My Brother's Awesome Pizza

My little brother and I never had a lot in common growing up. I loved reading, drama, and drawing, and he played sports and guitar. But at some point we both got hooked on cooking. Years ago, when he was just getting started, he asked me to show him how to make dough for pizza. I remember being amazed by how much more quickly he could knead than I can (he's probably six foot five, and has proportionately giant hands). Now he's surpassed his old teacher in pizza skills. About an hour after I got home from the airport, he was finishing up the kneading of a batch of his special pizza dough, and by evening it was risen and ready to be turned into a welcome dinner. He made four pizzas for the seven of us, two meat and two veggie.
My brother's pizzas have a luscious, fluffy crust with real flavor of its own thanks to a long rise and the brushing of olive oil and salt he gives the pizzas before they go in the oven. There were 3 cups of flour in each of these pizzas - they were definitely not thin and crispy! So that we could have hot pizza when the time came for seconds, he called us to the table as the first two pizzas were coming out of the oven and the second two were going in. He bakes them with just sauce, meat, and cheese until the crust is set, then adds the chopped vegetables for the final few minutes. The result is completely delicious. Substantial as each piece is, I just couldn't stop myself from having three of the veggie ones, and I wished I had room for more.

Buche de Noel

This is the Yule log cake I made for Christmas dinner. Since it was almost twice as long as my mom's silver cake tray, I just cut the rolled up cake in half and made it into two logs. The recipe is from a Julia Child cookbook, and was a bit more complicated and detailed than I'm used to. For the cake, a browned butter-citrus genoise, I was supposed to beat the eggs (without separating them, which surprised me) with the sugar for 5 minutes while I browned the butter. Unfortunately, the butter took more than 5 minutes to brown, and by the time it had finished cooking and cooling, the eggs had severely deflated. I'm afraid that was the reason the cake remained flat and dense rather than becoming springy in the oven. However, it wasn't a disaster - it still tasted fine, even though the texture was wrong, and it actually rolled up much more easily than the lighter-textured cakes I've made for Buches de Noel past.
The filling and frosting, which I made the day before I made the cake, were a challenge as well, but one in which I was more successful. They're based on Italian meringue, which I'd never tried to make since it involves bringing sugar water to the soft-ball stage and drizzling it into whipped egg whites, a process that seemed to hold way too many opportunities for disaster. However, it actually worked, to my amazement. Without a candy thermometer, I had to stand over the saucepan of bubbling syrup, dribbling drops from the end of a spoon onto a saucer until they seemed to make a ball-like droplet, but I guess I got it right. After adding the sugar, I had to add melted chocolate and butter, then separate into two bowls, one to become filling (with an extra half stick of butter beaten in), the other to become frosting (with a few tablespoons of cocoa added to stiffen it up). I made the mushrooms out of marzipan painted with melted white chocolate and dusted with cocoa. When I had frosted the cake, I made bark designs with the tines of a fork and sifted confectioners' sugar over everything for snow. It looked beautiful, and was a light and sweet finish to a day of feasting.

Japanese New Year

The celebration of the New Year is the most important holiday in Japan. Practically every business closes for at least 3 days, there's a mass exodus from Tokyo as people return to their parents' homes in the countryside or in other cities, and everyone relaxes, toasting mochi (rice cakes) and mikan (tangerines) on the gas heater. Since there are a lot of relatives around and the lady of the house also needs a chance to relax, the traditional meal for New Year's Day consists almost entirely of preserved foods beautifully arranged in stacked lacquer boxes, called o-sechi ryori.
Of course, there are many women who pride themselves on cooking everything themselves, and serving it up on the beautiful lacquer trays and in the boxes and dishes on display in all the department stores this time of year. But there is also the option of ordering your o-sechi, to be delivered New Year's Eve, from a department store, supermarket, or even convenience store (naturally, these vary greatly in price). Every store offers a catalogue describing and picturing the options, and at Mitsukoshi, where I took these photos, there's even a whole area of one floor devoted to displaying plastic models of each available set, so you can see exactly what you're ordering in full color and life size.
Whole shrimp (and in the more expensive boxes, whole lobsters or crabs), with heads and legs attached, are usually the first thing to catch my eye in these boxes. I'm assuming they are an exception to the rule that the foods in the box can be prepared ahead and will keep over several days. Pickled fish eggs, both the red salmon roe and the yellow herring roe, which is crunchy and comes in a wedge of eggs all stuck together, are always present, but there's never sashimi - the fish is either salted, smoked, or pickled in soy sauce, or it's made into the rubbery pink-and-white kamaboko you can see at top right in the upper box in the photo below.
Many of the foods have symbolic meaning - red and white are the colors of good luck, for example, thus the colored kamaboko, the prominence of shrimp and carrots (a special, dark-orange carrot from Kyoto, cut into flower shapes, of course), bite-size turnip-and-crab rolls, and other red and white foods. The herring roe is symbolic of good fortune, since yellow is the color of money and the number of eggs in each wedge is too numerous to be counted. The black, candied beans are also a good-luck symbol, though I'm not sure why. They're cooked for 12 or more hours in a syrupy broth of sugar and soy sauce, and they come out so incredibly rich that one or two is all you can eat. Each of these boxes, by the way, serves 2-4 people and costs 2-300 dollars. The most fancy boxes can cost much more. Last year I ordered a small box (about 100 dollars) when Yuri came to visit, and while it was fun to eat such beautiful food, I felt like everything tasted the same - very sweet. It's interesting how many cultures share the same principle of ushering in a sweet new year by eating lots of sugar. Not that I'm complaining!

