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Japan - What To Expect
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  • The Year In Japan
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  • Japan - What To Expect
  • April 10: Seasonal delicacies at McDonalds
  • April 20: The Dangerous Japanese City Streets
  • The Five Seasons Of Japan
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  • Triple Toddlers In Tokyo
  • May 11, 2022: Vegetable fields close to Tokyo
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  • May 29 2022: Dog Pooping Not Allowed!
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  • October 15, 2022: Is It Open Or Closed?
  • My Current And Forthcoming Books About Visiting Japan
  • Worcationeering - how to prepare for remote vacation work
  • November 13, 2022: The Osaka And Tokyo Escalators
  • December 13, 2022: Seeing Around Corners
  • Japan - What To Expect - Highlights
  • About Me & Where To Find Me
  • How To Get The Best Out Of Japan
  • Japan Travel Planning Tips And Highlights
  • March 21, 2022: Going To School
  • Driving In Japan
  • Car Rental Tips And Tricks
  • The Year In Japan
  • Discovering Tohoku
  • Japan - What To Expect
  • April 10: Seasonal delicacies at McDonalds
  • April 20: The Dangerous Japanese City Streets
  • The Five Seasons Of Japan
  • Read More Tips Here Every Other Week
  • May 3, 2022: Garbage Collection
  • Triple Toddlers In Tokyo
  • May 11, 2022: Vegetable fields close to Tokyo
  • Taking the train in Tokyo
  • Staying Safe In Japan
  • May 29 2022: Dog Pooping Not Allowed!
  • June 27, 2022: How To Navigate A Japanese Hotel Breakfast
  • Wisterian Watertrees Writing Samples
  • Sign Up For My Newsletter And More Here!
  • August 12, 2022: The Kei Truck
  • What Am I Writing Now?
  • September 7, 2022: Rainy Days And Traffic Dangers
  • September 25, 2022: Masks Will Not Go Away From Japan
  • October 15, 2022: Is It Open Or Closed?
  • My Current And Forthcoming Books About Visiting Japan
  • Worcationeering - how to prepare for remote vacation work
  • November 13, 2022: The Osaka And Tokyo Escalators
  • December 13, 2022: Seeing Around Corners

April 10: Seasonal Delicacies At McDonalds

Japanese cuisine leverages the changing seasons to the hilt. In spring, one of the delicacies appearing in traditional Japanese restaurants around February-March is the slightly bitter tempura made from the udo herb, one of the first vegetables to appear in Japanese forests, and soon combined with other mountain herbs into a spring vegetable tempura which is intensely popular as a side dish, served with a mix of green tea powder (macha) and salt, rather than the traditional tempura sauce.
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The flowers of the rapeseed plant are an appreciated vegetable in Japan. You can see the resemblance to broccoli.
Spring vegetables are not only picked in the mountains, however. The flower buds of the rapeseed (or canola) plant is another highly appreciated vegetable and heralds spring as much as the cherry blossom. It is also a highly appreciated type of tempura, or it can be served boiled like spinach, or nowadays eaten raw in salads.
But other vegetables, more familiar to western palates, are also appreciated seasonally. The first harvest of any vegetable is reason to celebrate, but in Japan, the humble cabbage has become a specially valued delicacy. Growing vegetables in temporary green houses makes an early harvest possible, and once the snow melts (if there was any) the first vegetables are planted, ready for harvest in as short time as a few weeks after sowing.
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The monkfish, especially the liver, is as tasty as it is ugly and an appreciated winter speciality.
The seasonality is not constrained to vegetables, however. Fish and seafood in Japan change with the seasons, as the animals come into the shore waters to spawn or feed. One of the most appreciated delicacies is “hotaru-ika”, a small kind of squid, less than five centimeters long, which gets its name because it actually glows during mating season in March. Caught off the northwestern coast of Japan, it is typically eaten boiled with seaweed and vegetables, or by itself.
But the weirdest looking, and most appreciated, seafood is the ugliest fish you will never see.
The monkfish or anglerfish (anko in Japanese) is as hideous as it is delicious. It is strictly a winter delicacy, the season at its height in February and ending in April. In Fukushima and particularly Ibaraki it is a local staple, “anko-nabe” hotpot a traditional winter dish, and the liver - the closest you can get to foie gras in nature - a standing feature of sushi restaurants all around eastern Japan. Typically served fresh with green leeks and ponzu, it is as different from other types of sashimi as it is tasty.
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Sakuramochi is a popular spring sweet, and this year McDonalds also turned it into a pie.
But the most appreciated seasonal delicacy are the sweets. While many traditional sweets are available all year round, there are two kinds which are tied to the season more than any other. It is the white dango (rice balls, actual balls and not the onigiri triangles) which are part of the autumn moon viewing; and the sakuramochi that are eaten when the cherry trees blossom.
Sakuramochi does not actually contain cherries, but consist of a cake of mochi - pounded rice cake - colored pink; wrapped around a wad of sweet bean paste. This confection is then wrapped in a pickled and salted cherry leaf (which is what makes it sakuramochi).
Sakuramochi is extremely popular and sold in convenience stores, grocery stores as well as the speciality traditional Japanese confectionery stores which would sell it. Sakuramochi is so popular that for this year for the first time it is sold in McDonalds. But not in the traditional form. At McDonalds in Japan, for a limited time, you can get a sakuramochi pie. It is a traditional sakuramochi (including a piece of cherry leaf) in a McDonalds pie shell, fried and not baked. The shell is actually an improvement, although hot mochi and bean paste is more like the new years ozoni soup than sakuramochi. Although more chewy.
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