Romantic pigs and other fun with food (and drink).

Today I'd like to present a jumble of photos representing my food adventures in Chiba. Without further ado:

Entry #1: "Romantic pig lab" roast ham. Okay, so I made up a translation for the "koisuru" part on my own. This brand name floored me when I first saw it. A colleague in a different department gave this to me as thanks for helping out with some translation work. The meat was incredibly high quality, and apparently really expensive too (somewhere around $1.50-2.00 per slice of ham?). Apparently it's still an up-and-coming brand, but there may come a day when you spot it in the store!

Entry #2: Onion ice cream. I kid you not. Shirako, a little town on the eastern coast of Chiba, is a huge producer of onions...so in typical Japanese branding fashion, I suppose they decided to make this outrageously flavored ice cream. It did not betray...it tasted like sour cream and onion flavoring mixed with vanilla ice cream. Not for the weak of heart.

Entry #3: Soy sauce-flavored cider. The "BO-SO TV" logo signifies that it was created for the local variety show of the same name. A friend gave me a heads-up about it, and then I found it being sold at the convenience store at my work. Not too bad, not that great either - I suppose it tasted like a weak caramel-flavored soda?

Entry #4: Hijiki ice cream. Previously shown in the post here, this is hijiki (brownish-blackish colored seaweed) flavored ice cream. I love hijiki and I love ice cream, but we just weren't meant to be...

Perhaps the oddest combination I've encountered aside from onion...and natto (although that was of course in the neighboring prefecture of Ibaraki).

Entry #5: Sweet potato ice cream. Certainly not as strange as the previous entries, I thought sweet potato was a unique flavor for ice cream nonetheless. Good stuff. Apparently Chiba is the largest national producer of sweet potato in Japan - it produces even more thank Kagoshima, the present-day Satsuma region (and sweet potato in Japanese is satsumaimo)!

Entry #6: Bamboo shoot wine. Although it sounds crazy, it tastes just as it appears - like good ol' white wine! Or perhaps I am not enough of a wine connoisseur to tell the difference? This was again in exchange for some translation work - brought back from the Chiba's little mountain town of Otaki.

Entry #7: I hail from the world's capital of hamburgers...but that did not prepare me for this monster - a 6 full-size burger menace. You can experience "leaning tower of burgers" (my personal pet name for this) at Village Vanguard in Chiba City, previously reviewed here.

Entry #8: Sky Anpan. Anpan is Japanese sweet bread, most commonly filled with red bean paste. This product was developed by Narita (home to the international airport of the same name) - I believe it's mainly sold at stores within the city itself. I have yet to actually find it at the airport, but I bought this particular one at the Lawson convenience store near my work. This anpan is filled with sweet potato paste (again with Chiba sweet potatoes!)...and was quite tasty.

Entry #9: Tasty local products. Last but not least...these examples are tamest of the entire post, but I just wanted to remind myself of all the yummy snacks I got at work - usually complements of visitors, or colleagues who brought something back from business trips around the prefecture. Inside the white paper bag is biwa - or a fruit named loquat that I didn't even know existed until I moved to Japan. It tastes like nothing else I've had - but generally it has very low-key sweetness with perhaps a texture a bit firmer than a peach? And pictured in the cup to the upper left is none other than Chiba-grown peanuts! They were covered with some sort of sweet coating - can't remember anything but that they were delicious, because they were gone in no time.

What do you think? Have you run into any interesting foods in Chiba before?

Super bass.

Quick update! This weekend I went to see the Narita Taiko Festival (成田太鼓祭り). To be honest, I didn't get to see as much taiko drumming as I did last year, but I still had a fantastic time nonetheless. Much of my duration at the festival was spent fooling around with friends - but perhaps that's what festivals are for in the first place!

Anyway, here's a mini photo overview of my trip to the taiko festival:

Fantastic weather really drew out the crowds.

千年夜舞台, or torchlit drum performance Saturday evening.

Celebrity spotting!

The photo's a bit blurry, but the two guys in the navy blue hoodies are none other than the comedian duo Taka and Toshi! There were a bunch of other TV talents there as well (that I'd seen on TV before but can't name them because they aren't as popular), because I'm pretty sure they were recording a variety show. I didn't feel starstruck or anything, but it was cool to come across some celebs!

