So for kyuushoku aka school lunch... I was very excited to eat my lunch. I was like "Cool. I'm starving... Let's see what we have here... Ok... Milk... Seaweed soup, bamboo rice, chicken cutlet, boiled vegetables, and.... huh?" I paused and noticed something next to my milk... It
was in a plastic bag and it was some bamboo leaf wrapped with a string. At first... I thought it was nattou aka fermented soybeans. I tell my students... "Hey cool! We have nattou for lunch today!" But one of my students says.. "No teacher... its not nattou... that's our dessert." I then took a moment to think what else it reminded me of... and the next thing that came to my mind was... a cocoon. I was like... "I know some parts in Japan eats bugs as a delicacy... but didn't know Ehime... or my city ate something like this for... dessert?" I asked my students to confirm and they say.. "No it's not a cocoon... It's chimaki!" I questioned myself, "Chimaki?"
I have never heard of chimaki (粽: ちまき) ever in my life. My students didn't know how to describe it, but they told me it was a dessert mochi served during the Children's Day celebration. A little different from the famous kashiwa mochi (柏餅: かしわもち) that most kids eat on Children's Day. I finish my lunch quickly like always and open the little "cocoon" slowly and carefully. I take the twine off and unravel the bamboo leaf to find myself a sticky mochi. The mochi did look like a white worm of some kind, but I told myself again that it was mochi haha. So I take out the mochi and take a bite assuming there was gonna be some red bean paste in there, but nothing was there. The mochi was sweetened and it tasted great thanks to the flavor of 
the bamboo leaf.
I am always amazed with traditional Japanese sweets and how delicious they are. At first, I thought chimaki was a cocoon, but it was actually sticky delightful sweet that made my school lunch better. What an interesting experience. haha =)
No comments:
Post a Comment