Tag: shopping

Valentine drive in Tokyo ;)

View of Tokyo bay from the dino bridge  

After a rainy and windy morning.  The sun finally showed up, it was incredibly warm, so we decided to go for a (Valentine) drive ;). You know like they do in the Japanese drama… Ahahah! Except that ours was a little twisted, we always love to visit industrial areas!! So this time we picked a scenic route through the city that leads us to the “dinosaur” bridge, a bridge that was opened a few years ago in the bay and that we’ve never taken so far. Eventually the route we took was a (romantic) garbage and waste collection route since we’ve passed all Tokyo dumpsters that happen to all be on the newer islands in the sea front with a beautiful view all with names that try to conceal the hideousness of their finction: Yumenoshima (Dream island), Wakashu (Young land)…!! Actually Yumenoshima-夢の島 is worth a trip for itself for its little museum on nuclear tests in the Pacific and the sadly famous wreck of the Daigofukuryu-第五福竜. The route we took was passing also right next to Haneda airport, so planes were just flying over ours heads at low altitude! Kind of love that! Finally we crossed the bay arrived in Heiwajima and Shinagawa’s warehouses and containers warf, for the industrial part of the ride, passed the water sewage and recycling plant and drove to Tokyo tower, before heading to Mitsukoshi to buy ourselves some little Japanese sweets: plum jelly and sakura manju and watch the sunset from home. Happy Valentine! Hope your Sunday was a good one!!!

PS: I also prepared the classic  chocolate truffles for Valentine!

Rice – お米

In Japan finding deliciouss Japanese rice to cook is not difficult, it’s like finding bread in France or pasta in Italy. Yet finding organic rice or at least non chemical rice is not so easy. There are only few places I know in Tokyo where to find some for sure and the one usually sold in supermarkets is not chemical free. In the countryside the “Eco” label is already a guaranty of better quality in terms of production, but I’ve hardly found it in the city. Isumi is one place that grows rice in Chiba and they have a rather big production, and I was surprised the other day to find something new on the shelf at the local cooperative: a 100% chemical free rice grown locally and sold in a nicely design package. So I had to buy it. I support all initiatives for local, chemical-free, environmental-conscious production and if possible aesthetical and sustainable packaging. I think this one has it all. I believe the packaging (who buys 2kg rice vag in the country???) is really targeted at Tokyo hipsters (even if there is nothing really as such) but I think there is something good in developing it, it just has to stay sizeable and not to become a crazy business which losses all the ethics and original purpose.

An unexpected finding

Rainy Saturday calls for a drive to some antiques and old stuff shop or kottoyasan (骨董屋さん) in Japanese. There are not too many but the one from the country are usually much better than in the city and much cheaper. We usually go to one we like in Otaki and where I’ve found many treasures, this time we decided to find new ones, and drove to Kimitsu (west coast of Chiba peninsula). To find a really amazing one. Tons of outdoor stuff (finally found a little (=that fits in our trunk) lantern for the garden), music instruments, paintings and as usual potteries, plates, bowls…  As in any of such places it’s never heated nor lit and so cluttered that you need a flash light to see things. Moving around also is an art since passages are really narrow! But still I love these places and could stay hours, looking at all the pieces of life and history that has accumulated there. A perfect occupation for a rainy day.

And because today was unexpectedly sunny we could spend the day outside trimming trees and trying a setting for the lantern. 

52 yens

Dekopon
Dekopon

Pretty much every morning on my way to the lab I stop by the local supermarket to buy me something for lunch. Usually some fresh veggies (avocado, tomato, rucolla…) to eat raw in my sandwich or with some pasta-rice-seeds, and a fruit for my snack in the afternoon. After the season of tangerines, I wanted some different citrus fruit and found beautiful iokan. So yesterday I got myself this kind of big tangerine that looks like an orange but not as sweet. And this morning when I was at the cashier the lady explained to me that she owed me 52yens because yesterday she mistakenly charged me for an other citrus fruit. I was really impressed! Not that she misrecognize the fruit, but that she absolutely wanted to reimburse me!!