Chasing autumn at Naritasan Park.

Hands down favorite shot of the day.

In my line of work, I've gone through a fair share of tourism information for Narita - particularly Naritasan Park. Oddly enough, I've been to the temple tons of times (like here, here, and here), but never to the park itself. Even though they're right next to each other. But finally, I was able to head over to the park with some good company - right on time for some gorgeous fall scenery.

Perhaps we got through half of park? (Kinda ran out of daylight towards the end of our visit.) There was lots of prettiness to be seen - I took a ton of photos, which I smooshed together in this collage. I'm not good with collages - but I think it gets the point across well enough....I love the fall.

Map of the park.

Okay, so this sign isn't that special but it just caught my eye. Particularly, I just kinda thought the message written on the lefthand side was nice. It says something along the lines of "Peace to those coming in(to the park), and happiness to those leaving." Whee! I certainly felt very happy and relaxed after my visit. Hopefully I can come again in the spring to see the plum blossoms (also something I missed out on last year grr).

She lives!

Okay, probably totally unnecessary, but it's good to have photos of people (with people in them??) just to spice things up a bit, right? Or perhaps I just wanted to stick in this photo somewhere because my hair looks like it's a crazy color (I think it might've been on the setting specifically for fall leaves.

Anyway, the way the weather is going, the foliage in Narita will probably only last until around the end of the week...if you get the chance though, go go go! For me, I think next up is Lake Kameyama in Kimitsu and the winter illumination in German Village at the beginning of next month.

Drummin' it up at the Narita Taiko Festival.

Hordes of people came to see the festival.

This year, I was absolutely determined to go see the Narita Taiko Festival (成田太鼓祭)! With about 55 teams (wadaiko, drum, and Japanese dance) that come to perform here each year, this event is said to be one of Japan's greatest taiko festival - and more importantly, who doesn't like taiko??
 
The Narita Taiko Festival is usually held on a weekend in April. I had originally planned to go Saturday, but then the forecast called for rain...which makes it difficult to take decent photos, no? So I went on Sunday instead. I think everyone else figured the same thing - or the crowd for this event is just always incredible. On second thought, I think it's both.

All for one, one for all!

Everyone was crammed into what is normally a gigantic open space (it only feels this cramped during the festival!) particularly for the Sengan Hana Daiko (千願華太鼓) performance, which is held at 10am both mornings of the festival...except if it rains, and this portion of the program is cancelled. Which is what happened this year.

I am really really glad I got to see it though! I can't explain well enough how amazing and intense it is...imagine about 700 drum players performing all at once! Surprisingly it is not deafeningly loud (because it is wadaiko, or Japanese drums???) but the drumbeats vibrating throughout the whole plaza is one awesome experience.

Since words don't do very well, here is a short clip I filmed:


Sadly the audio is pretty horrible on my recording, so here is a much much better quality clip of the Sengan Hana Daiko on youtube:

Yes, it's early, but if you actually want to be able to see the performance, you should plan to get there waaaaaaaaay before 10am. We got there maybe 15 minutes before everything started, and there were easily 5-6 people in front of us in every direction. No matter how much you try and shift, it was impossible to see...so the only glimpses I actually got of the performance were through my camera, when I stuck it in the air to take photos.

Long awaited MOCHI WAFFLE!

We took a break in between all the excitement to hunt this baby down. Yes - it is a waffle, but entirely made of mochi! I wonder if they stick the mochi into a waffle maker??? It was simple and PERFECT. You can choose from "Western-style (洋風)" or "Japanese-style (和風)." The Japanese-style has red bean paste, kinako, and kuromitsu on it, and looked delicious! I got the western style (pictured above), which has maple and chocolate syrup on it...it sounds weird, but it was pure genius.

The cafe - it's near the entrance to Naritasan Shinshoji Temple. The inside is super cute too...I would love to come back.

Navigating the sea of people along Omotesando Street.

After refueling, it was time to wander Omotesando Street, which connects Narita Station and Naritasan Shinshoji Temple. There are a bunch of individual stages set up directly along this street, and after the Sengan Hana Daiko in the morning, each of the taiko teams take turns performing at these stages throughout the day. Not to mention, the historic feel of this area is lovely, and you can find a lot of fun shops to buy stuff in and/or eat at.

