Around Japan in 47 curries: Iwate cheese
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Tom Baker (Chiba, 1989-91) is writing a 47-part weekly series of posts on his Tokyo Tom Baker blog, in which he samples and comments on a curry from a different prefecture each week. Here’s an excerpt from his ninth installment, about Iwate Prefecture.
The Choshu Five in London, with Masaru Inoue at center (Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons)
When I first came to Japan, I found some Koiwai cheese in a supermarket and mistook it for an American product. After all, Kiowa – as I initially misread the name – has an American ring. (The Kiowa are a Native American tribe.)
However, I now know the history of Koiwai cheese – and its unusual name – goes all the way back to the adventures of the Choshu Five, a group of young men who secretly left Japan in 1863 to study in Britain. After their return, they became leading figures in the country’s rapid modernization. One of them, Masaru Inoue, is remembered as “the father of the Japanese railways.”
In 1888, Inoue visited Iwate to inspect the progress of railway construction there. According to the Koiwai website, the volcanic soil and barren-looking windswept terrain struck him as a promising area for ranching…
I’ll Make It Myself!: What I Ate in Nagano, Day 3: Matsumoto, Miasa
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L.M. Zoller (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. A writer, web administrator, and translator, ze also writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group in LinkedIn.
New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to jetwit [at] jetwit.com.
On our last day in Nagano, we went to see Matsumoto Castle and drove through Hakuba and Miasa on the way back to Kanazawa.