Christmas in Tokyo

This time of year, Japan is all decked out with lights, wreaths, and Christmas trees. Yes, it's a Buddhist/Shinto country where Christian missionaries never had much success, but it's also the second largest economy in the world, and the commercial side of Christmas has caught on in a big way.
Interestingly, the "traditions" that most Japanese families have adopted for the holiday include eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and Christmas Cake, which is usually a strawberry shortcake ordered from a bakery, department store, or supermarket. As you can see in the brochure above, there are other options - notably, the ever-popular Mont Blanc transformed into a multi-serving-sized cake - but strawberries are classic. Even the supermarket produce section has strawberries on special right now, presumably because some enterprising housewives will make their own.
It's not just pastry shops that get into the holiday spirit. This is the display in the front window of Mame-Gen, the old-fashioned bean-snack shop near Azabu Juban station. There are similar displays all over the neighborhood. The 100-yen shop nearby has been blasting Christmas music all day long for about a month now, and has plastic wreaths and tinsel for sale front and center. The florists have bonsai-sized Christmas trees and poinsettias for sale. There are lights strung on trees and buildings everywhere, and today when I was in Ginza I saw a green-suited Santa greeting customers in front of one store. A little Japanese kid seemed confused by the green suit, but wasn't that once traditional in Europe? It made me think of the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol, anyway.
There are tasteful decorations in many parts of town, including the beautiful blue-and-white lights all over Midtown and Roppongi Hills, and the understated rows of triangular trees sparkling with only white lights in Ginza, but Shibuya is not necessarily the place to go looking for high taste. The decorations are big, bright, and campy. It's a teen hangout, and since Christmas is one of the most romantic nights of the year in Japan, second only to Valentine's Day, I'm sure there will be plenty of kids on dates strolling under the crown along "Christmas Lane" next week.

Nuts for Mame-Gen

Mame-Gen is one of the most popular shops in the Azabu Juban area, to judge from the number of people I always see carrying their distinctive green bags around the neighborhood. They sell traditional, old-fashioned snacks, mainly beans and nuts in various flavors. Mame means bean, and Gen means source, and this shop is definitely the place to go if you're looking for a wide range of crunchy, sweet-and-salty treats. In the photo above, the pink labeled package at left contains roasted and sweetened broad beans, the middle one has soybeans in a soy powder and green tea flavored coating, and the package at right has brandied almonds. In back, hard to see, there are brown-sugar-coated peanuts and yogurt-coated beans. And the shops sells about a million other flavors.
Though beans are the specialty here, they also sell a smaller range of rice crackers and sweets such as karinto, the fried, black-sugar-sweetened snack I wrote about in the last post, dried fruit, and hard candy. The fried rice crackers are actually made there in the store (or at least some of them are) and the frying machine is right there in the front window. If your timing is right, you can take home a hot bag of just-fried crackers. Or at least get a sample to taste.
Mame-Gen

Azabu-Juban 1-8-12

Minato-ku, Tokyo

Azabu Karinto

Remember what I said about how lines form outside popular shops? Azabu Karinto, a newcomer to the Azabu Juban neighborhood, is nearly always crowded on the weekends, but I recently made up my mind to brave the crowds and join the line. And having tasted what they sell, I'm now in serious danger of having to go back. Karinto may very possibly become my new obsession.