OMG this guy! He kept taking giant leaps into the air as he slammed a baseball bat-sized taiko stick onto the drum. WIN.

As we strolled around, we managed to come across one of the teams we were hoping to see perform individually - a group called 和 (wa)-jin.

Once again, words can't describe how EPIC their performance is, so here's a video:



And also, recording of much better quality from the previous day (once again not mine, found on youtube):

Choshi Hane-daiko drummers!

I will end this post with a group from our very own Chiba - the Choshi Hane-daiko (銚子はね太鼓)! I don't know too much about it yet - but it is a traditional style of wadaiko from Choshi, the most eastern tip of Chiba Prefecture (aka CHI-BA+KUN's ear?).

One dude leaps up after being pinned down.

 The really cool thing about Choshi Hane-daiko is how one guy will pin down the other guy and both of them will continue drumming like nothing's happened. As my friend put it, it's got this whole "I am man" masculine tone to it. It must hurt to be knocked to the ground like that though?

Here is my not-so-good recording:



I couldn't find any recordings of the Choshi Hane-daiko from this year, so here's one from last year:

In conclusion - taiko is epic! There are a couple of other highlight events I didn't get to see this year (the taiko performances by fire at night on the first day, and the taiko parade throughout the streets on the second day) - hopefully I will get to see them next year?

CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors in Sakae and Narita.

So Chiba Prefecture has this really cool project called the "CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors" going on right now. Well...the project has a much longer name, but we usually refer to it as 「チーバくん大使」or even  just「大使」.

The CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors are exchange students and other foreign residents living in Chiba Prefecture who have been appointed to promote Chiba Prefecture!! Specifically, they do this by writing Chiba-related articles in their personal blogs, facebook, etc. This year's ambassadors hail from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, U.S., Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Hungary!

English page about the CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors on the Chiba Prefecture website:
http://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/kokusai/english/information/residents/ambassadors.html

Anyway.... as a part of the project, the CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors can participate in specially organized regional tours of Chiba Prefecture! So this post is actually about their first tour, which I had the pleasure of tagging along on :D (Please conveniently disregard the fact that this post is about three months late.)

We went to Boso-no-Mura in Sakae Town and then Narita Shinshoji Temple and its surrounding area.
That might sound a bit familiar...but that's because I took my parents on the same route when they visited in October - I actually mimicked this tour because it was such a perfect day trip!

Anyway...here goes a photo summary of the tour:

This place is full of subjects for awesome photos!

We kicked off the first leg of the tour by looking around Boso-no-Mura, an open air museum that recreates the scenery of what businesses, farmers' houses, etc used to look like in Chiba about 150 years ago.

Even the insides of the buildings were made down to the finest details to reflect their history.

Hunting for the fine details.

 We were all really curious about these random objects, which turned out to be talismans to ward off bad spirits. They took the shapes of something that looked like a cross, an octopus...even dice!

"Rakkasei" peanut harvesting, one of Chiba's most famous products!

After looking around, everyone branched off into groups to do some hands-on stuff. The variety of activities they have at Boso-no-Mura is pretty amazing!

Weaving a coaster the old school way.

After I trekked back from watching the weaving, some people had already gathered a giant harvest of peanuts!

The peanuts are of course raw though, so no one could actually taste them there tho....haha.

Shortly after, Mi-san had just finished her coaster too!

After all of the frolicking though, everyone was just about ready for lunch - so we were off to Narita!

Down what looked like a very random alleyway...

But actually, the (tiny) entrance to the annex of a very lovely Japanese restaurant was hidden here!

Lunch was at the Kikuya ("Chrysanthemum House"), a local and very nice restaurant famous for a Narita area speciality, unagi (eel)!

I snuck a picture of someone else's food. I don't think the unagi had actually been served yet though. ^^;

I am actually not a big fan of unagi because while it doesn't bother most people, I am really conscious of the tiny fish bones so I can't actually concentrate on the delicious flavor...*sigh* I did had tempura and it was amazing!!

After lunch, we were off to Narita Shinshoji Temple, one of the best known temples in the Kanto Region!

Tiger.

This is a zoom-in of one of the sculptures within the Somon gate (pictured in the previous photo). If you find your zodiac animal and walk under it, it will bring you good luck!

