially winter in my book.