Karinto come in many flavors and types - over 50 types, according to the picture brochure included with each package. The classic style is that at that top right and bottom left - a yeasted dough that's cut or twisted into small pieces (though they can be as thick as an inch in diameter), fried, and soaked in syrup made from the black, molassesy sugar for which Okinawa is famous. They can either be soft (the one at the top) or crunchy (the one below). Azabu Karinto sells endless variations. Also on this plate are peanut and white chocolate-coated crunchy karinto. Others I'll have to try some day include soy milk, cinnamon, green tea, brown rice, miso, yuzu, and pumpkin... and about 40 others.

In the crispy-type karinto, the syrup soaks pretty much all the way through, but in the larger soft variety, as you can see, the center stays plain. It actually seems as if the center was made separately, but I don't know if that's the case, or how that would be done. But the texture is much firmer than the outer layer. Though karinto itself is not a beautiful food - it's an old-fashioned Okinawan snack that's considered rough and rustic - the packaging at Azabu Karinto makes up for the karinto's lack of beauty. Each package comes in one of four or five different patterns of thick Japanese paper, decorated with calligraphy or old maps or line drawings, and bound with a vertical off-white strip of paper bearing the shop's name and stamp seal and the name of the type of karinto inside. It's like opening a present.

Azabu Karinto

Azabu-Juban 1-7-9

Minato-ku, Tokyo

Happy Chanukah!

You have to love a holiday that demands eating fried foods by candlelight. And you have to love a language that includes a word like "fuwa-fuwa," meaning light and fluffy, and applied equally to fabric softener results and to baked goods. The traditional donut of Chanukah are the jam-filled sufganiyot that probably originated in eastern Europe and are now considered Israeli. In Japan, it's more common to find red bean paste than jelly in a donut, but Le Petit Decorer up the street from me sells plain, unfilled fuwa-fuwa-type donuts - perfect for serving with jam. Actually, you can ask them to be filled with custard cream in the store, a tempting option, though not one I've tried (yet).
Le Petit Decorer only sells donuts on the weekends, and offers three options. The one above is plain "milk" flavor, coated with sugar. The other fuwa-fuwa donut available is coated with cinnamon sugar. The third type is a ring-shaped cake donut flavored with maple syrup and sold with the donut hole sitting on top. I'm not normally crazy about donuts - sure, I like them, but I would rather have something more substantial and, much as I love the word, less fuwa-fuwa. I guess I'll never be a policeman. Still, for the sake of Chanukah, I'm not opposed to a donut or two. Especially by candlelight.

Fruitcake

I am one of those unusual people who actually like fruitcake. Maybe it's because I've never been exposed to a bad one - or maybe it's just that I've never met a fruitcake I considered bad. Dried fruit, candied fruit, nuts, sugar, butter, and a little alcohol - what's not to like? I've never been one to shy away from rich foods, but fruitcake (like its rustic relative, trail mix) is so rich that it's easy to eat too much without even realizing it. So when I opened up the party-favor gift we all received at the end of our office party last week and found a cute little box of two-bite-sized fruitcake slices from West Confectionary, each neatly wrapped in gold foil, I was completely charmed. What a wonderful idea, and what an attractive present! Fortunately the flavor did not disappoint, and the cake tastes just as fruitcake should - dense and rum-raisiny, with just a hint of spice. It's different from the recipe I grew up with, but still evocative of merrie-olde-Englande Christmas pudding and a cozy nostalgia for Dickensian sleet and candlesticks. No humbug.

Holiday Party

They say that back in the old days before the economy tanked, the annual holiday party my office held was a model of decadence, the kind of affair held at a big hotel and involving things like ice sculptures, Champagne, and evening wear. That was all called off by our CEO in an attempt to stay solvent, and last year the holiday party consisted of some hors d'oeuvres in the office board room. This year we went a little more upscale - it was still funded by the partners out of their own pockets, but at least we had a venue, the exclusive Ark Hills Club in the Akasaka-Roppongi Itchome area. The food was a step up from last year, too, except for the desserts. You will notice that - gasp - there isn't even a picture of cake here. That's because there was just one tray of cakes, and it disappeared in about five minutes and was never replenished. All the other food and drink on offer was plentiful and tasty, however, so I can't give the event a terrible score overall.

