food

obento

An integral part life in Japan is obento, Japanese lunch boxes (or just bento with the o being there only for politeness). Bento is simply put a proper meal with rice or noodles and fish or meat and vegetables and other Japanese foody necessities, all packaged in a box. Bento lunch boxes are for many […]

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(sur)realism

A short little post to celebrate a short little line of poetry found everywhere in Japan. 写真はイメージです。You can find “写真はイメージです。” written on a package of yoghurt, on menus at restaurants, in magazines and on advertisement boards just to name a small selection of places where you can enjoy the simple but beautiful sentence stating something

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tomatoes

After rain. Comes more rain – that is how I have experienced summer so far this year. Sure, there have been a few days or hours of sun in between the persistent showers, but the last month has really given us a lot of precipitation. And nature has loved it – the grass is growing visibly day

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green fingers

It is the middle of summer and the vegetables in our little garden are thriving like plants in a jungle. My mother-in-law is the one who takes care of it, grows the vegetables, gives the nutrients, does the weeding and harvesting – all I have to do is giving the garden water those days when the

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good old days

As if our world was not changing fast enough with a three year old toddler keeping the pace, my wife and I decided to throw in a little bit more change. We had thought our choice of Kindergarten for our son was a good one, we had made several visits, tried it a few days

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seaweed saves the day

I like the image of eating with your five senses – we try the best we can to make meals for our son that are not only appealing in flavor, but also have an eye-candy property as well as pleasant smell, touch and sound to them. I admit, more often than not, we are not

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eggs in the garden

In front of our house, we have a little vegetable garden. Or maybe that is a bit too much to say – we are planning to have a vegetable garden; so far we only have one kind of vegetables, two okra plants that my mother-in-law planted for us the first week after we moved in

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one color to rule them all

I had almost given up my efforts to keep my clothes clean from yellow stains; instead, a few months ago, I narrowed down my home wardrobe to a few pieces that I did not mind too much getting all stained from everything having a baby in the house brings with it. Thinking about yellow in

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lesson from a baby

From not really knowing how to open his mouth, to opening and swallowing the offered food like a hungry baby bird – our son has gone from beginner to master at eating in two short months’ time. His eyes start shining when he sees his little bowl and spoon coming towards him and he starts

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