The Japanese ume-fruit is a kind of plum or apricot that is pickled with sea salt and eaten as a sour, salty snack, umeboshi. The first time I tried umeboshi was when I studied in Sweden and shared a dorm kitchen with a Japanese exchange student, Mari from Sapporo. One evening, she pulled out a little bag and offered me to try this very special snack, that she had brought with her from Japan.
Social distance does not have to turn into mental distance, so these days I make an extra effort to reach out to the people I care about. I just talked to my friend Rieko on Line about what life is like in Japan during the days of social distancing and self-quarantine:
Tokyo is extreme in many ways, but I particularly find the relation between the genders very different from anywhere else. At most business hotels (budget hotels), there is an illustrated call girls catalog the size of a phonebook placed on the bedside table, and in areas such as Shinjuku, Roppongi and Akasaka, there is a hostess club on every corner.
While K-beauty is rocking all over the world, J-beauty has quietly been doing business as usual, providing efficient products to the demanding, hard-to-impress Japanese market. Whereas K-beauty is often seen as very trend-driven, with a strong appeal to younger people, J-beauty is more about high quality and discreet luxury that speak to women in their 30s and 40s.
When I am in Japan, I can eat sushi for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and maybe have a bowl of ramen and some mochi for dessert, but I am quite certain that this is not what a typical Japanese diet looks like. So what do Japanese people eat? I asked my Japanese friend Rieko to tell me about what she would normally eat on a weekday:
Last time I was in Tokyo, I stayed at Akiba Bay Hotel, which is a new capsule hotel, just a short walk from Akihabara Station. You are not allowed to take photos inside the hotel, but the layout was similar to the capsule hotel I stayed at last year. Akiba Bay Hotel is women only, and everything was very pastel-colored and cute.
Kakigori, Japanese shaved ice, is one of the most refreshing treats you can get yourself in the summer. The “flakes” are much lighter than the shaved ice in Denmark, almost like a cup full of snow, and the fluffy texture makes it almost impossible to eat without a spoon.
Back in 2003 I visited Japan for the first time. I was there with Rikke, and in less than one week we managed to party hard in Tokyo, sleep through an earthquake and fly off to Sapporo to meet my friend Mari before heading back to Denmark again. This was my first hectic introduction to Japan, and it was love at first sight.
In a dynamic city like Tokyo, things change quickly, and what’s popular today is often forgotten tomorrow. Calbee is one of the exceptions, which has managed to stay relevant for decades, and the brand’s potato-based snacks never seem to go out of style.
Crepes have been all the rage for quite a while, but these days, the absolute must-eat in Tokyo is the super fluffy soufflé pancakes, and one of the places to get them is at Burn Side St Cafe. So even though it was raining and there was a long line outside, this was where I went, after I was done browsing the shops in Harajuku. I think I waited for almost an hour to get a table. Not sure about the exact waiting time, but it was long enough for me to consider leaving, because I hate waiting, even if it’s for pancakes.