There was a whole buffet of hot dishes, like the one above, as well as the sandwiches pictured at top and some cold dishes like the smoked salmon and the marinated octopus in the platters at the back of the top picture. The hot foods were all heavily sauced - the only one I sampled was a platter of sea bream pieces in a silky sesame sauce, but there was also a creamy shrimp gratin, a thick, spongy-looking omelet in demiglace, and the pork dish above, which was the prettiest, being decorated with those tasty and shapely shiso leaves.

Even Tokyo Tower gets dressed up for the holidays. This was the view from the Ark Hills Club, which is on the 37th floor and has panoramic windows looking out over the city towards the bay. The lights on the tower (which is an orange monstrosity by day) changed color every few minutes, going from multi to all orange to all blue, etcetera. It was pretty.

After the long table of hot and cold western-style dishes, there was a shorter table on one end of the buffet with a couple of Japanese foods. Literally, a couple: the tempura above and the nigiri-sushi below. Tempura is one of those things that should really be eaten hot, but I must admit that didn't stop me from having four or five pieces. The sprinkle-your-own-salt thing was a big draw. And the sushi was quite tasty, too - a step above the pre-packaged grocery or convenience store quality, though like tempura, it's amazing what a difference freshness makes. On the whole, the food was beautiful, plentiful, and tasty. It was a really nice party, and since I don't have any personal experience of the old days to compare it against, I would even go so far as to call it decadent.

Tokyo Rusk

"Handmade delicious and beautiful rusks comfort our hearts and wrap us in sweet dreams."

That's the slogan to be found printed in cute, cursive handwriting on every bag and package of individually wrapped rusks at one of the newest additions to the Azabu Juban shopping area, Tokyo Rusk. With other branches around the city, and its sleek, transparent store design, with a flat screen TV in the front window playing a silent movie about the making of rusks, it's something of a misfit in this old-fashioned neighborhood - it would be more at home in Shibuya or Ginza. But it seems to be popular, not least with the young children who come in with their parents and quickly begin sampling the broken-up rusks set out in little baskets all around the store.

I decided on Earl Grey not based on taste-testing, but because the Japanese woman shopping there at the same time as I was talking on her cell phone to a husband or mother at home, and kept repeating, "Earl Grey? Earl Grey? Anything else? Just Earl Grey?" So that's what I took home. They have little chunks of orange peel, black dots (tea?), and a visible coating of sugar, though they're not overly sweet. They're quite pleasant, and might be good dipped in a hot cup of Earl Grey, in fact.

Why are rusks so popular in Japan? (My colleagues at work recently gave me a couple of rusks to sample from the most sought-after rusk shop in Japan, Gateau Festa Harada, a place where people stand in line to buy what basically amounts to chocolate-coated melba toast.) They're crunchy, they're usually sweet but not too sweet, and they have a European sort of je-ne-sais-quoi element to them, even for Americanka me. I like them, and they're a nice change from rice crackers, though somewhat similar in sweetness and crunchiness. Maybe that's the secret of their appeal here ... or maybe that's just the result of the ones I've tried being made in Japan.

https://www.tokyorusk.co.jp/

Azabu Juban 2-8-8

Minato-ku, Tokyo

Soyjoy

What is Soyjoy? It's a meal-replacement bar, often marketed to dieters, though it has a fair amount of fat and sugar. But for a snacky sort of food, it's pretty healthy, and for a health food, it's unusually tasty. American meal-replacement bars tend to be exorbitantly high on the protein, thanks to the addition of whey powder and other ingredients you would never find in nature, and pretty low on flavor, for the same reason, no doubt. Or they tend to be exorbitantly high on the sugar, or the no-calorie sweetener, as the case may be. Japanese meal-replacement bars are usually a lot less sweet, a lot less artificial, and also a lot less nutritious - they're more like crackers or digestive biscuits.
Soyjoy is the best of the bunch, because it actually has a bit of protein (about 4 grams per 140-calorie bar), and that protein comes mostly from soybeans. In addition, Soyjoy is stuffed with real pieces of dried fruit and nuts, making it taste almost as good as a granola bar. Because of all the fiber, it's a good idea to drink a lot of water at the same time - that really fills you up. It comes in a variety of attractively packaged flavors - the top photo shows, from top to bottom, apple, prune, raisin, strawberry, apricot, and cocoa-orange, and there are a few others, too. I see from their website that they're sold at a number of drugstores and supermarkets in the US, although in fewer - and different - flavors (including peanut chocolate chip - so American - but it sounds delicious!). I'll have to find out how they compare to the Japanese version when I'm home for the holidays in a few weeks!

