More Food and Buddha

I love that the weather has cooled off and it's starting to look and feel more like fall here! Although with that comes typhoon season and every week we have 2-3 days of cloud, wind and rain as the effect of a nearby storm.  Unfortunately, that has cut into my beach time this week - but the weekend was perfect weather and it should start to clear up again tomorrow! 

We went to Kamakura again this weekend and saw The Great Buddha statue in the Kotokuin Temple.  It is a statue made of bronze and is 13.3 meters tall - making it the second tallest bronze statue of Buddha in Japan. 

The statue was first cast in 1252 A.D., and was originally housed inside temple buildings.  However, the temple buildings were destroyed multiple times by typhoons in the 14th and 15th  centuries, and finally by a tidal wave in 1498, after which the buildings were not re-constructed.   There was a large earthquake in 1923 that destroyed the statues base, but this has since been repaired.  The latest alterations were done in 1960, which included strengthening the support around Buddha's neck and also making it possible for the body of the statue to move on the base - in hopes of avoiding damage from further earthquakes.  

We also got to go inside of Great Buddha (only 20 cents a person).  

Even though this was originally cast in the 1200's - the techniques used to build the statue are considered very sophisticated, especially for that time period.  It was cast in 30 separate stages.  The lattice pattern seen on the inside represents the large number of molds placed on top of each other in layers.  The cast pieces were connected together using a process called ikarakuri. 

There are many shops and treat stands around the Great Buddha statue.  One of the most infamous desserts served is the green tea ice cream and the sweet potato ice cream.  While they both have the potential of being awful - they are actually really delicious.  There are pictures at one ice cream stand of President Obama eating the sweet potato ice cream during his last visit.  He was re-visiting a place he had been to when he was 6 years old with his family and had the green tea flavor at that time.  

Another great find in the area was the dessert called dorayaki.  This consists of 2 pancake-like patties with some sort of filling inside.  I had pumpkin which was great, but the other flavors sound wonderful too.  

If anyone is a fan of animae - apparently there is a popular character who is addicted to dorayaki and will fall for all sorts of tricks and traps involving them.  One company even makes a limited edition of these called Doraemon Dorayaki (names after the character) every year. 

I've tried doing some authentic Japanese home cooking - the most recent of which is Shabu-Shabu. 

Shabu-Shabu is a one pot dish, which features very thinly sliced beef cooked tableside in a kelp-based dashi (broth).   You can also place vegetables of all kinds in the broth to cook as well.  The meat however, is held with chopsticks and moved back and forth in the water until cooked (which surprisingly takes less than 1 minute). The name of the dish is derived from the sound emitted while moving the beef side to side in the broth.  After cooking, you dip the meat/vegetables into a ponzu or goma (sesame seed) sauce.  It was really good, now we have to go out to a restaurant and order it to see how mine stacks up.  :)  
To cook this, we invested in an induction heater/cooker and a donabe pot.  The donabe pot (which means earthenware), is made out of special clay and meant to withstand heat from open flame.  This type of pot distributes heat very evenly throughout.  Before the first use - you have to simmer rice and water to make a porridge type quality substance to "season" the pot, as well as to seal microscopic pores in the clay that when heated can cause the pot to break. 

Lastly in this blog, I want to recommend a documentary that was recommended to me by my sister-in-law.  It is about an 85 year old man who has been a sushi chef for 75 years here in Japan!  His restaurant is below ground in a train station in Tokyo - has 9 counter seats and no bathroom - yet has earned a 3 Michelin stat rating (the highest honor in the restaurant business), and the only one given to a sushi chef.   I was only to going to watch the first 5-10 minutes at first and then wait and watch it later, but I was hooked after that short amount of time.  It goes into the intense training and dedication one most have to be a sushi chef (after 10 years of training is when they start letting you make some sushi - the egg one, not even the fish one), as well as the hard-working character and the intense expectations one puts on themselves in the Japanese culture.   It also touches on the problem of over-fishing (huge problem), and just how important the feelings/values of the group are in the culture versus the feelings/values of just one person.   Excellent, excellent and worth the watch!  Also, it was so cool to see places that we have visited so far on the film as well.   I would say we would be eating there soon - but the reservations are up to a month in advance and the tasting course (20 pieces of sushi) is $300 a person!  I see a birthday present in my future..... ;)  Below is the preview/link to the preview of the documentary (Jiro Dreams of Sushi).  It is free streaming on Netflix.

www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/

Enjoy!