My daughter and I have been making this banana bread recipe with chocolate chips for what feels like years now. It’s a recipe that was shared by my sister-in-law’s stepmom who either baked the bread for us as a gift, or perhaps she brought it to a potluck, or maybe it was featured in her dessert bar at her annual Christmas dinner. Wherever we first tried it, it made such an impression that we’ve been using this recipe as...

To this day, I do not like the smell of daikon radish in my fridge, or my home, but regardless of this tiny “problem”, I still enjoy eating it. Perhaps its because it happens to be one of the traditional Japanese vegetables that regularly appeared in my mom’s dinner repertoire, including oden, a favorite winter stew where the daikon is simmered over a long period of time. Or more commonly, daikon appeared in sunomono style...

It’s been a year since we travelled to Japan, and while I never got around to sharing the last of our family photos from our wonderful trip, the fact my mom just arrived in Osaka was motivation enough to publish a blog post. Both Bebe and I are definitely pining to be with my mom in Japan. Bebe loved Sanrio Puroland in Tokyo. It’s a teeny tiny Sanrio version of Disneyland but it was Japanese style cuteness overload, and we spent a...

  Kyoto is one of my favorite sightseeing destinations in Japan. Throughout my life, I’ve had the privilege of visiting this beautiful city a few times, but because I’ve visited at such different stages in my life, it felt familiar, yet also new each time. (Sorry, some of the images are large and may load slowly; I forgot to compress them!) My younger experiences included visits when I was in early elementary school, followed...

It’s been over a year since I last shared anything on my personal blog, and it’s also been a year since I was last in Japan. I thought I’d kickstart my blog by sharing a few pictures from our travels to Kyoto and Tokyo this spring. I also have several pictures from last year’s trip to Japan in spring 2015 that I’ve wanted to share for more than a year now, but somehow time just kept slipping away. Maybe I’ll...

  Happy Japanese Girls’ Day! Today, March 3rd, is Hinamatsuri, also known as Girls’ Day or Doll Festival. Since Bebe was born, this Japanese holiday is one that we celebrate annually in my family, and is something my daughter looks forward to each year. Many years in my childhood, my Mom would host Hinamatsuri parties for me and a handful of my friends, and now I in turn have the pleasure of doing the same for my...

As a kid, one of my favorite Japanese foods was sweetened kinako, or roasted soy bean flour. Of course, back then, I had no clue as to what the dry, golden brown, powdery flour-like substance called kinako was, other than the fact that my mom said it was made from soy, but to me, it was magical. It was the most delicious food ever, especially when my mom dusted fresh warm mochi with sweetened kinako. The sugary sweetness of the kinako, combined...

  Last year, my mom taught me a new osechi ryori (traditional food for celebrating Japanese New Year) dish that she learned from a friend of hers: kuromame, or sweet black soy beans cooked in the slow cooker. [Photo Credit: Hideki Ueha] This slow cooker recipe is a life saver, given I’ve burned my share of kuromame batches by forgetting about the beans simmering on the stove. The beans need to simmer for a while in order to achieve the...