December Pastries

When I was teaching English in Kyoto elementary schools, I had a set of flash cards with pictures of food on them to teach the English words for things like cake, cookies, hamburgers, and oranges. Coincidentally - or perhaps not so coincidentally - all four of those words are English loan-words in Japanese, as were almost all the words on the flash cards, making it a favorite unit among the kids (they already knew what the words meant and enjoyed laughing at the strange way that I pronounced them). The illustration on the cake flash card looked almost exactly like the photo above, because that's the quintessential cake in Japan. It's known as Strawberry Shortcake, though the cake is really a sponge, covered in very faintly sweetened cream and filled with slivers of strawberry. Like the Mont Blanc, the Strawberry Shortcake is found in every Japanese pastry shop you will ever see, and was always the number one favorite when I asked my students what kind of cake they liked. (Incidentally, chocolate cake in Japan almost always goes by its French name, gateau chocolat, for some reason.) The Strawberry Shortcake from Petit Decorer is lovely, but does nothing to distinguish itself from the thousands of others like it - it's sweet, fruity, and very light, which is all you really want from a cake like this anyway.
This one, also from Petit Decorer, goes by the Frenchified name of Gateau Fraises, and is giving Laduree a run for its money with that fancy swirl of cream over a split glazed strawberry sprinkled with silver sugar dragees. The two thin layers of pistachio cake are sandwiched around vanilla custard cream and slightly macerated strawberries. There's also a dollop of custard underneath the cream swirl, holding together the strawberry on top. I should mention that in both these cakes, the strawberries were perfectly ripe, sweet, and delicious, which isn't always the case with pastries even in fruit-obsessed Japan. The Gateau Fraises is elegant, attractive, and a bit richer, like the grown-up sister to the sweet, simple Stawberry Shortcake.

Petit Decorer

Minami-azabu 1-4-21

http://decorer.jp

Peanut Butter

Ode to Peanut Butter

Shall I compare thee to a plain peanut?

Thou art more creamy and more spreadable.

When spread on bread thou art delicious, but

When licked straight from the spoon, delectable.

See this jar of peanut butter? I just opened it last week. It's my fifth jar of peanut butter since moving to Tokyo 14 months ago. Isn't that crazy? I only went through about two jars the whole three years I lived in Nashville. Why I've turned into a peanut-butter-monster since coming to the land where peanut butter either has to be brought in your suitcase, muled by your visitors, or bought from the import stores at an exorbitant price, is anyone's guess. But that is how it stands. I eat it straight from the spoon, and only sometimes spread it on bread or crackers (or, decadently, on chocolate cookies). It runs out fast.
I feel slightly better about my addiction because this is SMART BALANCE peanut butter, so it's good for me ... right? Let's look at the nutrition information. It has the same amount of fat, calories, and protein as your average jar of peanut butter, but it has a lot less sugar and enough potassium to balance out the sodium (as my brother's nutritionist fiancee pointed out). It tastes a bit more raw than Jif, which I actually like, though it does take a short while to get used to the change. By the way, in the chunky versus creamy debate, I say if you want chunky, just eat peanuts. If you want peanut butter, make it buttery smooth. And if you're headed to Tokyo, would you mind bringing me another jar?

