Totally Tokyo

Uba, A Newly Discovered Favorite!

So Japan and I have an awesome realtionship. I love it, it loves me back.

Last night I had the complete honor of being invited over to a Japanese household by a friend of ours from our hang out. Her parents wanted to meet us, and cook us a traditional meal. Noriko, the cutest coolest girl that we meet at the Pearling Cafe, has enjoyed our foriegn company, and we have enjoyed her for putting up with our attempts of speaking Japanese. And so when she asked Edith, Ali, Mario and myself over to her parents house we were all deeply honored. I had read some where or another that being invited to a home is one of the largest compliments you can give a guest. More often than not a traditional evening is spent outside of the house because the homes are too small to cater to guests. I was reminded of this honor by everyone that I told my plans too. Noriko only knows a little bit of English, and I barely know Japanese, but I was lucky enough to be surround by my friends, who thank god, have years of the language under their belt. OK enough about how we got the invite, lets talk about what we experience:

We all were soooo nervous to go to the home, we brought a watermelon with us (a rare and great fruit here in Japan, and when looking for one we were informed that they could cost 50 dollars! I dont know about that, but we found one for a little over 1,000 yen) as well as some chocolates from New York, a fine state of the USA! Noriko's family welcomed us with such kindness and showed us to a room which had a table that was FILLED with soo many entrees! I got scared on the ride over that I would not be able to eat most of the meal, since I do not eat meat, but Noriko told her mom all about me and she prepared meals that did not have meat, accept the side of chicken. Again I felt sooo honored! There were over 15 entrees on the table,with two seafood stews brewing on another table. We later found out that the dad was a professional soccer player, and now owns a company which produces Uba, which is a seperate section from Tofu. Apparently it is a very expensive and delicate food that most people travel to Kyoto for (when i shared my story about Uba with Japanese students later they were all jealous and surprised!). There was octopus, edamame, potoato salad, squid,some sort of fish I had never ahd before, which was to die for!, seafood lettuce wraps, tofu pockets, celery mixture thing, as you can see it is hard to describe, jsut check out the pictures.

My "I statments" about myself from Japanese Elements 1 came in handy. I told my age, my major, my college, where I am from, and they said they were extremly impressed with my Japanese, which was flattering, and even if was a lie, i will take it! And the family said they loved my style, and that was a vain compliment that I cherrish! haha! OK enough with that, now here are the pics of the food, be jealous!
Best meal I will probably ever have here:

posted by Stephy-ru @ Friday, September 15, 2006