Back when I lived in France, I remember there were oranges of a few sorts, pomelos, grapefruits, tangerines of two or three sorts, then lemons and limes, cedrats and a few other variations quite difficult not to identify immediately. Arriving in Japan I discovered a whole new citrus fruits variation. Of course there are the now famous and trendy yuzu, but there is really much more than this. The variations vary with the different regions and I am sure not to have completed the exploration, if it can be completed! I don’t even know where to start from with dekopon, iokan, natsu mikan, hassaku, kiyomi, shikwasa… All are delicious with a typical taste and smell, and most grow at different time of the year. They can be used in different preparations or just peeled and eaten like tangerines.

Ochanomizu-Akihabara revival

The west of Tokyo with it’s big centers like Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, Shimokitazawa… has been for long the most lively and trendy places of Tokyo, while the east was mere old areas attracting old people, sometimes falling appart or for the tourists: Asakusa, Ueno, Akihabara, Nihonbashi, Ginza… The area between Ochanomizu ad Akihabara, and the one between Asakusa and Nihonbashi (right where we live), have changed slowly in the past 5 years with a lot of cafes and craft shops opening here and there. The trend was confirmed by two big initiatives using the under-track space of the Yamanote line in Okachimachi and the Sobu line in Manseibashi: aki-oka artisan 2k540 and Maach ecute. If I knew about both for some time and have been to aki-oka quite often, I’ve never really had the chance to go to Maach which opened more recently, until yesterday. Since it is an “ecute”, the usual name for stations shopping mall I was expecting to see the same fashion and accessories brands as in every ecute, but it was a completely different thing. Under the arcades of the tracks there is a path and shop, or rather stalls continuously span, without knowing exactly what brand it is. The space is very beautiful, and since I went there around 20:30 it was extremely quiet. The majority of shops are interior and natural clothing shops, which is again the typical new image of Tokyo east side, with similar trends in Marunouchi, in Nihonbashi… There are also a number of cafes and restaurants. I went to Fukumori, because I like their food from the north of Honshu and their simple concept very much, and have been often to their other shop in Bakurocho, but there are several others cafe I’d like to try. I’ll keep you updated!

I didn’t regret paying a visit there, and I think that’d be one of my hide away for rainy days! 

The perspective in the shopping gallery
The perspective in the shopping gallery

The perfect pillows

I can fell asleep and nap pretty much anywhere, even at the dentist during a consultation, or during my pilates sole work out! Yet I’m very sensitive to sleeping quality, and it’s gotten worst in the past tears with a constant lack of sleep. So finding the perfect sleeping gears has been quite difficult but I think that now I have finally it!!! Several years ago when we settled in Japan I bought a big duvet at Muji and I must say that I’ve never expected it to be so nice, and fluffy and warm after all these years. For the bed we once decided to get rid of our futon and got a wonderful Simons  bed. Never regretted that investment! I even often miss it when we are traveling!!! But for the pillows it’s been more difficult. We’ve had plenty but never satisfied until we stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Paris and I tried their pillows. The first time I thought it was just by chance that I slept so well, but after a few nights I was just in love with these pillows, super voluminous, yet like giant marshmallows, with super support and softness. 

So finally I undressed one pillow to check out where they came from and discovered Ploh (http://www.ploh.com). Ploh is Singapore based company making luxury down bedding. Once back in Tokyo I started to hate my pillows and finally ordered Ploh pillows. After one week they were delivered via Fedex. And no disappointment! They are just as great as I hope they would be!!!

Sweet dreams! 

Maison Plisson

While in Paris last month I was curious about going to Maison Plisson since I read so many fantastic reviews about it in magazines, blogs etc… Maison Plisson http://www.lamaisonplisson.com, for those who don’t know, this is a Parisian grocery select store that has opened last May. It offers selected products from a variety of places mainly French but also from Europe.