Pears and Apples

Apples are my favorite fruit, no matter what country I happen to be living in at the moment. Whereas grocery store apples tend to be hit or miss in the US, and only orchard apples have any really dependable flavor, in Japan they're all wonderful, and you will never, ever find a mushy red delicious or a watery macintosh. I like some varieties better than others (okay, I'll confess that I have gone home without apples at all when there were no Olins to be had), but really there's no such thing as a Japanese bad apple. Best of all, unless you accidentally pick up one of the gift-fruit apples (which tend to be giant and individually wrapped in protective foam), you won't pay that much more than you would in the states, about a dollar an apple.
Here is a Japanese pear, a nashi. I got four pears this size - the gigantic, gift-worthy size - for just three bucks from my neighborhood slightly-injured-fruit stand. There's nothing wrong with the pears at all, except for a little cottony-ness in places that probably disqualified them from being sold as perfect, expensive gifts. They taste like nectar and are pure white inside, gushing with juice. Unfortunately, the only Asian pears I've ever seen for sale in America were tiny and hard as rocks, but if you ever have a chance to try a ripe one, don't miss the opportunity!
Here's a pair of my beloved Olin apples. Most apples in Japan are grown in Aomori prefecture in the north, and I don't know if it's something in the soil or in the air there that makes the apples taste so good, but they're amazing. The skin has its own sweet-sour flavor, and the inside is redolent of citrus and cloves. They're crisp, crunchy, and perfectly balanced. I eat at least one and sometimes two a day when they're available. Happily that's most of the year, though they start to get scarce mid-summer through the new harvest in September. Fujis are available all the time, but ... I'm an Olin addict, and nothing else is quite the same. I usually don't buy any other kind of apple at all, though if Mutsus, another green variety, are around (they are extremely rare and usually cost more than others) I'll get a few for their absolute smoothness and pure, sour-apple flavor. But to be honest, Olins are still the best.

Thanksgiving in Tokyo

Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays growing up. We would drive over the river and through the woods to my grandparents' house in Mississippi, arriving just in time for the huge lunchtime Thanksgiving dinner. Then the grown-ups would clean up, watch TV, or fall asleep while the five of us cousins would venture outside in the crisp November air to explore Granddaddy's vegetable garden, the pond, and the fields out back, where the pecan trees were full of nuts and the herd of Holsteins roamed a pasture of long, coarse, brown grass. Midafternoon, when everyone had recovered just enough appetite to manage a piece of pecan pie, one of the mothers would call us inside for dessert, and then we'd settle down in front of the fireplace to play Monopoly for the rest of the day.
Thanksgiving as a grown-up in Tokyo is a bit different, but still one of my favorite holidays. There are no late-autumn fields around here, but the ginkgo trees and Japanese maples are starting to change color in the nearby park. And I'm extraordinarily lucky to have family in Tokyo, which means these days I get to celebrate Thanksgiving with my other grandparents and another set of cousins. They always invite a big group of interesting people to their dinner, and it's always a wonderful evening of delicious food and great company.
One thing I particularly appreciate is that I'm not the only non-turkey-eater at this table - there were four of us, which certainly justified having a Thanksgiving salmon on the table in addition to the turkey. There was even vegetarian stuffing, made of white bread with olives and artichoke hearts. The green beans, adorned with slivered shiitake mushrooms and sauteed red onion, were an elegant variation on the classic casserole. There was a spicy carrot ring, somewhat like carrot cake but more dense and less sweet; an eggy corn casserole that my grandfather makes for every special occasion; a beautiful salad full of colored peppers and avocado; and of course the turkey and gravy.
But dessert is always the best part. At the top of this post is the photo of all that remained of the pumpkin chiffon pie after dinner - it's so light and creamy that even those who, unlike me, aren't diehard pumpkin fans love it, and the ginger cookie crust is so good that my cousins were picking up crumbs from the table the rest of the night. There was also a delicious apple tart that I didn't get to photograph. And the most beautiful dessert of the evening was certainly the cranberry upside down cake - a rich shortbready cake topped with sour, ruby red berries. After the table was cleared, we all sat there talking and laughing for another couple of hours, until we finally were able to stand up and move around a little. It was a wonderful celebration, and being able to celebrate my favorite American holiday so festively even here in Tokyo surrounded by family and friends is certainly something to be thankful for.

