Traditional sweets at Inatanidochu

The way home from Nagiso, we visited to a cultural theme park, Inatanidochu. You can learn and experience history of this reason. They look like a Japanese old village, but are not real one like Tsumago or Magome.

We had a tea at a Japanese café. They had free green tea. We ordered typical and traditional Japanese sweets.

I had a match with sakuramochi. Yes, sakuramochi, here again! I told you that sakuramochi is my favorite confection for the spring. But the sukuramochi was little different from the one I know. The cherry leaf outside and sweet bean paste inside are the same. The middle staff covering the bean paste is different. One from my region is a kind of rice cake, called Domyoji. The one I had here was something like thin pancake. I think sakuramochi here is Kanto-style (Tokyo) and sakuramchi at my reason is Kansai-style (Osaka).





My wife Hiro, had rice dumpling. One has sweet been paste, and another one has sweeted soy sauce.












My father had zenzai. This is also little different from our local one. This zenzai is sweet been past with rice dumplings and chestnuts.












My mother had anmitsu, which are bean jam, agar, ice-cream and pieces of fruit served with syrup

Tea at Hotel Kisoji

The hotel we stayed at Nagiso was Hotel Kisoji. We’ve been there several times. I think they are a middle class hotel. They offer typical room and good dinner at reasonable price. I like the rooms at Sumimeikan better. The tea provided at guestroom was three kinds of instant tea, green tea, hojicha, and plum&seaweed flavor tea. So, there was no teapot. There were just teacups and an electric kettle.





Dinner was served at a restaurant in the hotel. We were lucky that we were led to a private room, which had a little tokonoma (alcove in a traditional Japanese room where art or flowers are displayed). The dinner was great Japanese cuisine.


What I love about Hotel Kisoji is their hot spring baths. They are wonderful. They have spacious indoor bath and open-air bath that you can feel the nature of Nagiso. The outside bath is like in a Japanese garden with rocks and trees. The hot spring comes out from a little waterfall, and flows down to bath to bath. It is pleasure to have a soak in a bath over viewing the sky and trees on mountains.

Tsumago-juku, the historical town

This weekend, we also went to Nagiso spa resort. On the way, we stopped by Tsumago, which is an old post station in Nagano prefecture. Now it has been touristy, and they have restaurants, cafes, and gift shops in the historical-looking street. It’s like Magome where we visited in the last summer.

Big tea store, Mikuniya-zengoro

This weekend we went a shopping mall in Gifu prefecture, called Kakamigahara Aeon. I found a big tea store, Mikuniya-zengoro, there. They have huge selections of English, Chinese and Japanese tea. They of course have standard types of Japanese tea from different regions, but also have some unique Japanese flavored teas, such as cherry green tea. I bought Yame-sencha from Fukuoka prefecture (90g 1050yne) and Uji-gyokuro from Kyoto (50g 1050yen). I’ll report you someday how the testes are like.

The best of bottled green tea, “O-i, ocha with umami of gyokuro”

Hi, everyone! Last night, I went to a supermarket. I’ve bough Japanese confectionery on impulse. It was sakuramochi, which I’ve introduce on this blog the other day. I also found a bottle of green tea, “O-i, ocha with umami of gyokuro”. I had never tried it before, so I bought it.



After dinner, we placed sakuramochi on kaishi, and the tea into a cup with saucer. Although they were cheap sweets and tea from a bottle, don’t they look nice? I had a sip of tea first. I wanted to taste the tea well before my mouth was contaminated by sweetness of confectionery. “O-i, ocha with umami of gyokuro” didn’t have much aroma, but I think this is one of the best bottles of green tea I ever had. It was very mellow. It sure had umami, but I thought the hallmark of this tea was the sweetness. It had very rich and nice sweetness that I had never found in bottles of tea. The bitterness was very mild. The modest bitterness brings out the sweetness more. After having sakuramochi, by the contrast of sweetness, it was difficult to enjoy the sweetness of the tea, but the comfortable bitterness of the tea stood out. I really enjoyed the tea and sakuramochi.


