おみやげ - Omiyage

There is a tradition in Japan that if you go away on a trip somewhere, you are expected to bring back gifts for all of your family, friends and co-workers. This had led to the development of many regional omiyage (souvenirs) which usually come in the form of food. I think this is because food items can be bought cheaply and in bulk. I saw, for instance, many of the Japanese passengers on the flight from Heathrow to Tokyo carrying boxes and boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, presumably for this purpose.

In some of the departments that May and I work in during the course of a week we are given a tea break, and along with ocha we are also offered various omiyage that people have brought back from their domestic travels. We've tried omiyage from Nagoya, Tokyo and a bunch of other places that I now forget. Nagasaki's omiyage is the castella cake, which was originally brought over by the Dutch. It is basically a plain sponge cake, something not all that impressive to a European but to a Japanese person it is quite unusual. When I went to Glover Garden a few weeks ago and they had scores of castella shops lining the sloped streets. Fortunately for May and me, they had plenty of samples on offer of all the different flavours, including chocolate, banana, green tea and cheese. Yum.

Here's the cake that May and I bought from the Fukusaya Castella shop, which is famous in Japan for having the best castella's money can buy. It has been going for nearly 400 years, so I guess they have had plenty of practice. It just happens to be in Hamanomachi, the main shopping district here in Nagasaki. We couldn't resist trying one.

This is a fairly common type of omiyage, a manju. They are cakey on the outside and have a chestnut or sweet soy bean paste or something similar inside. Nagoya is meant to have the best manju, but this I bought from the hospital shop for ¥55.

Suwajinja

I have been unbelievably busy this past week or so. I'm just about getting enough rest, but I have had practically no time to write anything substantial for this blog - sorry. Hopefully, this quick post will keep you all occupied until I find some time to write a real post.

May and I went to Suwajinja Shinto shrine on Saturday. Much to our dismay however, we had to climb the Tallest Set of Stairs in the World (see above) to get to it. This photo wasn't even taken from the bottom, but part way up.

The great ascent was worth it though; The view was amazing.

The shrine itself wasn't half bad either.

And we found an old-fashioned well to play with while we were there. Yay.

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After the shrine we headed to the Fukusaya Castellla Shop, which has been making and selling castella cakes since 1624. We split the cost of the smallest one they did and had it for dessert after our first attempt at home-made okonomiyaki, which I have to say was a remarkable success.