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Masses of variously colored cosmos flowers are very common around Kitakami in the fall.
 This is definitely not the kind of pepperoncini I ran around town looking for back in May:
 As it turns out, this kind of pasta is actually called peperoncino. This batch is from a mix, consisting of a liquid sauce packet (olive oil, garlic oil, soy sauce, and some other stuff) and a separate toppings packet (toasted garlic, parsley, and sliced dried togarashi). It's quite delicious. Here are some more manhole covers. These ones are from Akita prefecture.
 These racks of lanterns feature prominently in Akita City's largest festival, Kanto Matsuri. The manhole cover is in the city's downtown area.  Kamakurando, a tourist destination in Yokote City, has its own manhole cover design. The dog is Kamakurando's mascot, Nobu. Of course, he's an Akita dog.  Omagari is a city famous for fireworks, and the site of Japan's largest fireworks competition. A friend gave me a bag of satoimo today.
 Satoimo are probably better known in America as taro root, the basis of the Hawaiian food poi. Here, they're most often boiled, peeled, and served in miso soup. I have a new Japanese-language cookbook that rather conveniently has a bunch of satoimo recipes in it, so I made one of them tonight.  This is satoimo no kurogoma miso ae, taro with black sesame and miso dressing. It was quite tasty ¡½ the satoimo themselves have a mild flavor that went nicely with the stronger black sesame. And a Manhattan. The leaves are already starting to change color here. Last weekend, this was the scene around an old farmhouse located in the village that makes up part of the city museum.
 Lanterns are a common festival decoration. At the city museum's festival today, the road was lined with small lanterns decorated by children from a local elementary school. This one was particularly wonderful.
 The kanji is wa, meaning "peace" or "harmony." Beverages that come in tall cans have a sketchy reputation in America, at least where I'm from. They're usually full of cheap malt liquor or beer. They can often be found lying in the gutter, surrounded by the brown paper bags used to conceal them from the eyes of people who might happen upon the people drinking them. Which is why these amuse me tremendously:
 The all-American drink, now available in tallboys! Like all kids, young oni are happiest when school is out for the day.
 Actually, these boys are preparing to dance Onikenbai as part of a local junior high school's sports day. I can't believe we've been here over a year and only mentioned our primary grocery store in passing.
.JPG) Here's hoping the bar associations I belong to don't hold our frequent trips here against me! Back Next |
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