“O-i, ocha with umami of gyokuro” is a blended tea of sencha, tencha(the ingredient of matcha) and gyokuro. It has less caffeine than ordinary tea. I’ve done tea tasting for other brands before. Namacha was my best then. But now I think “O-i, ocha with umami of gyokuro” with rich sweetness will be my best. I would sometime like to taste the both Namacha and this tea at the same time, and make sure.

Good matcha from a tea shop in my town

Yesterday, we had another tea lesson. When I was placing matcha into natsume, I noticed that the aroma of matcha was richer than usual. I find a smell like seaweed in the matcha. It’s probably similar to the aroma that gykuro has, and I think it comes from umami. Our master usually buys matcha for the lessons once or twice a month. Yesterday's matcha was new one. It may be fresh grinded one at the store. The taste was very good. We thought it was better than usual, and loved it. I think fresh is better for matcha, and it's better to buy fresh matcha little by little from store.
Our muster buys it from a small shop in our town, called Kokaen. They have tea gardens and produce matcha in Nishio, or the tea garden owns Kokaen. I’m not sure. Anyway, Nishio in Aichi prefecture is one of the biggest matcha production regions in Japan. I think this outlet shop form Nishio tea farm sells good quality matcha.

Scooping Mathca from natsume

In natsume, matcha should be naturally heaped up like a small mountain.



When you scoop the matcha in temae, you should scoop it at far side of natsume in an across straight line.



After use, the matcha should be scratched at the far side and have a cliff.

Sweets of the day, Feb.24 Sakuramochi

Sweet on Feb 24 lesson was Sakuramochi, which is rapped with cherry leaf. You can eat it with the leaf. Sakuramochi is popular in the spring, and one of the most favorite confectioneries. I especially love the pink sticky rice cake part. When I was a kid, I snitched just the rice cake when my mother was cooking sakuramochi. It is so good.

Matcha latte at Gusto

The other day when we went to Gusto, Hiro had matcha latte. I tried a ship of it. It was sweated and the foam on the top was fine. It was milkier and milder than matcha latte at Mos burger. Hiro liked this sweet matcha latte!

Matcha latte at Mos burger

Today we went to a hamburger shop for dinner. Mos burger is one of the popular hamburger chain stores in Japan. I like them because they have originality, and value quality rather than selling cheap.

I had matcha latte that wasn’t sweated. It had substantial matcha flavor with rich bitterness. It was rich and premium. I liked it, but it would be much better if it had more milk.

Black bean tea at Gusto

The cold weather is coming and going these days, here. I’ve bet that snow season is over, and I changed my snow tires to regular ones this weekend. How is the weather like in your town this season?










We liked Gusto, so went there again this weekend. This time I tried sencha and black bean tea.



Sencha was from Sizuoka. The leaf was looking good for this reasonable restaurant. The aroma was okay, and the taste was nice. I could not find so much umami, but it had a good distinctive bitterness. Somehow, the tea brewed yourself tastes better than tea just served.






I had never seen black bean tea. It looked like coffee beans, and had roasted soy aroma. The brewed tea was brown, and the taste was mild and did not have bitterness. It tasted like watery coffee. Oops, watery coffee does not sound delicious, does it? I didn’t mean that. It was pretty good. Let’s see, I could say it was similar to hojicha and had rich soy flavor and faint sweetness. I liked memorable roasted flavor.


I had hamburger in stew with rice and miso-soup.

Flower of the day, Dec. 16 – Feb 17

Here are flowers displayed at our tea lessons. All of them are Camellia. Our master has different kind of Camellia trees in her backyard.

Dec.16












Dec.28










These are the flower and rice bale ornament at hatsugama on Jan 6.












Feb.1











Feb.3










Feb.10











Feb.17