Do You Know Pocky?

Today is Pocky Day! Yes, those cute Japanese stick cookies from the Glico Company have a day of their own: 11/11. Get it? Like four Pocky sticks in a row.











Seems like the holiday was copied from the Korean "Pepero (a cookie like the Pocky) Day". It's similar to our Valentine's Day.




So try a Pocky today- they come in lots of flavors.
















Here's a customer review from Walmart (yes, Walmart!):

"Glico Pocky is THE BEST. From the first bite it tastes like magic in snack form. The chocolate isn't too sweet and just melts in your mouth, all while being complimented by the biscuit stick.
Pocky=Amazing"

Keeping Up With Bento

It seems that bento-making adds to the pressures of Japanese motherhood:

"According to Anne Allison, food is prepared in a presentational style that is determined by a number of codes. One code calls for “smallness, separation, and fragmentation,” another for opposition by means of color, shape, texture and even between the food and its container. The foods should oppose each other in that pink is placed with green, smooth surfaces with rough ones, and circular foods in square dishes should rest next to angular foods in round dishes. There is also a code that calls for the stylization of nature. Foods should remain in their natural, raw, state (and) should also be decorated with natural objects such as flowers or maple leaves. Mothers can spend up to 45 minutes per obento every morning for each child’s lunch.

 
Nursery schools have established regulations for obento. All children must bring one for lunch and each obento should have the following properties:

1) Food should be prepared in such a way that it is easy to eat.
2) Food must be prepared in such a way that it can be eaten with chopsticks or with the fingers.
3) Portions should be small.
4) Food that a child does not like should be slowly introduced so that the child will not be a fussy eater.
5) The obento must be pretty and pleasing to the eye.
6) Obento should be as handmade as possible, including the obento bag (obentobukuro) in which the obento is contained.

Mothers take extreme care in following the rules because each obento serves as a connection between the home (uchi), and the outside (soto), represented by the school.
 
Once at school, the child is responsible for completely finishing his or her obento. Often recess or lessons will not start until every student is finished. The logic behind this rule is that the child must meet certain expectations as an introduction to the future “rigors” of the Japanese educational system. Schools create many ploys to encourage children to eat such as sing-alongs and collectively thanking Buddha. The bottom line, however, is that the obento signifies a message to follow directions and accept authority. The lunch-time rules form an approval of ritualistic tasks that will be carried by the children into later years.
 
Because the obento signifies both uchi and soto it is important for the mothers to create the perfect obento for each child. It must be attractive and must encourage the child to eat all the food within it. However, mothers do not have to form ideas for the obento by themselves, hundreds of magazines are published about obento giving tips and ideas for creating the ideal lunch. In fact, although dated, a 1998 survey in Osaka concluded there were 474 magazines available pertaining to obento. Many schools hold PTA meetings to discuss obento, especially during the first months of the school year. These meetings focus on how the food should be “packed and wrapped” in order to ensure the best results. Often if a child fails to be able to finish his or her obento the blame is placed on the mother’s inability to prepare a proper lunch."
 

And all we had to do was make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

J-List

When I was in my Bento phase I discovered a shop in Japan (J-List, via the web) for some of my supplies. They started sending me a regular email (hate this, usually) called "You Have a Friend in Japan" which, of course, I ignored until a few weeks ago. Now that I've started reading it I'm actually happy when it arrives. Take a look...

"Japan has many interesting cold remedies. I've been feeling a bit under the weather over the past few days, apparently having caught my daughter's cold. After testing the Japanese joshiki -- the near-supernatural "common sense" that most every Japanese person seems to possess -- about sick people not taking baths by taking one with no ill effects, I partook of my large stock of American cold remedies like Nyquil and Alka-Seltzer Plus and went to bed. Nothing is less fun than being sick and not having access to medicine brands you know and trust, and while there are many cold medicines here in Japan, they just don't seem to work well on my giant gaijin body. Incidentally, the Japanese have some pretty interesting folk remedies they turn to when they're sick. To break a high fever, put a raw egg in a glass with sake and a bit of sugar and swallow it rapidly, then wrap a spring onion (e.g. a leek, like the one Miku Hatsune is always holding) around your neck and hit the sack."

So every few days I learn a little more about Japanese popular culture.

Kewpie

Bet you didn't know that the Japanese have the highest per capita consumption of mayonnaise, "Kewpie", of course, which was introduced to Japan in 1925 and is said to be saltier, creamier and have more "umami" than our good old Hellmann's. Sounds good - I'll let you know. We had some kind of mayonnaise-drenched shrimp in Beijing and I have to say -they were pretty disgusting.

"A Hen In The Wind"

Ozu's movie made in 1948- an absent husband, an abused wife (he pushes her down the stairs), a sick baby and prostitutes. It made me think about what hens have to do in the wind. What more could you want.

Bunny Bento Eggs

Seiza

Before I started watching Ozu movies I never gave this any thought.
From Wikipedia:

To sit seiza-style, one first kneels on the floor, folding one's legs underneath one's thighs, while resting the buttocks on the heels. The ankles are turned outward as the tops of the feet are lowered so that, in a slight "V" shape, the tops of the feet are flat on the floor and big toes are overlapped, and the buttocks are finally lowered all the way down.

