Tag: Japanese customs

The recipe for sweet potato yōkan that I often made this fall.

Method

1. Clean the Japanese gelatin stick and soak it in water.
2. Wash the sweet potato thoroughly and wrap it with the skin on for cooking in the microwave. 4 minutes at 600W. Flip and cook for 3 minutes.
3. Make the Japanese gelatin liquid, while cooking the sweet potato in the microwave. Tear the soaked Japanese gelatin into small pieces and boil over heat. When it comes to a boil, add the sugar, stir to dissolve, and boil for 2 minutes. It seems that it solidifies more easily if it is brought to a full boil.
4. Break off the stringy parts of the head and tail of the sweet potato. Peel it. Tear it into about 5 pieces, and put them in a mixer.
5. Remove the Japanese gelatin liquid from the heat and add it to the mixer and mix avoiding lumps left. It seems to be a good idea to stir the mixture with a spoon every now and then.
6. Transfer from the mixer to a suitable container, smooth its surface, and put it in the refrigerator.

That’s all. After it hardens, warm it quickly with hot water, take it out of the container, cut it, and eat it. It has a simple taste which is affected by the sweetness of the sweet potato.

   Tonight is Izayoi (十六夜) this year. I took a picture of the Moon again. During the daytime it was cloudy with occasional showers, but at the night the Moon is clear.

   After one week rainy days, we had a sunny day today. So I took the photos of the remaining cherry blossoms. This year, in our town, we have almost had no good day for Hanami until today during cherry-blossom season.

   The declaration of flowering(開花宣言). For what? For cherry blossoms in my garden this year he-he. I’ll show you the photo. See the right image, which has only one blossom open. Today was very sunny and it will be sunny tomorrow. So, the peak bloom date is soon.
 
   On another right image you see plants like writing brushes, which are tsukushi(土筆). Tsukushi is one of spring greens and eatable. They say scrambled eggs with tsukushi are good though I don’t like them so much.

Yesterday, i.e. 2015 December 13, Hanyū Yuzuru(羽生結弦) had his third Grand Prix Final title in a row in Barcelona, Spain.

For the 2015–16 season, he used a certain music called Seimei for the free skating. The music was took from the film soundtrack of Onmyōji(陰陽師). I don’t love this as free skating music very much. Because I love it as the music of the ending dance of the film, and Hanyū’s skating broke the dance image though his skating was excellent.

   Tonight is Nochi no tsuki (後の月). I took pictures of the Moon. At Sep. 27, I mean at Otsukimi this year, I failed to take pictures of dark patches on the Moon. One of my reasons of failures is that night was cloudy, but most biggest reason is my new digital camera, DSC-WX220, which I don’t use longer enough.

   The ume (梅) blossoms are still in full bloom in my garden (fig.1 white, fig.2 red), but I can see peach and apricot blossoms here and there in my town after 桃の節句 (peach festival) (fig.3 ひな飾り by Tirol-Choco, it’s a chocolate box (^o^). ).

   All told, I wanted to recite one of spring poems and chose 春風 (Spring wind) by 白居易（樂天）. How do you feel?

亦　薺　櫻　一
道　花　杏　枝
春　楡　桃　先
風　莢　梨　發
爲　深　次　苑
我　村　第　中
來　裏　開　梅

• Rough translation of the poem
  Spring wind makes one of the buds on a branch of Ume tree break in the imperial garden
  Cherry, apricot, peach and pear following
  It opens shepherd’s purse flowers and rustles shells of elm fruits in my village nearby mountains
  It makes me happy because I also have the spring wind

   If you read the poem, read top to bottom and right to left.

   Tonight is “Otsukimi“. Yesterday, I had very clear moon, but cloudy tonight (around 21:00).

   We have a folklore that says a rabbit lives on the moon and it pounds mochi. A song for you about rabbits and the moon. I apologize for the noise in advance. After upgrading to Windows 8.1, I cannot use a genuine sound driver for NJ2100. The noise maybe depends on it.

• うさぎ (Rabbit)
  Usaki, usaki, nani mite haneru.
  うさぎ，うさぎ，なに見てはねる。
  Jūgoya otsuki sama, mite haneru.
  十五夜お月さま，見てはねる。

   Now, I can see beautiful Full Moon. But, almost Sep 9.

   Today is Risshū(立秋), so I was going to clean the patrimonial graveyard in this morning. Actually, this is for Obon(お盆). Most of Japanese do the cleaning of the graveyard for Obon still now, but all of them do not do it on Risshū. It is my family custom.

   It’s sunny day today. I cleaned the graveyard from 6:30 to 8:00. The period we feel cooler than around noon.