July 24, 2009: Cooking School

I want to say I haven’t done much, but doing so would be a lie. I feel like I’m super busy everyday, yet the time when I will actually be busy is weeks from now (when my final exam and everything school-wise is due, and all things that relate to the rest of my Summer start to unfold and become a reality). Enough of the fluff talk, let’s get to interesting stuff.

So, last weekend, Saturday, I went to some Japanese Cooking School for a few hours and learned how to make some Japanese sweets. Wagashi is a traditional Japanese dessert, which is made with mochi, azuki (red) bean paste, and fruits. There were about 60 of us there. We made manju: the outside of this yummy dessert was made with flour, rice powder, and buckwheat and the inside is filled with red bean (boiled azuki bean and sugar). First we made the dough using flour (wheat flour and regular flour), water, isupata (some cornstarch thing, I think), and sugar. This created a very sticky dough, which looked and felt kind of like mochi, but it definitely was not. Then we separated this dough and the azuki bean paste into careful weighed amounts. Then we rolled the azuki into the sticky dough until the dough completely enveloped the azuki. Then we put these finished products on a wooden thing, sprayed some water on them and put them in a steamer oven-thing. The finished product was delicious. Too hot, yet we all excitedly shoved them in our mouths, and within a few bites, they were gone. They were yummy, although I prefer mochi. The outside of the manju has a bit of a bready texture. Below is a recipe if anyone wants to try. Super easy if you have the right stuff.

Ingredients for 10 Manjus
70g of sugar 100g of wheat flour
2 g of isupata 400g of red bean paste
40ml water 60g of flour

Then we made Nerikiri, which is one of the main desserts in Japanese tea ceremony (sadou). It’s very sweet and dissolves in your mouth quickly. There is an outer paste and an inner paste. The outer paste is usually very colorful and is made by mixing a soft type of mochi (Gyuhi) and bean paste made from grey/white and navy colored beans. We created a pink outside and the inside was red bean paste. Basically we just put the red bean inside the pink outside and created a round ball. Then we put a small piece of white paste on top of this pink ball, put it in a cloth, twisted the top, and took it out of the cloth. And by adding some green paste in the shape of a leaf on top, we called it a peach. Super simple!

I learned a little about the Japanese judicial system this week because we went to a court house. It seems that most people who are accused of a crime in Japan are usually found guilty, and once a decision is made, you cannot appeal your case. There are no second opinions. It’s because in Japan it would be disrespectful to ask for an appeal, and people also trust the decision that was made to be fair. Also, the jury (which has only just recently been instituted) makes the decision, not the judge. They have monitors all over the room and computer panels in front of each jury member and every one else involved in the case. The victim can have one person (supporter) sit in the chair next to them during the case. Also, to make the victim feel safer, and grant ease to the emotional confession, the victim can have this barricade (portable wall thing) placed behind them. Court rooms in Hakodate are very small, even so popular court cases are open to the public, but in the case they have a lot of people but not enough seats, seats are raffled out. If you have been working as a lawyer in America for at least 3 years, you can do some type of lawyer work in Japan. You can’t necessarily be a lawyer because you might not be familiar with the laws, but you can work.

Today my friends and I climbed Hakodate mountain but we have done this already, so for a change of scenery I decided we should all go to the plateau (I had no idea what this place was specifically called, but from far away, it was the edge of the mountain and looked like a nice little smooth, flat, surface where the sun hit perfectly from my far off point of view and so I called it a plateau). Once I got to this plateau, I found out it was just a parking lot, but on the other side of the parking lot, there was so much more. So I found out it was called Tachimachi. It was beautiful, I felt like I was in a paradise. For a moment, I forgot I was in Japan, and found myself lost in the rippling of the oceans waves. The waves growled and kicked the rocks close to the shore and the sea seemed endless. Even on a day lacking sun and full of heavy clouds, the lush greenery of the mountain was magnificent. We saw a cave in the distance and imagined what fun it would be to explore a cave! We found a small, arbitrary path, walked down, and found ourselves on the rocky shore, at the edge of the mountain. We climbed a few rocks, carved ourselves into them (I made an M), and enjoyed the scenery of the mountains to the right and Hakodate city to the far left.