Now how do I get up?

I'll Never Call My Husband Mr Thick-head.

Here's a memorable quote from Yasujiro Ozu’s movie: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice. “I'll never call my husband Mr. Thick-head." It was Setsuko’s retort to the ladies at the spa when she explains why she doesn’t want to be set up in an arranged marriage.

It starts out with four women, each on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Well, at least two of them were: Takae, the unhappy, lying, spoiled wife and the above mentioned Setsuko. They lie to sneak away to a spa where they sit around smoking and drinking sake. Overindulging! Comparing their husbands to the carp in the pool (Mr Thickhead)! It was Japan, 1952 and the film is a femi-Nazi milestone. It passes the so-called Bechdel Test (“a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.”). So it turns out that Ozu was a “proto-feminist" - who knew? The Noriko trilogy (Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story) includes female characters with independence and intelligence we wouldn't expect in '40s and '50s let alone in Japan. Don’t be deceived -in most of his other films the role of the wife is to help her husband change his clothes when he comes home from the office. The husband removes his suit, dumps it on the floor and changes into a kimono more suitable for relaxing at home. The wife predictably and silently picks up each item of clothing.

My curiosity about Ozu was piqued when I read “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”. The protagonist was crazy about his films and upon my finding out that Ozu was a real person, a real director, I was motivated to see one of his films. I became hooked myself.

It turns out Yasujiro Ozu is a well-known Japanese film director who died in 1963 on his 60th birthday. His films focus on relationships- generational (fathers and daughters, mothers and sons), marriages (arranged and otherwise), children (often rebellious) and taboo (in the west) subjects such as abortion. (See Tokyo Twilight!!!)

One interesting and repetitive aspect of Ozu’s films is the perspective he uses for his shots. What I didn’t realize is that he “moved the camera less and less as his career progressed.” Maybe if I had watched his movies in chronological order I would’ve noticed that. Probably not. What is impossible not to notice is his invention of the ‘tatami shot’, in which the camera is placed at a low height, supposedly where it would be if one were kneeling on a tatami mat. Another feature in every film I have seen is the long hallway with people inevitably crossing the perspective point. I think he used the same hallway in each of his movies. Personally, I like these predictable techniques. I find the long still shots relaxing and perhaps a little boring. So different from the dizzy Ken Burns-esque zooming in and out.

Near the end of the movie (The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice) Takae’s husband says that every marriage is like “rice flavoured by tea.” I haven’t figured that out yet but I'll think about it.

Ozu Movies

Here's a list of all Ozu's movies -in chronological order (unfortunately most of the early ones are lost). I will try to mark(*) those I have seen-if I can remember correctly.





Sword of Penitence
Dreams of Youth
Wife Lost
Pumpkin
A Couple on the Move
Body Beautiful
Treasure Mountain
Days of Youth
Fighting Friends Japanese Style
I Graduated, But...
The Life of an Office Worker
A Straightforward Boy
An Introduction to Marriage
Walk Cheerfully
I Flunked, But...
That Night's Wife
The Revengeful Spirit of Eros
The Luck Which Touched the Leg
Young Miss
The Lady and the Beard
Beauty's Sorrows
Tokyo Chorus*
Spring Comes from the Ladies
I Was Born, But...**
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?
Until the Day We Meet Again
Woman of Tokyo
Dragnet Girl
Passing Fancy*
A Mother Should Be Loved
A Story of Floating Weeds**
An Innocent Maid
Kagamijishi
An Inn in Tokyo
College is a Nice Place
The Only Son*
What Did the Lady Forget?
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
There Was a Father
Record of a Tenement Gentleman*
A Hen in the Wind
Late Spring*
The Munekata Sisters
Early Summer*
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice*
Tokyo Story**
Early Spring*
Tokyo Twilight***
Equinox Flower*
Good Morning*
Floating Weeds*
Late Autumn*
The End of Summer*
An Autumn Afternoon*
(54 in total)
*-those I have seen
**-my favorites
*** -this film will convert you if you are not already a fan

Stop! Do Not Pass Go! Go Directly to...

The TV, for what should arrive today but a


package in a plain brown wrapper. From Hong Kong. Three(!!!) unavailable (I thought) Ozu movies that I have not seen! I am in 7th (what happened to the first six?) heaven. Excuse me, gotta go... to the TV.

PS. Who sent these?
PPS. I know you did. Thank you.

Size Matters

The size of your bento box determines the number of calories it contains (now that makes sense). So you choose your box by the diet you are on and who you are -elderly lady bentos, little kid bentos, man bentos, etc.

My Latest Obsession

Bento

Wikipedia's definition is, "Bentō (弁当 or べんとう, Bentō) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. The Bento is still used by workers as a packed lunch, by families on day trips, for school picnics and sports days etc."

In Japan, bento box size is described not by its dimensions (inches or centimeters), but instead by its volume or capacity (in milliliters — ml). Why? Because a rule of thumb in Japan is that when you pack a bento box normally (A: 3 parts grain dishes, 1 part protein dishes, 2 parts vegetable dishes; B: without candy, junk food or fatty food; and C: without empty space), calories correspond directly to capacity. So a 600ml box should hold a 600-calorie meal.

Of course, I'm not this ambitious yet.