Japan has started 2024 in a rough situation, Noto earthquake on Jan. 1 and JL 516 and the Coast Guard plane accident at HND on Jan. 2. It was like bad karma for starting the new year 2024.

I will put some positive and continue this thread. I found Nagasaki Sara Udon mix at a store. So I decided if I could not go to Nagasaki, then bring the flavor of Nagasaki to me.

This required little cooking on my part. Besides the Sara Udon mix, I got cabbage, bean sprouts, onion, pork, Kamaboko (fish cake), and frozen seafood mix.



The Sara Udon mix is made by Mirokuya (website in Japanese only), a company in Nagasaki that makes Nagasaki Champon, Nagasaki Sara Uond, and other Nagasaki flavored goods. So this Sara Udon mix is authentic!

The content of Sara Udon mix is noodles, soup mix (powder), oil (for browning noodles), and lard (for meat and vegetable cooking)



First, cook noodles in boiling water as directed.



Same time start cooking meat, seafood, and vegetables using lard. Prepare the soup mix with water, soup is in the right top corner of the picture. Once meat, seafood, and vegetables are cooked, add soup.





After boiling the noodles, remove them from water and brown noodles in a pan using oil. Make noodles slightly crispy.



Add meat, seafood, and vegetables to the top of the noodles. Finish, ready to eat!



I had Sara Udon at Nagasaki when I visited Nagasaki a little more than a year ago. I visited Inasayama during the evening and took a taxi to Inasayama. Upon return from Inasayama, it was still early in the evening to go back to the hotel. The taxi driver told me that the east side of Nagasaki station another side of the street is an area with drinking holes. I did a little drinking in that area, and before heading back to the hotel (Hilton Nagasaki), Kamome Market at Amu Nagasaki at Nagasaki station has Soshurin which is open till a little later in the evening serving Nagasaki Champon and Nagasaki Sara Udon. I had Sara Udon at Soshurin at Nagasaki station. The Sara Udon I had at Soshurin was a thin noodle, but the one I made here is a thick noodle.

I had been contemplating whether this was going to be the year where I finally learned to make crispy noodles (such as those eaten in some Sara Udon, Gomoku, Kokura style dishes).

However, having learned more about the horrendous fire that ripped through the Torimachi Shokudogai in Kitakyushu on the 3rd January I suspect it won’t.

Anyone fluent in Japanese?

Last autumn we ended up, by accident more than by choice, in Kushiro. At dinner we went to one of those classic restaurants with booths and grills, a bit like an izakaya, of the kind you can find under a train station in Tokyo. We ordered random food, had a great evening, and when it came to leave the whole staff (and a few of the other customers) saluted us (to the point that they were waving out of the windows) and gave as a present these two bananas with something written on it. Google Translate is having a very hard time coming up with a translation, but it feels as if it's some sort of encouragement. If anyone could translate it for me that'd be great! Thanks.

長い道のりも、まずは一歩から。

大変な時こそ大きく変わるチャンスだ。

After this cut and paste into Google Translate should do it.

Thank you How kind of them.

For the first time in my sojourn here I had the milk bread from Mt.Trebor in Azabu Juban. I expected more after reading and speaking with others from here and in real life. I also falsely believed that I had never had bread from Mt.Trebor only to find out recently that there are 50+ branches including once in a supermarket I used to frequent.

Ah, this is what happens when someone who already has the keys to paradise tries a gateway drug!

The Azabu store is Mont Thabor.

Trebor is:
https://www.google.com/search?q=choo...O4qQOUvOE,st:0

🎶stick ‘em up your … and they last a bit longer!🎶

No transfiguration*event happened for Qy, perhaps, in this case, Trevor is the better name.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_of_Transfiguration

Wasn't Mt. Trebor the one in Life of Brian?

Who knew that my best buds from FT were Mont Travail milk bread pumpers.

I decided to post here because this is food-related.

Note: This is a long video; the first one is 37 minutes long, and the second one is 42 minutes long. The video is in Japanese, but you can see all the cooking, and in the second video, the owner comments in Spanish (his native language)

I have now lived in a non-native land as an expatiates longer than living in my native land as a native. However, I still see with amazement and respect when I see stories about expatriates living in a non-native land.

First video, a restaurant in rural Hiroshima. But people still venture out and line up outside the restaurant. I think this shows food is universal, even if people have never had such cuisine before; still, good food is good food no matter what.

Second video, the owner is creating their own dish using native flavors from Spain in Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki. Then adding a new Okonomiyaki item based on a request by the U.S. guy living in the area.