The smell of well-done socks of a sixteen old boy, natto

Epoisses in France, Durian in South Asia and Surströmming in Sweden.

All the foods are said to be very smelly.

People seem to like smelly food though they smell.

Japan has also some smelly food: one of them is natto, fermented soybeans. Its smell is just like the "well-done" socks before pulling off them for taking a bath. It is made of boiled soybeans and put them into a tube made from straw to allow the natto fungus to increase in number. Some time after, the beans ferment and get sticky. We usually stir it into gruel, add some drops of soy sauce and some finey-chopped raw Welsh onion, called negi in Japanese, and eat it with boiled.

Some says, anybody from the outside of Japan can eat it is compensating for his small weiner.

By the way, I had disliked it for 19 years old. When I was a college student, I always did not have two nickels to rub together. I went to a supermarket to get some healthy and reasonable food and caught sight of this food. This food is cheap and healthy, as well as eggs. After getting the beans, I tried it and did not feel so worse. Since then, I like this food and often eat it for breakfast.

If I have a chance to go to Sweden, I'll try Surstromming!!

PS. The photo below is the beans after stirring.

One of the best souvenirs in Kyoto

The red is powdered pepper and the black is roasted pepper mixed with other spices.

A little powdered pepper can spice up Udon or Soba. Plus, the black one goes well with hamburger, steak, Chinese and Asian cuisine.

By the way, the black one is one of the best sourvenirs from Kyoto for me and we cannot get it in Tokyo. I think that the best souvenir for giver is light, small, reasonable and the one that make people happy. This canned pepper is lighter and smaller than a egg, lower than a entrance fee in Kyoto's temple, and very useful in various cuisine.

Unfortunately, little souvenir meet the above four conditions but the pepper meet all of them. For me this is the ideal souvenir in Kyoto.

Udon, a Japanese noodle

This is Udon, a kind of Japanese noodle made from flour, with shrimp Tempura. Shrimp Tempura is the most popular food for Udon. We can eat it at standing bars, attached with stations. Many stations have such standing bar and we can also eat Soba, a kind of noodle made from buckwheat.

By the way, Udon in western Japan, including Kyoto and Osaka, differs from the one in eastern Japan, including Tokyo. The difference of the taste mainly comes from the difference of Dashi, soup stock. The soup stock in eastern Japan is mainly extracted from dried kelp or dried small fish; the one in western Japan is boiled and dried bonito fish. By the way, Ben, Nelson Daily Photo, know much better about Daishi and miso soup.

As is very interesting, people in Tokyo also like Udon in eastern way very much but many people in Osaka or Kyoto don't like the one in western way.

Most people in Japan said that most of foods in western Japan tend to be more delicious than those in eastern. I partly agree with this and prefer Udon in western Japan way.

Miss Mr. Milk Man

This is by the entrance of a house and a box for bottles of milk is set up on a wall.

Milk used to be delivered to houses every morning in Japan. But now I hardly see persons who deliver bottles of milk and milk stores. Because there are tons of 24/7 shops selling daily foods, including milk, at every corner in Japan.