Japan - 7 April 2023

Maxine : Today we had a lazy morning, I slept  past 8 o’clock. For breakfast we grabbed some croissants.When we went outside, we found it was pouring with rain, the hotel receptionist saw us going out into the rain without umbrellas and just with coats.  He kindly gave us each an umbrella. 

We went to the bus stop caught the 205 bus that went over the Ali bridge to the Shin Aoibashi bus stop near Taro’s house. Taro is a chef who hosted our Japanese cooking lesson at his home. We went for a little wander before going to Taro’s house for the cooking class. During the cooking class we made Miso soup, Japanese omelette, and wagyu beef. I got to shave the burdock root for one of the dishes.  Another thing that I did was flipping the omelette, which was tricky to do with a pair of chopsticks. At the end we got to try all the food we had made during the class.  The pink and white marbled wagyu beef was my favourite, because it tasted creamy, rich and flavorful. There were two other couples, one from Germany but they live in Switzerland. And the other couple were Americans from New York. 

Tonight we are going to have a family, midnight feast, and play ‘pizza’, a game that I got for my birthday from my friend Sienna. 

As Maxine said, we had a lazy morning but after breakfast we did a couple of hours of homeschooling before heading for our main even of the day: Japanese cooking class.  A perfect way to spend on a rainy day.

We booked a cooking class with Taro (www.kyoto-cooking-class.com) at his home with his wife, Yoshiko.  It was a phenomenal experience that lasted over 3 hours.   We learnt not only a lot about Japanese cuisine but also about various aspects of Japanese culture.  The dishes we covered included:

• Miso soup
• Negi-miso
• Kinpira (stirred fried root vegetables)
• Dashimaki tamago (aka Japanese omelet)
  
• Wagyu beef

And the most important thing we learnt is that Dashi (Kombucha & fish stock) is pretty much the basis of all Japanese cuisine, and the basic umami flavour of most Japanese dishes. 

Rain continued after class, so we bussed it back to the hotel and stopped along the way for pastries and dinner. Late afternoon and evening was filled with more homeschool (when life gives you lemons and all that…) to get ahead in a few subjects, laundry and a quiet night avoiding the downpours. We even had to do a short tumble dry on all our sneakers to ensure they were dry enough to venture out in again tomorrow. 

Early start and a long-ish travel day tomorrow to Takayama.