#taranome

たらの芽は、タラノキ（タラノキ科）の若芽のことを言います。タラノキは、日本各地の山野に自生する落葉性の低木で、春になると若芽を伸ばします。この若芽がたらの芽と呼ばれ、山菜として食用にされます。 たらの芽は、ほろ苦く独特の風味を持つ山菜で、春の訪れを告げる食材の一つとして知られています。ビタミンやミネラル、食物繊維などを豊富に含んでおり、栄養価が高いことも特徴です。

It is my second and last day in Hamamatsu, Japan today. Despite the rain we went out today, and now I’m waiting for OS X to update—Finder keeps freezing after every 3 or so clicks and it’s driving me completely crazy. Hopefully this update will solve my problem or I will have to pirate Windows. Anyway, we’ve been in Japan for 2 weeks today; visited Tokyo twice, Sendai, Kaminoyama, Nikko and Hamamatsu. Tomorrow we take the shinkansen to Kyoto for 5 days and stay in a temple guesthouse!

From the Philippines we landed in Tokyo Narita airport, where we activated our JR passes (essential for travelling in Japan) and collected our rental sim cards from the post office (http://rental.cdjapan.co.jp/index_en_jpy_10.html). We then followed Megumi’s instructions to get to her apartment (one of Jason’s family friends), where we stayed for 2 nights. That evening she took us to a local Japanese restaurant—the kind where patrons sit at a bar, right in front of the chefs while they prepare your dishes and make conversation. Our chef prepared the most delicious vegetable tempura, sushi, salads and miso soup. We tried a seasonal vegetable called taranome which was especially good. The chef had such a twinkly smile and kind laugh, I wished he were my grandfather.

The next day we went to the Ghibli museum (Megumi very kindly bought us tickets a month in advance—it’s extremely popular). This museum is absolutely fantastic, I had the best time. There were some really cool demonstrations of animation techniques, original paintings from some of the films (too amazing I was in awe), and a full size cat bus!! I really wanted to climb on it but alas it was covered in kids, and sadly no photos were allowed. We also saw a short film about a girl trekking through the countryside and her encounters with spirits, accompanied by human voice sound effects.

After staying with Megumi, we took a short tour around the North of Japan for a week before returning to Tokyo for 5 more days. The second time in Tokyo, we stayed at an apartment in Asakusa, East Tokyo. One of the main reasons for returning to Tokyo was to go to AnimeJapan (formerly known as Tokyo International Anime Fair). We managed to skip the ticket queues by buying tickets at our local Family Mart. The fair itself was crowded but otherwise nothing like the London MCM Expo as I was expecting it to be. We watched the trailers for the next season’s shows, spotted some cringe western otaku (fanatics), and a small variety of cosplay including some girls in sexy costume posing in front of a car for a crush of desperate photographers, myself included.

Tokyo highlights include seeing so many women and men wearing kimono (especially the really fancy kind that couples would rent and then have photos taken on the bridge that we crossed everyday); enjoying the incense and peculiar architecture at Tsukiji Hongan Ji (an Indian style Buddhist temple); ginger chai tea and a fancy toilet that opened the lid automatically upon sensing my arrival, at Ginza Ginger cafe; getting surprisingly drunk with Jason on grapefruit flavoured beer (9% alc.) while watching anime; a very elegant Ikebana exhibition with Megumi amongst the cherry blossoms at Yoyogi Park (I think); and an acutely embarrassing maid cafe experience at @Home, Akihabara.