Setsubun 節分, which is a festival that celebrates the start of spring according to the Japanese lunar calendar, is coming up Feb. 3rd. Beside throwing beans around the house and screaming, another tradition is to eat an uncut sushi roll or maki-sushi 巻寿司 facing some predetermined compass direction. Most convenience stores will begin to sell the uncut ones on that day, sans compass. At Vie de France (a bread shop) they were taking preorders for sushi-rolls made with white bread instead of rice. It looks like it will taste very dry. I heard that there are other variations like maki-sushi made of sweets or fruit. Perhaps Krispykreme should make a glazed one?
Looks really nice, thoug whouldn’t eat the french version. Who whould want to eat baguette with raw fish inside? Strange (most French are, btw ;-). Why not brioche?
What about you? Are you going to send us some wierd pictures of yourself running around your house with beans?
Hi Q-taro,
Got a question thats irrelevant to this post. I remember you wrote about the powerbook g4 a while back. I have a co-worker who recently purchased one second hand but its in Japanese. Is there anything in the OS that let us change the language to English?
Appreciate your help.
Cm, in the system settings you can change the interface to English. Check out support on Apple.com for help.
Great Roy!
You’ve finally managed to get a Q-Taro yourself! Congratulations!
Huh???
Sorry… ‘ve been a bit sleepy when i was writing that…
I ment he called you q-taro, and you didn’t care.
Thats all.
Nori and bread together just seems nasty…if that is nori and not some weird substitute. Ugh.
White bread instead of rice? Dry indeed. I was thinking of some sort of maki-cake hybrid the other day. マケーキ might work. It could be cool with lots of good flavor combinations, or just nasty with uni and cake…yum.
After 15 years in Japan I had never heard of the uncut norimaki tradition. Is that because an uncut norimaki is somehow more “faithful” , or mamena, by being undivided, therefore being a kind of homonym for mamemaki?
It seems that the only acceptable norimaki should be nattomaki 納豆巻き because it is made with beans 豆.
If one gets a blister while chopping firewood is that triply auspicious? 肉刺薪。
The bread makizushi sounds rather gross. But if you don’t have a rice cooker whatcha gonna do?
That’s a funny suggestion about Krispy Kreme. Yeah, they could do a glazed jelly roll. There you go, you could top it with scoops of soy ice cream. It could become another “adopted” tradition kind of like Christmas cakes.
Better yet, they could substitute anko (あんこ or 餡こ）sweet bean paste (or bean jam) for the jelly in jelly rolls. That would be right up Krispy Kreme’s alley as for mamemaki. Yuck.
I wonder if it would sell.