As they also have a cafe and a restaurant we first went for lunch there before checking the adjacent shop.  It was an awfully rainy day so eating outside was not an option, so we had a tiny table squeezed between other tables and it felt quite exiguous. Like the whole place was designed as a cafetaria for 10 year old kids. Luckily the food was really nice, simple, home-made like.

My main disappoinment was the grocery shop. I was expecting a huge store but it’s rather ridiculously tiny supermarket on the ground floor, with low ceiling, and a basement that is even tinier and lower. Passed the disappointment of the entire space, what about the products? The cheeses and charcuterie looked nice but it was not an option for us since we couldn’t cook or bring back any to Japan. The fruits and veggies were scarse and not too appaling, bad timing maybe. And I was hopping a treasure trove grocery shop, but it didn’t impressed me at all, in the basement it is super tiny, a few shelves only, mainly foreign products and processed bins and sweets, it looked rather like a gift shop… I was hoping to find some delicious lentil from Auvergne, big white kidney beans from Toulouse, buckwheat flour from Brittany, and other wonderful things… But I didn’t. The wine shop is also a small corner in the basement…

So unless you can bring back fresh products home or live in Paris, for me Maison Plisson’s shop = Non!

The pictures of this post come from Maison Plisson Instagram account. 

Ingredients for bread

Multi grain and whole wheat little bread made for breakfast
Multi grain and whole wheat little bread made for breakfast

At first when I started to bake my own bread I didn’t know much about it and I didn’t know how to chose the ingredients. As in any preparation the quality of the ingredient is crucial and it is not easy to understand what is a good flour and what is not, and also there are so many types of flours and bread that it took me some time. More over as I access information about bread mainly from French sources adapting to the Japanese available products was a hard task!

After using a lot of French organic products and random flours I could find in Japan, I think I have found a good set of resources locally. My main source of ingredients and in particular raw yeast is Cuoca. They have a wide selection of products, you can order on-line, but for me the best is that they have a shop that covers half a floor at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. My favorite flour there is the “Tradition Francaise” by Viron, perfect for every white bread, and in particular baguette.
For most of the bread now I use the organic flour I can find in the supermarket. It is not a local product but the whole wheat flour and the hard flour are really perfect for my breads.
For the seeds, I haven’t find yet something that satisfies me fully in Japan. A lot of the seeds are not organic or comes from China, which I must say worries me because of pollution problems. Right now I use seeds that I buy in France in any organic shop such as Bio C Bon, Naturalia etc… but I hope I’ll find something suitable soon in Japan!

Happy week-end, for me it’s going to be a lot of baking I know!!!

Okinawa fresh products

I discovered passion fruits while traveling to the Seychelles when I was 6. On Bird island I ate my first one and immediately loved the juicy, sour, sweet, crunchy little fruit.

Back in France I’ve eaten passion fruits but nothing to compare with the one that haven’t travel so long.

Japan islands span over such a long  North-South axis that Okinawa offers delicious tropical fruits and it’s only A a 2h-flight away from Tokyo. When we travelled to Ishigaki three years ago we fojnd several farms growing pineapple, passion fruits, mangoes, dragon fruits… That also offer to send to Tokyo anytime you want. It’s a very nice manner to have super fresh fruits from Okinawa in Tokyo. The other way is to go to Ginza Okinawa’s shop. (Each region of a Japan has a sort of antenna shop where you can by local products, most of them are located in Nihonbashi-Ginza area)

The shop sells Okinawaian products of all sort, and the visit was originally motivated by my husband needed some accessories and parts to repair his sanshin (Okinawa’s traditional music instrument). And so it was a good opportunity to get some delicious fruits and in particular perfect passion fruits!! There is nothing as such to start a day than a little salad with pineapple, passion fruits and blueberries!

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