Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

makiwi: I’m loving Last Cinderella ラストシンデレラ sort of despite myself.

Makiko Itoh

Swiss food is very underrated in my opinion - and I say this as a former (long time, about 15 years) resident of Switzerland and current resident of France. The food is mostly of the simple, hearty peasant-origin type, (although there are plenty of fancy starred restaurants too) but usually made with good, fresh ingredients and very tasty. (The photos here were all taken by me unless noted otherwise.)

Swiss sausages are usually excellent. This is from the Zeughauskeller in Zürich, a big old fashioned beer und wurst kind of place with grumpy old waitresses. The sausages are served with rösti, which is kind of ubiquitous in German-speaking Switzerland.


Birchermüesli at Confiserie Sprüngli. This is muesli that has been soaked overnight with grated apples,, served with berry purée, milk and optionally, cream. It's so delicious and unlike any other muesli you've had.


This is with that optional cream...


I really love Confiserie Sprüngli; they are a Zürich institution. Their hot chocolate is amazing. You can buy a mix - it's basically fine chips of dark chocolate. Swiss chocolate is excellent from top to bottom - that is, high end chocolates are terrific, but even cheap supermarket-grade chocolate bars are very good for the  price.


Swiss cheeses are excellent of course. What's really great is that there are so many types of small production, hyper-local cheeses to explore, beyond the famous ones like Gruyère and Emmentaler (the latter is the "Swiss cheese" with the big holes). If there's a morning market when you're there make sure to go and see what they are selling. The larger supermarkets also carry several local types of cheese (tip: look for them at the deli counter, not in the refrigerated shelves).



Bread is pretty great too. You can all kinds of breads from the rustic the refined. Arguably the most famous Swiss bread is the Butterzopf (braided white bread enriched with a little butter), traditionaly eaten on Sundays (Sonntagszopf).


Switzerland also has excellent charcuterie, especially dried sausages. This is from Neuchâtel in the French-speaking area.


A typical lunch you can get almost anywhere is a platter of cold cuts, cheese, and bread. This version is a Walliserplatte or Walliserteller, from the canton of Wallis (Valais).


There are all kinds of regional specialities. For instance, in the Doubs River valley across the border from France you can get freshly caught trout that's been poached gently in stock and served with boiled potatoes and tons of butter. Sooo good.


Switzerland is a land-locked country, but it gets lots of fish from its lakes and rivers. Another fish dish you see a lot is Eglifilet (fileted perch), panfried and served with potatoes, vegetables, and lemon. (not my photo)


Swiss wines are very good too - try splurging on a high-end one at least once. You can't get them elsewhere easily because the Swiss themselves drink up most of the production. I don' have a photo of a wine bottle, so here's a pic of a Swiss vineyard in the fall.


Finally...anything you eat while looking at scenery  like this is going to taste good, especially after a hike or even a slow stroll.



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makiwi: OMG, the new @Flickr is so frigging slow to load I want to stab it repeatedly

makiwi: this month’s Japan Times Japanese Kitchen column is about soramame, aka fava beans, broad beans, etc. http://t.co/6Egz3ldEJ6

Makiko Itoh
This is an impossible question to answer. All kinds of books for children are available in Japan. I also don't have kids myself so I don't pay a lot of attention to children's books. So I just went through the bestseller lists on Amazon Japan and picked up some that caught my eye. This is not a comprehensive list.

For infants, books with rhythmical sounds seem to be popular, like this one which seems to be about the sounds of water coming out of a tap.

A series starring a cat called Nontan, like this one that teaches kids about using the potty.



For preschoolers, a series about a family of crows who run a bakery in the woods is very popular. They are by an author/illustrator called Satoshi Kako, who was also a prominent children's rights activist and academic.

There are books in translation for all ages. For this age group there's the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Going up to grades 1-2, the current bestseller is "Why Grandfather Became A Ghost" (which is just my translation since there doesn't seem to be an official English version out) by Danish author
Kim Fupz Aakeson.


I  remember this from my childhood - nice to see it's still a bestseller: My First Errand by Yoriko Tsutsui.


Around this age academic/quiz books become popular too, like this math puzzles book.


Moving up to grades 3-4, here's another math skills book, using Doraemon to help things along (but written by a mathematician/teacher, not Doraemon's original author)

There's also a learning series starring Chibi Maruko-chan; this one teaches jukugo, or kanji combo words.

This is interesting...a introduction to shogi (Japanese chess) for kids.

Michael Ende seems to be very popular for grades 5-6. He's best known for The Neverending Story in English speaking countries, but Momo is his top seller at the moment in Japan.


Books about note-taking skills and such start to appear around this age. This is a translation of the book Mind Map For Kids.



For grades 7-8 (or junior high/middle school) there are a ton of how-to-study books, quiz books, serious works of non fiction ("Introduction to European Thinking"...??) and any number of novels and such.

This one looks like fun - a picture guide to outdoors survival skills.


