Koborebanashi

Trivia, Tidbits and Tales about Japan

Tag: food

  • In Praise of Okonomiyaki

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    I went for okonomiyaki for lunch today, for the first time in several months. Now, of course, this being Hiroshima, okonomiyaki means Hiroshima okonomiyaki. (Hiroshima people can get quite irate if you say ‘Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki’, so I won’t, but that’s what it was.) It’s very different to Kansai okonomiyaki. This being Hiroshima, I wouldn’t dare say anything other than that I prefer the Hiroshima version to the Kansai version, but actually, that happens to be the truth.

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  • The Year Through a Rice Field: February

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    Once or twice a week, I have to walk past quite a large rice field. As the year progresses, it’s always fascinating to see how the seasons change, as reflected in the rice field.

    Right now, the field is bare. It’s just brown earth with a few dead stalks, presumably from last year’s rice plants, mixed into the soil. Now we’re in February, though, it won’t be too long before the farmers start to flood their fields and then plant their rice seedlings.

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