Oct 9, 2008

Hari Raya in Japan + Boat ride in Matsushima






It has been a week since Hari Raya (Eid).

I was not busy on hari raya at all, because my husband was working, and my daughter was at school.

Just a little bit busy on the last day of Ramadan because I cooked a few traditional dishes for iftar. Some nasi himpit, beef rendang, sambal ikan bilis and lodeh. It was the most special iftar we had.

On Saturday night, we went to Sendai, about 40km from Furukawa to attend the Malaysian students' open house. It was my first time meeting most of them because I only met a family and a Phd student during hanami last april. We were supposed to reach there earlier but my daughter claimed she had stomach ache so we brought her to the hospital before departing for Sendai. 2 hours at the hospital with people staring at us, especially my husband who wore a daring pink baju melayu, that was really funny.

At 8 we reached Sendai and gosh..there were so many of them. About 25 students, most of them are studying mechanical engineering. They go to Tohoku Univ. My genius math teacher in JMC was a graduate of this university. Lots of food; nasi himpit, rendang ayam, lemang, bihun, chocolate cake, kuih raya (from malaysia I suppose), roti sardin gulung..and the list went on. I brought an apple cake and agar2 pengat labu. The fruit cocktail was really good.

I took a lot of pictures with my new Canon Kiss F hoping to get good hari raya shots. Later, I realized that I forgot to insert an SD card but I thought that the pictures taken were stored in the camera's internal memory. I was totally wrong!! When I returned home and check the manual, there is no such thing as internal memory for this camera...betul ke? Penat je amek gambar banyak2....

The next day, Sunday we went to a friend's house. He is the company chief cook where my husband works in, and we fondly call him "pakcik canteen". The last time we went to his house was a few months ago, and his parents have been waiting for our next visit for quite some time.


We reached his house at about 1.40pm, and the first thing we did after greeting the family was a boat ride around Matsushima. Matsushima is a popular tourist spot in Miyagi prefecture- declared one of the three grand views in Japan. The name Matsushima came from the 260 tiny islands ("shima" in Japanese) covered with pine trees ("matsu"). Pakcik canteen brought us around the islands on his boat. This was my second time after the first ride on my grandfather's boat around Pulau Besar nearly a quarter century ago.


















Although it was cloudy that day, the view of Matsushima was magnificient. The tiny islands were like sculptures; one looks like a person wearing a hat, some look like sea waves, and some has holes resembling doors...As it was a Sunday, many people, men and women were fishing on the islands. We were also shown the place where they culture oysters, laver seaweed and kelp.



































Returning to pakcik canteen's house, we were served with edamame (green soybean), japanese tea and biscuits. The edamame was sweet and delicious. They gave us some home, in exchange to our rendang and nasi himpit. Nani was very talkative, she made origamis , sang songs to entertain the grandparents.





A moment later, a friend of pakcik canteen came to guide us to his fish shop. The shop was only about 2 minutes by car from pakcik canteen's house. Man, so many fresh seafood, it was hard for me to decide which to buy.






We bought some oysters, tuna, mackerels, crabs..and the shopkeeper was kind enough to add cuttlefish, some small fish, more oysters, crabs, ikan bilis...bla..bla..They also gave us crab miso soup for tasting and grilled scallops for free. Sedapnyee....






We returned to the house and had some tea and edamame again. We then said goodbye at around 4. The family gave us osenbetsu (a parting gift--because we are leaving for Malaysia end of this month for good)..and it was 10000yen! Alhamdulillah, rezeki.

We went home and the first thing we did was cooking dinner...a seafood nabe(hotpot)! It is easy to make one, just put the seafood with little water and soy sauce (or dressing) , heat it to boil and add vegetables. I wanted it hot, so I took it with some kimchi. With all the giant oysters, crabs, cuttlefish and some vegetables, the hotpot was really good!





Oh yes, if you visit Matsushima around this time, you can also enjoy eat-all-you-want grilled fresh oysters for only 1000yen per person.



































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