By this age kids are reading regular fiction and sci-fi fantasy and so on, which aren't classified as children's books, such as the Harry Potter books. There really isn't a "young adult" genre in Japan.

From the middle or end of elementary school on, kids start to buy manga for themselves. Many manga cover "young adult" type subjects. Manga are not classified under the children's book category so it's hard to say which age group is reading what manga.

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vanilla etc

Makiko Itoh
As much as your budget and tummy can stand. Unless there are specifically stated rules (e.g. some all-you-can-eat sushi places say you have to eat everything on your plate) about leftovers, they don't care if you have any. You're paying for it whether you eat it or not. Sushi restaurants aren't any different from any other kind of restaurant in this regard.

If you're worried about over-eating or looking like a glutton, just sit at the counter and order 1 or 2 pieces (2 pieces = 1 kan) at a time. Then who's to know if you're eating your 1st piece or your 20th? Your chef will not judge you for eating a lot, that's for sure. Customers with hearty appetites are appreciated way more than the yahoos who only order like 4 pieces per hour.

Source: I used to work at a sushi restaurant, and have been to many in various countries. (I've even dated an itamae or two but that's another story.)

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Makiko Itoh
It looks like you're looking for a color scheme creator or picker. Mashable had a nice list of such tools and sites recently: 10 Tools for Creating Brilliant Color Schemes. I'm especially fond of ColourLovers. You'll want to grab the ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) format to import into Illustrator.

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I’m still getting reactions to the recently completed Japanese Cooking 101 course (if you missed it, here’s the complete list of lessons.) While the reactions have been overwhelming positive, I’ve gotten a couple of negative comments too.

One I wanted to address in particular is the accusation, if you will, that the lessons do not represent that way most people cook in Japan anymore.

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makiwi: @deliporo thanks for buying my book ^_^

Scented candles from Grasse

makiwi: @Koiyuki the questions don’t make any sense to me so I’ll have to pass

Makiko Itoh
Spam.


I've tried to like it many times. I've tried pan-frying it and making spam musubi, using it in stir fries, plain in sandwiches, and more. When I visited Hawaii a few years ago I had spam musubi several times because people kept telling me how good it was. But at the end of the day it's gelatinous, fatty, weirdly soft and way too salty canned pork product that people had to eat during wartime. It's the saltiness that's the killer for me. I guess it's possible to develop a taste for this stuff if you have to eat it for a long time. But I'm just not willing to force myself to do that.

On the other hand, natto is extremely good for you, and is indeed the food of the gods. ＼(^o^)／

(ETA: I like almost everything else mentioned on this list so far though...)

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Makiko Itoh
There's nothing inherently "Japanese" about this situation at all. So, either she:

• sincerely wants you to have a quintessentially Japanese experience, or
• wants to get in your pants.

Do Japanese girls frequently invite casual acquaintances/sort-of friends to go stay at a hotel or inn (a ryokan = traditional style inn) for a night? Nope. But maybe she was just naively suggesting it  without considering it could be taken a different way. Some people are just kind of socially unaware like that.

Another  possiblity is that you somehow misunderstood her and she was saying YOU  should go to a ryokan, or with a group, or something. People do go to  ryokans, especially ones with hot springs in nice areas, all the time.  It's great

You may want to ASK HER before you go off on your trip together, to clear up any misunderstanding beforehand. (Note, some comments disagree with this approach. As a female I would much prefer to be asked up front rather than let assumptions lead  to a genuinely awkward situation...but maybe that's me.)

If you don't want to do that you may want to consult a mutual friend who knows her better what they think.

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Makiko Itoh
There is no right or wrong order to order. You can order whatever you want, in whatever order you like.

This is what I do though, if I'm sitting at the counter.

1. Good/high end sushi place that I've been to before. I always go omakase (the chef chooses for you). Usually he'll serve you the best fish in season first, usually(but not always) in this rough order: white fish, fattier fish (e.g. tuna), shellfish/squid/octopus, hikarimono or shiny-skinned 'blue' fish like mackerel and herring. At which point the chef either keeps going, or asks what else you'd like to try.

2. A sushi place that's new to me: I order a hikarimono early on, the eel or sea ell (unagi or anago) and the tamago (omelette), then if all is well go on with the fish; if not, stick to rolls. This is something I learned from an old sushi chef many years ago - he said you can usually judge how good the place is by how they prep those things.

3.  Conveyor belt sushi: Whatever comes by that doesn't look like it's been around the room a couple of times.

I have a personal preference for finishing with a ume-shio handroll and tamago though. The sweet tamago is like a little dessert.

If you're ordering a pre-plated set, you can eat it in whatever order you like.

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makiwi: hehehe RT @jlleblanc: it's a stubborn variety, bolts almost immediately if you don't harvest it right away.

makiwi: OMG, I submitted a recipe to an editor with the ‘er’ missing from ‘butterhead lettuce” >.<

To test responsive design layouts