Japan (Lonely Planet, 11th Edition) - Chris Rowthorn [56]
The celebratory year begins in homes and restaurants on 1 January, with the multicourse, lavish, colourful osechi-ryōri (special New Year’s cuisine that involves dishes chosen for their symbolic meaning, including shrimp, fish eggs and cooked vegetables). Served in jūbako (four-layered lacquerware boxes), osechi originated primarily as a means of giving the overworked Japanese housewife three days’ much-needed rest – its ingredients last well.
The 3rd (or 4th) of February sees beans employed not as an ingredient, but as weapons in the fight against evil, at the Setsubun Matsuri. To celebrate the end of winter (last day of winter according to the lunar calendar), events are often held at local shrines throughout the country with characters dressed as devils, who act as good targets for beans. Worshippers and tourists gleefully pepper costumed demons with hard soy beans, to the cry of ‘oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi’ (out with the demons, in with good luck). Japanese also eat maki-zushi on this day, facing a lucky direction, which changes each year, in addition to eating one bean for each year of their age, plus another for good luck.
Common at many celebrations, but especially at the Hina Matsuri (Girls’ Day celebration; 3 March), is seki-han (red-bean rice), made from glutinous and nonglutinous rice mixed with the red azuki bean, which gives it its sweetness and characteristic pink colour.
Late March or early April sees the much-anticipated coming of the cherry blossoms. The Japanese gather for hanami (flower-viewing parties), which during the brief, glorious reign of the pink blossoms transform every inch of open space into a riot of alcohol-drenched, raucous contemplation of the evanescence of life and beauty. As if the cherry blossoms overhead weren’t enough, the Japanese eat a variety of pink and white mochi on sticks during these parties, which is supposed to resemble the branches from a cherry tree.
The Japanese summer is long, hot and very humid. Its star festival is Kyoto’s July Gion Matsuri, nicknamed Hamo Matsuri, the Pike-conger Festival, for the large quantities of the beast consumed during that time. Pike-conger and eel are famed for their invigorating qualities and their ability to restore flagging appetites.
New Year (Shōgatsu;) is one of the most food-centred festivals in Japan, the time when distant family members gather for a three-day bout of feasting and drinking, punctuated with the sacred first visit to the local shrine. Inevitably, it’s a freezing midwinter night, and the warm ama-zake (sweet sake served at winter festivals) served at the shrine helps keep out the winter chill. The first dish of the year will be toshi-koshi soba, long buckwheat noodles symbolising long life and wealth, as soba dough was once used by gold traders to collect gold dust. To cries of ‘yoi o-toshi o’ (have a happy New Year) and, postmidnight, ‘akemashite omedetō gozaimasu’ (happy New Year), the cycle of eating and celebration continues anew…
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What’s What in Japanese Restaurants: A Guide to Ordering, Eating and Enjoying (Robb Satterwhite) is a brilliant guide to what’s on offer in Japanese restaurants. With thorough explanations of the various types of Japanese dishes and sample English/Japanese menus, this is a must for those who really want to explore and enjoy Japanese restaurants.
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VEGETARIANS & VEGANS
Travellers who eat fish should have almost no trouble dining in Japan: almost all shokudō, izakaya and other common restaurants offer a set meal with fish as the main dish. Vegans and vegetarians who don’t eat fish will have to get their protein from tofu and other bean products. Note that most misoshiru is made with dashi that contains fish, so if you want to avoid fish, you’ll also have to avoid misoshiru.
Most big cities in Japan have vegetarian and/or organic restaurants that naturally will serve a variety of choices that appeal to vegetarians and vegans. (See the