otsukimi お月見

September 30

So, Sunday night was supposed to be "tsukimi", or moon viewing - essentially a harvest festival, when people enjoy the full moon and give thanks for a good harvest. Being a moon viewing, round things are very popular. One of the traditional offerings is a pile of 15 shiratama: little white mochi balls. On the old lunar calendar, the night is called "juugo ya" or 15th (it was August 15th on the old calendar), hence the 15 balls, I guess. Sweet potatoes, round fruits like nashi and persimmon and moon cakes are also popular offerings (of course, you can eat everything after you've "offered" them to the gods).

Sweet potatoes, boiled and dressed with a little lemon juice and sugar.

I tried to make "moons" from pickled turnip, "kabu". The orange things are carrot "ginko leaves".

I decided to make shiratama with our dinner, which was much easier than I expected. You can buy shiratama flour, which is made from mochi rice and maybe some cornstarch or similar. Add enough water to make something resembling bead dough, roll little balls (quickly, and with dry hands, or you'll get a sticky mess), then drop them into boiling water. When they float to the surface after a minute or so, they're done. Drop them into icy cold water to firm them up, and keep them in the water until you're ready to use them. I made shiruko, a good wintery dessert. It's a kind of sweet red bean soup. I didn't have time for soaking azuki beans overnight, so I bought a can of readymade, sweetened beans, added a little water and a pinch of salt and heated them. When you're ready to eat, you just drop a few shiratama into the soup. The beans are quite sweet and the shiratama are bland and a little chewy, and somehow the combination works really well. If you put three shiratama on a wooden skewer and cover them in sticky, sweet soy, you'll have traditional dango.

Drop the balls into boiling water. 

Add them to your shiruko.

The rest of our dinner was very simple. I had some tuna which had been simmered in soy sauce to use as a rice topping and I made a small dish of namerou - a fish version of steak tartare. You need finely chopped raw fish (aji (horse mackerel) is good, but I used iwashi -(sardine)), mixed with a little miso paste, grated ginger, finely chopped shallot, some finely shredded shiso leaves and a little squeeze of lemon juice. It's sooo delicious! I heard it was traditionally made by fisherman around the coast of Chiba, and it's called namerou - from nameru - to lick - because you'll want to lick your plate clean! No pictures, because we ate it before I remembered to take a photo. It's THAT good!

Ok, so back to the moon. The classic view of the full moon in autumn is through susuki, or pampas grass. It's a popular decoration for tsukimi and the supermarket had nice arrangements of susuki with yellow pom pom-shaped flowers, which I guess were dahlias. You often see round dahlias (denjikubotan) used in very traditional Japanese arrangements (they're often mimicked in hair decorations); they have such impact. So did I buy these gorgeous flowers? No; I was hurrying home with my groceries before the typhoon hit.

This is what I wanted to buy / make. Maybe next time! Courtesy of Kanko Flower School, in Osaka.

The cute label from our moon cakes.

A rabbit shaped moon cake, with sake.

And so, visually, this month's tsukimi was a wash out, literally. Around 7pm, the typhoon hit Tokyo, and the howling winds and hard, horizontal rain made seeing the moon impossible.  We did toast the moon with some sake and very cute moon cakes, in the shape of rabbits. Why rabbits? Chinese and Japanese legends say a rabbit lives on the moon, pounding mochi in Japan or pounding herbs to make medicine in China. You'll find a lot of traditional fabric prints and plates decorated with rabbits, transfixed by the full moon.

These lovely hair pins are from kazurasei.co.jp

You can get a lot of furashiki cloths like this at shops like Loft; use them for decoration or to wrap your bento.

Monday was incredibly hot, as it usually is after a typhoon, but all the clouds had been blown away, so we could see a just-past-full moon last night. Next month, there's another full moon, called "Jusan ya", so we have another chance to drink under the moon beams.

I cheated - this is a shot from last night, after the typhoon.

Hey, Mr Kerosene Man

February is cold!

Ok, it’s not a special seasonal tradition, but winter in Japan is cold, and houses are generally not centrally heated (though I did visit an apartment with under-floor heating, which was very comfortable). We live in an old Japanese house with tatami mats and wooden floors. In winter, it gets really cold, so we stay mostly in the living room, with an electric carpet (since we sit on the floor), and a kerosene heater. Kerosene is much cheaper than electricity for heating, but you have to get jerry cans of kero and use a battery-powered  pump / siphon to fill the heater. It's also a bit smelly; you need to keep a door or window open a little to keep fresh air circulating. Like most families here, we keep a kettle of water on top of the heater, to humidify the room. This means there’s always boiling water for tea, but it’s also noisy. Every weekend the kerosene man comes in a little truck, which plays dinky music.

Our friendly local kerosene man

It costs a little more than going to the petrol station, but he’s very cheerful and he’ll carry the full jerry cans to your front door. In Japanese, kerosene is "touyu". During the big earthquake last year, a lot of houses lost power, but they could still keep warm with the kerosene heater. It has an automatic shut off if it gets tipped over. 

The other advantage of a kerosene heater: you can toast mochi on it! My husband loves to do this in winter. Mochi is very cheap, being basically pounded rice, and it’s quite filling. It starts as a hard white block – kind of like plastic – but when you toast it, it becomes crisp on the outside and fluffy & stretchy inside. The easiest thing to do with toasted mochi is to dip it in soy sauce and wrap it in a piece of nori, to make isobe mochi. It’s salty, chewy and delicious!

Toasting mochi directly on the kerosene heater. It's a bit of a pain to clean after.

I also used the toasted mochi to make a more filling soba soup, with some crispy fried prawns.

Soba with tempura ebi and toasted mochi.