Garden in the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Art – forest bathing in the heart of Tokyo with a touch of wabi-sabi

 

Last weekend, I went to an exhibition of tea ceremony equipment at the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art.  Located in Shirokane residential area in the heart of Tokyo, this art museum is rather a smaller art museum in Tokyo. However, they have a fine collection especially for notable tea ceremony and Noh (Japanese old playwright) equipment.

 

Despite the size of the museum, this place has an extra to appeal visitors – the garden. Walking in the woods aside with moss covered ground, old tea room architectures, well-patterned stone paving, and porcelain benches was such a valuable moment.

 

The museum does not advertise much about their exhibitions as the larger-scaled art museums do. So, there’s less crowd - you can enjoy the collections and the garden in the “calm and quiet manner”. I’d like to emphasize about this advantage because, in the same weekend, I went to another exhibition of tea ceremony equipment at the National Museum of Art in Ueno, and it ended up a big disappointment: I couldn’t see many of the collection there as the over-crowded visitors swarming around the glass cases.

Kameido Tenjin - the wisteria spot in Tokyo

One of the beautiful blooms in early May in Japan is wisteria. If you live in Europe, you might not be familiar with this flower, since it's known to be found only in the East Asia and North America. In contrast of more wild wisteria found in the US, you find a lot of artificially planted wisteria in Japan, because we've liked to take a good care of this beautiful to plant to see it's best performance when it blooms (also there are wild wisterias in Japan).

Wisteria appears to be mystical when it blooms; numerous of small petals, colored in pale purple, composite like chandelier while spreading mildly sweet scent.

The most well-known wisteria spot in Tokyo is Kameido Tenjin, a Shinto shrine in the east side of the city Tokyo. Not only mass compositions of the chandelier-like bunches, but also there are traditional garden landscape with a large pond, where turtles and carps stay in cozy attitude. In some part of the shrine, the flowers are planted on the stage build on the pond and people walk on the pathways alongside of the stages, or connected between the stages.

The only con about this place in wisteria time is the crowd. Since there's not much wisteria spots in the city of Tokyo, and the place is not big in it's size and the pathways are narrow, it becomes very crowded. So, you may be stressed if you are the like me who try to avoid the crowds as much as possible. But, I still went there - the beauty of the wisteria overcame my stubbornness.

Umazurahagi - foie gras from sea

 

 

Talking about this fish in the photo, umazurahagi, I need to start with the brief explanation of kawahagi. Kawahagi, called thread-sail filefish in English, is one of the top listed fishes for the Japanese table-top pleasure. If fugu is known as the king of the fish for the gastronomic consumption, Kawahagi is the queen.

Looking from the side, kawahagihas a diamond shape with its funny face that seems trying to kiss someone. Umazurahagi , called black scraper in English, is very similar fish from kawahagi, as it's hard to distinguish which is which from their appearances, both as live fish and in sashimi format. Umazurahagi is known that it somewhat comes after kawahagi in it's taste, however still, umazurahagi brings good enough of the gastronomic pleasure. And more it's economy choice than kawahagi.

What in the above photo is from sashimi pack of umazurahagi that I found at the supermarket a few days ago, rearranged on my tamba-ware pottery square plate. The thin-sliced meat looks almost transparent. Once having it in your mouth, touch of the meat in your mouth and the way it's rich flavor comes out as biting are so delicate.

And, what's more important about this fish than it's meat, is liver (the pink round staff on the left side in the photo). The reason we like this liver is very similar to how French people like foie gras. Only the difference is that we eat this liver raw when it's fresh. High containment of fat brings rich, creamy, and delicate touch while flavor is clean without unpleasant smell. This is something like what I imagine if foie gras can be eaten raw. And I make sure to note that this liver does not contain deadly poison as fugu does. One you see in the above photo is the whole liver, but it can be fine chopped and eaten with a slice of meat.

In any form, regardless of meat of liver, we usually eat this kind of fish with the light dip of Ponzu, the sauce made of soy sauce, mirin, kombu, and juice of the Japanese citrus fruit usually with yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu - full of umami combined with the tart refreshness of the citrus fruits.

High season for kawahagi is actually in winter when the liver grow the most, besides in summer, known as when the meat comes the most tasteful. However, regardless of the season, whenever I find this fish in sashimi at supermarkets, I can't hold myself from grabbing one.

Making Aji (horse mackerel) Sashimi for Weekend Lunch

When I woke up this morning, I found it's raining outside, and my hope for enjoying the mildness of early spring sunlight is gone. So, I quickly ran to the neighboring supermarket for commiting to my at-home pastime favorite: cooking. My challenge this time is to work on a whole raw fish, forming it into the eatable state without any heat or preserving condiment: the technique called sashimi in Japanese.

So, here's my input - one whole aji:

Aji, called horse mackerel or jack mackerel in English, is one of the most popular kinds of consumable fish in Japan. For most parts of the coastal Japan, it is not difficult to find sashimi-quality whole aji at supermarkets in any time of the year. And, it's cheap as roughly about 1 USD / piece. Unlike it's price, this fish has rich and fatty taste, and good in fried, grilled, and in sashimi.

To fillet aji into sahimi pieces isn't so difficult as you imagine once you try for a few times. The processes briefly are: 1) chopping off head and fins, 2) taking organs out and washing blood away, 3) taking bones apart from meat, 4) peeling off skins and 5) slicing the meat small as eatable pieces. For the detailed work instructions, there are number of visual examples you can find on the internet.

And, here's my output:

 



Edgy pieces on left side are sashimi as-is. A dumpling-like batch on the right side is called "namerou"; sashimi finely chopped with miso, mirin (a kind of rice wine for cooking), and ginger. Namerou gets along with the sticky Japanese rice very well. (And now, after making namerou, I have to confess that I used preserving condiment, miso, despite I said I cook this fish without preserving condiment at the beginning of this post)

Also, I utilized perishable parts (such as chopped head and fins) except organs,blood, and tiny bones for making broth. Simmering them in kombu dashi for 10 minutes, and mixing it with a tiny bit of salt and usukuchi soy source makes soup du jour.

At last, I'd like to leave a tip for how to distinguish the fresh fish in the easiest way. Fresh fishes have fresh eyes, eyes look as they live. Ones not fresh has reddish eyes, like blood flowing into their white of eyes.

Edges from the Classic

at Osaka Castle

Zen Gardens in Tofukuji

from the last summer visit at Tofukuji in Kyoto, when the gardens become the greenest of the year.

Stairway to Heaven

found in Kitakamakura