{"id":11933,"date":"2010-05-31T21:50:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T01:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=11933"},"modified":"2010-05-31T23:09:32","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T03:09:32","slug":"wit-life-97-anko-obsessed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/31\/wit-life-97-anko-obsessed\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #97: Anko obsessed"},"content":{"rendered":"

WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For those of you who have been faithful readers of my blog, you probably have a sense of the sweet tooth that I have, especially regarding \u548c\u83d3\u5b50(wagashi<\/em>).\u00a0 This is something known well by those closest to me, as well as those looking for the fastest way into my heart :)\u00a0 My birthday was this past weekend, and my friends came through with flying colors in terms of satisfying my cravings for something sweet.<\/p>\n

I celebrated my birthday with dinner at Koiso<\/a>, the best Japanese restaurant in NY (and I’m not saying that just because I used to waitress there!).\u00a0 It is a truly authentic family-run joint where regulars dominate the clientele, and there are always multiple conversations taking place in Japanese.\u00a0 Taisho (the sushi chef), gets his supplies from the Freeport Fish Market, and he always lets customers know what\u00a0 fish are the freshest that day.\u00a0 Omakase<\/em> (leaving it in the hands of the master) is definitely the way to go for the best sushi\/sashimi!<\/p>\n

Taisho’s wife Kyoko-san is the waitress and all-around life of Koiso, and the warmest woman you will ever want to meet.\u00a0 For my birthday, she had all of my favorites prepared.\u00a0 As you can see in the picture on the right resembling an anko<\/em> trifecta, she made me a generous portion of \u8d64\u98ef (sekihan<\/em>, sticky rice steamed with azuki beans used for omedetai<\/em> or celebratory occasions) as well as zenzai<\/em> (bottom left, minus mochi) from the leftover azuki beans.<\/p>\n

The small gold box on the right was actually part of a gift from my former homestay \u304a\u6bcd\u3055\u3093 (okaasan)<\/em> back in Kumamoto.\u00a0 This local wagashi <\/em>is called \u9663\u592a\u9f13 (jindaiko)<\/em>, named after the taiko drums used for military purposes that were played at Kumamoto Castle back in the day.\u00a0 This is probably my favorite Japanese sweet, due to it being natsukashii <\/em>(nostalgic) as well as its uniqueness of having anko<\/em> jelly on the outside and mochi<\/em> on the inside, the reverse of most wagashi.<\/em> \u3042\u3042\u3042\u3001\u5e78\u305b (shiawase<\/em>, or happy)! <\/em><\/p>\n

In other news, there were two Japan-related articles in the Times yesterday.\u00a0 One<\/a> talks about the Major League debut of Eri Yoshida, “a diminutive 18-year-old woman who arrived from Japan with dimples and a sidearm knuckleball” who is now part of the independent Golden League’s Chico Outlaws.\u00a0 She goes by the nickname \u30ca\u30c3\u30af\u30eb\u59eb (nakkuru hime<\/em> or “Knuckle Princess”), and if her impressive debut is any indication she has much success ahead of her.\u00a0 The other article<\/a> discusses the plans of tech provider Softbank to expand into China.\u00a0 Happy reading!<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. For those of you who have been faithful readers of my blog, you probably have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,70,18,1,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-food-drink","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-36t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11933"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11965,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11933\/revisions\/11965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}