Golden Dolphins of Nagoya

About two weeks ago, Stefan, a good friend of ours from Rice, came to visit. Together, we took a trip to the nearby city of Nagoya to do some exploring.

The sightseeing highlight was definitely Nagoya Castle known for the golden dolphins on its roof. The fact that these dolphins have teeth is both amusing and troublesome to me.

The castle was built in 1612 but unfortunately most of it was burnt down in 1945 during the World War II air raids. So, what we see today is a rebuilt/reinforced version of the original. Some tour guides joked about how Nagoya Castle was also destroyed by Godzilla, Gaos and Battra. Even the revered dolphins were not immune to the chaos, as their gold scales were often the target of theft.

The golden dolphins were not just adorning the castle's roof. They appeared everywhere around the city - as cookies, as mascots, on receipts, on signs, on sewer covers...sugoi desu ne !


One other thing worthy of visiting in Nagoya was the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. Half of the museum was devoted to the Toyoda family's beginning in the textile machine industry. The other half was devoted to their current automotive focus. In addition to the obvious learning of facts, we also saw a robot that could play trumpet amazingly with its special mechanical lips and hands, we played with an extremely large lever and spent some quality time in a wind tunnel. (obligatory pun) Needless to say, we were blown away!

Chris and Stefan were also great sports to accompany me to the Orchid Garden, a pretty neat botanical garden type place which advertised itself as "a dreamlike oasis in the city, a pleasurable and resourceful place to visit for garden enthusiasts." The brochure said there were 20,000 orchids from 250 species on display. Based on the number of sweet photos I took, I'd have to guess they were correct.

Mochi-Tsuki

As part of the same excursion as Chris's Japanese stage debut, we also had the chance to try our hands at mochi-tsuki, or pounding rice with large mallets to make sticky rice cakes.

Basically, cooked rice is placed in a traditional large mortar known as an usu. Then, people gather around to whack the rice with heavy wooden mallets called kine. One person has to flip the mochi and drip some water on it between all the mallet hits. Eventually, the rice becomes one big sticky mass of mochi and is cut into little balls for everyone to eat.



I especially enjoyed participating in this ceremony because we have a video game (Cooking Mama 2 for the Nintendo DS) that includes mochi-tsuki as one of the challenges. After discovering what the real experience is like, the game is much more fun now! :)

A variety of toppings are used on the mochi rice cakes. For example, we had the choice to add red bean paste, finely chopped daikon radish, soy sauce, confectioner's sugar and kinako (soy powder). As you can see, it was pretty delicious!

According to our landlords, this traditional method of making mochi rice cakes is rare nowadays. Most of the commercially available mochi is made by machines. This is understandable, given the considerable amount of effort required to swing the mallets effectively. We were, as usual, very lucky to have had this opportunity!

A Flair for the Dramatic

Earlier in February, at the Museum of Kyoto, there was a special event held by the Kyoto Guide Club - a club designed to take foreign residents on fun outings to see unique attractions that wouldn't be in a guide book.


This time, the outing included viewing a special exhibit (The Works and Correspondence of Yasunari Kawabata & Kaii Higashiyama), enjoying street performers and learning how to make mochi-tsuki (a slightly sweet and sticky rice cake). I will post later about the mochi-tsuki. (We've been so busy lately, that I have a back-log of fun adventures that I hope to cover soon.)

The street performers were very entertaining even though we did not fully understand their shtick. They danced, told (what I think were) jokes and did some samurai stage fighting. But, the best part was when they recruited Chris from the audience to help them with the grand finale. He had to sit perfectly still holding a daikon radish over his head. Then, two of the performers sliced the radish into pieces with their swords.

Here is a quick clip of Chris's action scene:


As an omiyage or souvenir, Chris was given the Daikon pieces to take home. Using the daikon pieces, we made a delicious and very easy soup! Japanese radishes are far superior to the dinky red radishes that we have in the United States.