On the way up to the main hall of the temple, we were all super amazed by this! I couldn't get the lighting down very well, but the rock around the center of the photo is shaped like a TURTLE! And it is covered it turtles (that just look kinda like oval rocks...)!!!  So cute <3

I totally forgot to take a picture of the main hall...as I was wandering around the back of the main hall, I found this! If you look closely, there are little green statues all over the place - it actually stretches way further off to the right...I wonder how many statues there are in total??? I love discovering random things like this!

Pagoda!! This is a National Important Cultural Property, as are many of the other structures at Narita Shinshoji Temple.

Phew...it was a really hot day! And after this we went to Tokyo Game Show too.

Anyway, it was a really awesome first tour!


I am actually hoping to go back to both of these areas sometime over the next few weeks and do some further exploration. Particularly, I can bet that Narita will be swarming with worshippers going for hatsumode, or their first temple visit of the New Year - but it will be fun nonetheless! I STILL need to eat that mochi waffle at one of the cafes nearby the temple. :D


Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

One Week in Chiba: Part 6 ~Traditional Japan~

??!! What's going on here???

?! Okay let's backtrack a little.

The next day of our travels led us to the Boso-no-Mura Open Air Museum in Sakae Town, northern Chiba. I had visited the museum a couple weeks before for work with the CHI-BA+KUN Ambassadors (now that I think about it, I haven't managed to post about that either *sigh*!). After my visit, I thought it might be a nice place to take my parents, and it seems like it was at the top of their list in terms of fun things to do!

On the way to becoming a samurai!

My main goal for coming here was this "workshop"...or specifically two of them, where one of the museum staff helps you wear a feudal lord's armor or a princess's outfit. I signed up my dad for the armor, and my mum for the princess outfit.

Pretty princess!!!

Admission to the museum is only 300 yen for adults, and there's a TON of stuff to see inside. And this workshop/experience is only 200 yen per person! Super cheap, and my parents had SO much fun. The description says it takes 20 minutes, but the museum staff let us walk around and take photos...and a lot of other museum guests randomly took photos too! You can make reservations by calling in advance, or you can come sign up then and there - but calling in advance guarantees you get the time slot you want.

Anyway, more fun for our photo shoot:

The lord and his wife.

The lord/bodyguard protecting the princess from the enemy!!! (The "enemy" is not some random guy...he is actually one of the friends who showed us around that day. He was really into his role though...)

Here my mom is making a monaka, which is either ice cream or red bean paste sandwiched in a crunchy shell. Mmm!

On a separate note, Boso-no-Mura offers TONS of hands-on experience things. There is so much to do I haven't managed to fully explore the museum yet!! Need to go back again sometime~.

We also had a very delicious bento lunch at Komorebi, a restaurant right across the entrance to Boso-no-Mura. This sparked a discussion over how balanced Japanese meals were, and how to possibly recreate such meals back home in the U.S. - my dad fell in love with the food here, and is gonna try to give up his fast food lunches!!

Another totally random photo, but I am really curious about this red plant, which we found as we strolled around the museum. Can someone help me identify it? It looks like it has the same texture as a broom...

Narita Shinshoji Temple!

We also spent some of the day wandering around Narita Shinshoji Temple and its approach (参道).  It might not be as big of an area, but here, you can still enjoy the same classic Japan that you would in say, Kyoto or Asakusa. I'm kinda sad that this place isn't more well known - I must confess I didn't know of it until I visited it for work recently.

Cyclists stopping in front of a ryokan, perhaps to rest up for the night.

Kinda off topic, but as we were walking around town we stumbled on these cyclists, who were participants in Tour de Chiba 2011. Tour de Chiba is an annual cycling event where participants bike across/around Chiba! Depending on how hardcore the cyclist is, s/he can choose from 6 different courses, varying from distance and taking 1-3 days.

Various flavors of marshmellows! They were super delicious.

Hmm...a not-so-better view of the townscape. You can see Shinshoji Temple in the distance though!!

The Shinshoji Temple area is really gorgeous if you are looking for a quiet, calm place to wander and stroll around. And so many delicious foods too!!! There is a cafe with a mochi waffle that I have been eyeing for ages...I'll have to go back to try that at some point. So much exploring to do, so little free time!