Nagano Bakery

Japanese people are often very patient about standing in line, and a line is often worth joining. This isn't always true, of course - for example, when Krispy Kreme opened its first shop in Shinjuku, the line stretched all the way down the street and across a pedestrian bridge from the store. I can't believe the people who waited that long could have been impressed enough to make it worthwhile. Fortunately there isn't quite such a wait to get into Nagano Bakery. And what's on offer is (at least in my opinion) far superior to a glazed donut, even a good old fashioned Southern Krispy Kreme glazed donut. What might that be, you ask?
Yes, it's a mentaiko sandwich! Where else but Japan can you find fish eggs mixed with hot pepper and mayo stuffed in a crispy, chewy mini-baguette and topped with strips of nori dried seaweed? As weird as I fist thought this combination was, when you think about it, it's not all that extreme. After all, Russians eat caviar on bread with butter. Americans eat oyster po' boys. Japanese put spicy fish eggs in rice and wrap the whole thing in seaweed. This may be a different form, but it's the same concept. And it's delicious.
Don't worry, if donuts are more your thing, they have those too, plus all the classics both Japanese and French. Shown here is a nice variety, from the plain rolls on the top shelf spread with peanuts-cream (a Japanese concoction that transforms peanut butter into something sweet and ultra-creamy), condensed milk, or cream cheese to the donuts and sweet rolls on the second shelf to the "weiner roll," "potato France," and "tuna France" on the bottom shelf. Since the shop is in a very officey area and probably does most of its business around lunch time (it doesn't even bother to open on the weekends), there are more filled rolls, sandwiches, and savory options than is usual at a Japanese bakery.
I've tried a lot of the breads at Nagano, but my favorites are the mentaiko sandwich and this cheese roll. Not only is there often a crisp wafer of overflowed cheese baked onto the bottom, but the bread is softer than the baguette, a perfect vessel for the generous serving of cubed cheese held inside.

Nagano Bakery

2-17-31 Akasaka

Minato-ku, Tokyo

A Trip to the Supermarket

I'm the kind of tourist who gets just as excited about going to a supermarket in a foreign country as I do about going to a monument or museum. At a supermarket, I can imagine I live there, and pretend I blend in - just one of the locals doing my weekly shopping. It's a window onto people's ordinary lives, displaying what they eat, how they spend their money, what kind of packaging and advertising attracts them. In Japan, there are piles of picture-perfect, often individually-plastic-wrapped fruits and vegetables near the entrance of almost every supermarket. Inside, there are small, neat aisles of groceries, many with gorgeous calligraphy or cute cartoons on the wrapper. Sales stickers are prominently displayed, and like other kinds of stores, supermarkets often have "point cards" that let you rack up bonus yen as a percentage of your purchase price. I have no idea how my point card actually works, but I dutifully give it to the cashier every time I shop.Of course, a Japanese supermarket has most of the normal foods, drinks, cleaning supplies, and toiletries you'd find in a supermarket at home. But it also has a number of things that are unique to Japan (or at least to Asia). The picture at the top is a huge selection of various brands of natto, the slimy, sticky, stinky fermented soybeans that are every foreigner's (and many Japanese people's) bane. I actually like it, which is a continual source of amazement to people whose first question to any foreigner is, "Can you eat natto?" It's supposed to be extremely healthy, and is therefore popular with tiny, old Japanese grandmas. It's also a common filling for sushi rolls, which are made using the dried seaweed nori, shown in even more incredible variety of brands and packaging in the photo just above. There are actually numerous types and flavors of nori - it can be saltier or sweeter, roasted more or less, air or machine dried, harvested in Japan or Korea - and it comes in various cuts, sized to be rolled into sushi or wrapped around individual onigiri or sliced to be sprinkled on top of rice or other dishes.
Tofu is another thing that comes in a surprising number of variations. It's not just firm or soft, though those categories do exist. There's "fresh" tofu (obviously not really fresh, since it's wrapped in plastic on a refrigerated shelf), which is very creamy and is sold floating in liquid; there's seared tofu, which is firm and brown on one side; there are various types of fried tofu; and there's my favorite - silky, smooth, plain blocks in individual, bad for the earth, packaging. The brand at the far lower right is among the best - silken perfection.
Of course there are all kinds of fish (meat, too) in the supermarket. Fish comes pre-sliced for sashimi, in larger cuts for sauteeing or baking, and in the form of a whole fish (not necessarily cleaned - an unhappy surprise for the American purchaser). There's also a selection of dried fish, shown above. I've seen on TV how they're processed, by being split in half, salted, skewered, and hung in a cage overnight to dry out. But I have no idea what you're supposed to do with them in your kitchen. I think you grill them. But I haven't ever tried it, and probably never will. Tofu is just much easier.

Speaking of easy, most supermarkets also have a deli section with pre-cooked food all ready to be taken home and re-heated. Things on a stick are always popular - here I think we're looking at yaki-tori, grilled chicken, front and center. There are some fried vegetables and fish in the back at left, and in the foreground at right is some braised eel. When I was moving into my apartment and didn't have any pots or plates yet, I ate supermarket food for several days, and it was pretty good - not to mention a great way to feel like one of the locals.