Japanese Celebratory Food
I'm relaxing at the in-laws. A cool breeze comes in through the open sliding door that looks out on my husband's late father's garden. Yellow flowers bloom everywhere outside, swaying in the wind. I'm drinking tea with my mommy in-law, without a care in the world. People told me having a baby would be hard work, but all I do is relax here and chat with mommy while looking at the garden, while my newborn gets 17 hours of sleep every day.
A woman comes up the steps, carrying a large box. It's the plastic version of one of those lacquered wooden boxes that were traditionally used as picnic baskets. The woman, Ms. Yamamoto, doesn't bother with the door or the bell, she walks up to the screen, sees us, and says she just dropped by to give me "Sekihan."
"Seki" means "red" and "han" means "rice."
The rice gets its red color from red azuki beans. The beans are left to soak in water overnight, and then that's mixed in with the rice before it's cooked. The result is pink rice with dark red beans. Because it has its own distinct azuki flavor, it's eaten differently from white rice. White rice is like a conduit for everything else you eat. It's the backdrop of the stage. The pickles, the fish, the fried chicken, whatever, provides the flavor, and the rice is there to soak up the juices, the spills, and fill you up between bites. Sekihan is more of its own thing. You don't go putting your other food on top of it or with it. So to give it flavor, mommy-in-law immediately mixes some salt and sesame seeds to sprinkle on top.
"Congratulations," Ms. Yamamoto says as she hands over the pretty red and black box. Because sekihan is a very special dish, usually eaten only for special occasions. She hands me the rice, and I give her some vegetables from the garden in exchange. She says that the rice is hard and tastes terrible, and I now know that that's her being polite, and not weird, like I used to think before I got used to Japanese culture.
That night we eat the sekihan with a lot of other small dishes that Mommy has prepared. The only things you really need for Japanese cooking are- Soy sauce
- Mirin (sugary sake)
- Sake
- Vinegar
- Dashi
Whatever you want to cook in the Japanese style, just throw in a pan and add two or more of the above to your taste, and there you have it. Japanese food. So tonight we're having liver and ginger (seasoned with mostly mirin and a little soy sauce), thinly sliced vegetables (pickled in vinegar with a little bit of mirin), a dish with tofu and ground beef (soy sauce, mirin, sake), and fried vegetables (with dashi).
Since most of this stuff has very similar seasonings, and none of the seasonings clash with one another, the leftovers can all be thrown in together at the end.
So here's the other part of Japanese culture that boggles me. I was still hungry after the meal so I grab some natto to eat for a snack. My niece asks me, "Is natto your number 1 favorite food?" I say, "Yes." She asks, "Then what's your number 0 favorite food?" I have no idea what that means so I just randomly say, "pizza." Mommy-in-law hears this and immediately runs to the fridge, gets out some bread and ketchup, and starts looking for cheese. My sister in-law who's much younger and more internationally savvy, asks her what the hell she's doing. Mommy says, "Jennifer said she wants pizza."
Yeah, in Japan, "I like this" often translates into the polite version of, "I want it now." I have to be careful around traditionally-minded folk.
Sister in-law saves me the embarrassment by explaining that that's not what I meant. I call over to her, "I don't even know what 'number 0' even means!!"
After the meal I thank everyone for cooking for me, and mention how nice Ms. Yamamoto was for bringing the sekihan. "It's really delicious, and much healthier than white rice," I say. Maybe I said this a bit to heavy handedly, because all of a sudden the next day, we're having sekihan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Mommy-in-law has gone out of her way to make loads of it for me. She even freezes some rice balls so I can have it whenever I like. I ask her why the sudden switch from white rice to sekihan.
"Sekihan?" She tilts her head at me. "Oh! You mean Bean Rice."
Bean Rice?? Is it different? It doesn't look any different to me.
Then I realize that sekihan is for special occasions. This rice may be the same, but we aren't celebrating anything. "Red" is a celebratory color, so many celebratory foods are things that are red. Sekihan, red colored seafood, sweet red beans, pink kamaboko, and, more recently, strawberries. But today is not a celebration. So today it's just bean rice.
"Yes, I mean bean rice," I say.
"Because it's healthy," she replies, handing over the salt and sesame seed mix.
And I recall the conversation the night before. Maybe she took that too literally. Maybe I accidentally implied that I didn't like her plain white rice. I really am not fluent yet in Japanese culture, no matter how long I live here. My heart remains American and I still think like an American.
Another celebratory food is the Tai fish, which is also red. This is a play on words. "Omedetai" (wishing you the best) has the word "Tai" in it. So tai is usually served with sekihan for big celebrations. Tai can get pretty expensive, especially around times of the year where big events are going on. New Year's, Coming-of-Age-Day, etc. In Japan, traditionally birthdays aren't celebrated, or I'd expect kids would be eating fish instead of birthday cake. But birthdays became popular via Western culture and now everyone has birthday cakes. Instead of birthdays, a child's "Boy's Day" or "Girl's Day" is celebrated, along with Shichigosan, an autumn celebration when a child has lived healthily to the age of 3, 5, and 7 years old. Another one is the coming-of-age ceremony in January. So there are lots of celebrations instead of birthdays where kids can eat yummy food. And one of those is called "Momoka."
Momoka is the 100th day after the birth of a child. It's kind of celebrating that a child can now eat for the first time. The family is given sekihan, Tai, and other celebratory foods. The child is dressed up in a big frilly bib and taken to the shrine to get their first set of chopsticks. However traditions change and most people don't go through all that effort anymore. It's more common to get your kid's pictures taken wearing a ridiculous bib and surrounded by fake food. I find this a bit out there. I mean if you want me to dress my baby up, go to a shrine and receive chopsticks, I can see that. But an expensive photo shoot with fake food and a baby? I just don't get it.
At the temple I go to, the Momoka ceremony isn't so popular, so they hold it in conjunction with the "Congratulations on the birth, and on thriving well enough to be able to get out of the house" celebration. When Jay was 20 days old and seemed thriving well enough to go on a longer car ride, I called up the temple and asked if we could do the ceremony early. For safety, they said he had to be 30 days old. So he couldn't get his blessing while my sister was here. I asked Mommy-in-law if we could get the blessing at the local shrine early instead. No. That's not traditional.
Okay fine.
Well we got Jay blessed at both the shrine and the temple after he was 30 days old. (Wow I kept another human being alive for 30 whole days!!) And the temple blessing included the Momoka celebration, so now he has a pair of chopsticks and he still can't even use his hands yet.
His 100th day celebration coincides with Yossi's birthday in August. So instead of getting pictures of him with food, I want to get some goofy pictures of us as a family on that day. And instead of Sekihan and Tai, a good old birthday cake will do!
Jennifer