Who are you? and Where are you from?

I remembered when I had German food first time in my life, I was eight, at famous German restaurant in Kamakura, Kanagawa. We'd never been to Germany, but my mom dug into German culture then (I still don't know why). So she took us there so frequently to have Eisbein, she bought Sauerkraut at gourmet grocer (I had it as regular side-dish with white rice), she read us "Der Räuber Hotzenplotz" so often.

That's how I experienced Germany. Of course, I learned a lot about this country later, but food was a kind of good introduction to explore other culture. Why? Because I still remember that so brightly.

In the summertime, we had so many kids from everywhere in the world. Some kids knows about Japanese food much better than their parent, and they often speak much better English than their parent. If I could have chance, I really wanted to have a class like "Learn about Japan with what we eat". I'm not foodie, but I know how I should describe its origin and reason why we eat those. And tell you that Japanese food is not only Chicken Teriyaki and California Roll.


Tokyo is getting to be a cultural melting pot in these decades, but not yet like here. We can have almost everything in Tokyo but still "Japanized" -- Baklava is not sweet enough, Sinigang is not sour enough...but we can have more authentic thing in New York! It's a time to explore the other side of the world without passport.


Better way to enjoy stay-cation. You can take 7 train to India, or B train to Russia. No fuel-surcharge is required.