Tuesday, May 02, 2006

she's making a list, she's checking it twice....

Saturday Sir is taking me for our annual pilgrimage to Mitsuwa market. i'd love to go there more often, but believe me - i'm grateful to get to go even once a year. i've heard thru the grapevine that they've remodeled the food court, so i'm looking forward to checking out the new restaurants. i'm frantically making lists of what to buy so i don't forget to pick up some vital culinary necessity! (Gohan, ume, hijiki, daikon....barley tea.....Kewpie Mayo!)

It's practically 'slave barb celebrates her Japanese Heritage' week around here. First we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens to the Sakura Matsuri. i also bought a set of Koinobori, traditional Carp shaped flags to celebrate Children's Day on May 5th. Yes, yes - i'm celebrating my inner Japanese child who was never celebrated when she was a kid. It's a re-claiming of sorts.
(the father 'fish' in the set is usually black - so Sir can "flag" black carp on Friday! i will be the red carp....the fisting fish?)

my father(Norwegian-American) didn't let my mother (Japanese) teach us any of the language or cook any of the foods. He was a pretty weird dude, if you ask me. Why marry a Japanese lady and then deny her heritage? i understand now that i'm a adult why she was so miserable and angry when i was growing up. Not an excuse for her violence, but at least i know why it happened.

She would only put her foot down at New Year's when she insisted that we have O-Mochi. Yum! If you were to mention mochi to me or my siblings, we would probably all still drool. :-)

Saturday we're off to Mitsuwa, where we'll both feast on good things in the food court and i will wander around feeling inadequate that i can't read any of the packages and guessing what the contents are on some items. Sigh... it's annoying but i try to look at it as an adventure. Maybe i'll get brave and try to eat some natto.....maybe not! (people either love it or say it's like snot. Yummy. Snot.Hmmm.)

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