About food in Japan

Japanese Tea Salon - Higashiya, Ginza Tokyo

At Ginza, the best known luxury shopping district in Japan, it is not easy even for locals to find a cozy place for tea break during exciting shopping hours.

Higashiya, locating on the north part or 1-chome of Ginza, is one of such options, very sophisticated oasis. The "Japanese Tea Salon", as it calls itself, is on the second floor of POLA Ginza building, a property by the established Japanese cosmetic company.

Like the cosmetic brand on the ground floor, the space of Higashiya tea salon looks both peaceful and beautiful with arts placed on the wall, modern lighting and warm wooden tables and chairs. It is also quiet and people enjoy their own "tea ceremony" without any kind of noisy disturbance.

 

It offers fantastic selection of Japanese tea in term of the number of options and quality of listed products as well as Japanese traditional sweets. Otherwise choose the tea set at just over Yen 1000. Then you will have small pieces of seasonal Japanese sweets and again seasonal recommendable tea.

 

 

Don't forget bringing a book or someting to read instead of your moile phone to talk with someone. That is what is the best way to spend time and fully to enjoy at Higashiya, Japanese Tea Salon, we believe.

     

 

Lastly, we also recommend that you "pay a visit to the toilet" without fail.

It is the best and the most comfortable toilet that I have ever seen in Japan and in the world. I visited ladies' room only of course. Sorry for gentlemen, as we do not know how it is for you. 

We would not tell you how it is great so you can enjoy finding it.

Cafe name: Higashiya Ginza

Address: 2nd floor POLA Ginza, 1-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Website: http://www.higashiya.com 

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Furikake (ふりかけ), to make your rice more tasty!

As you know already, cooked white rice is principale food of Japanese. In traditional Japanese diet, rice and miso soup is a regular combination of Japanese meal whether it is for breakfast or dinner.

Also as you may know, Japanese rice is very sticky compared with other species of rice in other parts of the world and the taste of cooked rice is subtle and plain.

So in many cases, we put something on rice to have them together. Then, in Japan, we can find many kinds of food products that are assumed to be taken with cooked plain rice. For example, raw egg (we want to talk about it some days), "tsukemono" (漬物) pickles, "nori" (海苔, dried seaweed) and "kimchi" (キムチ, Korean hot pepper pickles) joined in our choices from around 10 years ago.

Furikake (ふりかけ) is one of the major line ups along with ones mentioned above. Furikake is a kind of mixed seasoning specially made for rice. There are hundreds (or more) of recepi for furikake in Japan but typical ones are likely to consist of dried fish or seafood such as salmon, cod roe (tarako), bonito, seaweed, egg, sesame. Typically they are all dried and cut into very small pieces like powder that makes us failed to imagine what are the ingredients. Furikake has good harmony of salty savory flavours as a whole and it makes the best match with hot plain rice.

Takaing many different kinds of food ingredients without having big volume is one of the qualifications of furikake. Because of that, it is also recommended to children from nutritional view point.

Furikake is often used also for box lunch. The easiness of preparing and variation of colors, such as yellow, brown or green pieces all together, help with changing your lunch box more pleasant in term of taste as well as looking. Rice mixed with furikake is also good for "onigiri" rice balls.

In addition, because furikake is dried and has long shelf-life, it will be one of good souvenir of Japanese food to bring back to your country. You will find selections of furikake at supermarkets and a few choices at convenience stores. 

Here we have two samples from a traditional Furikake producer, Tanaka Foods (田中食品) with over a century history in Hiroshima.

Ryoko no tomo (旅行の友, "a friend of journey")  

As mentioned, furikake is the best suit for lunch box and is easy to bring arund.

So the owner put such name on the rice seasoning,

also naming after her wife called "Tomo".

 

This package must be very attractive for some of you.

a small portion of furikake (one pack for a bowl of rice) in a small Hello Kitty bag

The pack has each different picture of Kitty. 

How fun it is if we bring one of them with lunch box,

even just for having lunc at a school class room...

 

Tanaka Foods official site: http://tanaka-foods.co.jp

Related post in the past: Tsukemono(漬物, Japanese pickles)

http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp/blog/2008/11/tsukemono-japan.html