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.

Omisoka 大晦日

I really meant to start this on January 1st, but like many resolutions, it was quickly forgotten. However, spring is a time of new beginnings, so I'm back-tracking a little, but let's start from January. While Japan is a very modern country in many ways, a lot of people still observe traditional events and honour the seasons. I'm trying to follow the Japanese annual events and seasons, to give you an idea of what Japanese life is like for a fairly typical family. We live in an ordinary small town, about 50 mins from Tokyo, with fields of cabbages and spring onions next to convenience stores. 


So, let's start from December 31st, crossing into the new year. We had ten don - tempura shrimp on rice for dinner, and watched a combination of Kouhaku (the interminable singing competition) and Downtown (the equally painful comedy duo and friends), eating mikan and drinking beer, dozing and keeping warm under the kotatsu. 

Just before midnight I made toshikoshi soba, or "crossing the year soba". It's really simple and light. I got some mentsuyu - premade soba stock (basically dashi, soy, mirin etc). It's "straight type" but you still need to dilute it a little to taste. Cook your soba noodles for a few minutes in plain water till al dente, drain and rinse to get any starch off: you can feel the texture change. Then toss them into the soba stock, add a fistful of sliced green onion (naganegi), some greens like spinach or chingensai, etc and warm through. Put in a bowl and add a little thinly sliced yuzu peel.
At midnight we opened the windows and listened to the temple bells chime 108 times (we fell asleep well before they finished).