Japanese Diet

Japanese Diet

Japan has some of the longest life expectancies in the world and the reason being "The Japanese Diet"

The Japanese Diet Basics

The emphasis is on small portions of fresh seasonal food. Dieters are advised to value quality over quantity and to eat slowly so as to appreciate the flavors of the food and reach a feeling of satisfaction with less food.

A major factor of the Japanese way of eating is to eat until 80% full. In addition a great deal of emphasis is placed on presentation and making the food look beautiful and appealing to the eye.

Dairy and bread are not part of the diet and when beef and chicken are included in meals they are regarded more as condiments rather than the main focus of the meal. Fresh fruit is the preferred dessert however if a richer dessert is eaten it is in very small quantities.

In Japan breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day and is often the largest.

They have a concept of the Japanese power breakfast, which consists of miso soup, rice, egg or fish, vegetables, fruit and green tea.

Recommended Foods

The seven pillars of the Japanese diet that are the foundation of the dietary aspect of this plan:

·         Fish such as salmon and mackerel.

·         Vegetables including daikon radish and sea vegetables.

·         Rice (preferably brown).

·         Soy (tofu, miso, soy sauce, endamame).

·         Noodles (soba, udon, ramen, somen).

·         Fruit such as Fuji apples, tangerines, and persimmons.

·         Tea preferably green.

Typical Breakfast:

• Miso Soup

• 1 cup white rice

• 1 egg

• Nori seaweed strips

• Green tea

Typical Lunch

• Teriyaki fish

• Rice

• Asian greens

• Green tea

Typical Snacks

• Fuji Apple

Typical Dinner

• Chicken

• Rice

• Miso soup

• Sea vegetables with tofu

The Japanese achieve a lot of physical activity by simple actions such as walking, climbing stairs and using a bicycle to run errands rather than relying on motorized transport.

Eating Healthy Foods is the Key

It is important to be aware that there is no magic to Japanese foods and eating healthy food is the key!!

Autumn in Japan

Autumn in Japan:

September is the time for tsukimi (moon viewing). As the weather cools in October and November, leaves begin to change color and suddenly the landscape is a dramatic palette of red, brown, orange, yellow and green. The koyo (red leaves) of late autumn are an often breathtaking sight, especially against a backdrop of Mt Fuji or a temple in Kyoto.

Energy Saving Vending Machines in Japan

With the recent disasters in Japan and shortage of electricity, comes a new era of vending machines that are both eco-friendly as well as energy saving. We have seen countless fascinating innovations in many sectors of Japan involving the recent trend in “setsuden” (energy saving) and “teiden taisaku” (blackout countermeasures). As we also know, vending machines are a significant part of Japanese culture, located on the corner of every street, entrance of a building, and even rows of them side by side. However, these convenient, but not-so-efficient ubiquitous machines, devour an astonishing amount of electricity for their size. Numerous measures have been taken up by JVMA (Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association) to reduce the use of electrical energy such as Zone Cooling (in which the machines only cool/heat the next few cans that are ready to be sold), a sensor which enables it to turn off its lighting system during the day and when there are nearby lights, and a “Vacuum Insulation” system where materials such as glass wool and metallic films are used to prevent heat and cold loss.

Japanimation

Japanimation is an older term used in the West to describe what is now more commonly known as anime. It is a simple contraction of the phrase Japanese animation.Japanimation has its roots from the era just before the 1920s, when it began forming in Japan, but did not achieve true popularity until the 1930s.

Around the turn of the century, animation began being produced fairly widely in the West, and these techniques made their way to Japan around 1917, when the first Japanimation clip was screened, a two minute movie of a samurai and his sword. Through the 1930s, as film was taking off in the rest of the world, it remained a relatively dormant industry in Japan. This was in large part due to the limitations when it came to telling stories that took place in the West, due to a lack of Western-looking actors.

A clear solution was seen in Japanimation, which allowed movies to be shot in any location, with any racial group, and even allowed for strange fantasy worlds and characters. With the widespread success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Japanimation discovered new, even cheaper and more efficient techniques, and continued to evolve. The first full-length Japanimation film was produced in 1944, and was entitled Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors.
The popularity of Japanimation within Japan continued to increase during the 1970s, and new genres, particularly the space opera, were explored. With the success of the Star Wars films, the space opera became an even more successful genre, and sci-fi Japanimation became extremely popular during the 1980s. In the 1980s a number of successful Japanimation films and television shows were also exported to the United States, where they were largely converted into remakes. In 1984, Hayao Miyazaki produced what would be a pivotal film, Nausica of the Valley of the Wind, which allowed him to start his own company, which would eventually produce some of the most popular Japanimation films of all time, many of which would be exported to the United States for widespread consumption.

By the late 1980s, the Japanimation boom had hit the United States and other Western countries in full force. Movies like Akira and Vampire Hunter D were instant cult hits in the United States, and they paved the way for a more widespread acceptance of Japanimation, as well as for a burgeoning fan base of die-hards who would import movies directly from Japan. This trend continued through the 1990s, with seminal films like Ghost in the Shell becoming commercial niche successes in the United States, as well as influencing later Western franchises like the Matrix films.

There are many different styles of art seen in Japanimation, but overall they adhere to a number of key graphical styles, which immediately differentiate them from the vast majority of Western animation. Great deals of the stylings of Japanimation are derived from Japanese comic forms, manga, and many popular films and shows are based off of comic books. In recent years some Western films, such as Kill Bill have adopted Japanimation techniques for part or all of the film, and the visual style has become very widely recognized in the West.

Use of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji Characters

Use of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji Characters -

Modern Japanese is written with a mixture of hiragana and katakana, plus kanji.The katakana characters are mainly often used for transcription of words from foreign languages. For example, "television" is written terebi (テレビ). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and personal names. For example America is written Amerika (アメリカ), Sunil is written as Suniru (スニル)
A typical Japanese newspaper consists of approximately 70 percent kanji, 20 percent hiragana, and 10 percent katakana.

Consider the following sentence:
English: I will use this computer.
Japanese: 私は、このコンピュータを使います。
Pronunciation: watashi wa kono konpyu-ta wo tsukaimasu

In this sentence the word 'Computer' is written as 'Konpyu-ta' in Katakana.
The rest sentence is a mixture of Hiragana and Kanji Characters.

Hiragana characters are mainly used for all parts of speech except nouns, verbs and adjectives & endings of words written in kanji

Consider the following sentence:
English: The request was sucessfully executed.
Japanese: ﾘｸｴｽﾄは正常に実行されました。
Pronounciation: Rekuesuto wa Seijyou Ni Jikkou saremashita

In this sentence the word 'Request' is written as 'Rekuesuto' in Katakana.
The words 'Sucessfully' and 'Executed' are written in Kanji characters as '正常' (pronounced as Seijyou) and '実行' (pronounced as Jikkou) respectively.
The remaining words are written as Hiragana characters as mentioned below
- Particles 'は' (pronounced as wa) and 'に' (pronounced as ni)
- Endings of words written in kanji 'されました' (pronounced as saremashita)

Japanese Food

Japanese Food

Sushi

In Japanese cuisine, sushi is a food made of vinegared rice combined with various toppings or fillings, which includes seafood and can also include meat, vegetables, mushrooms, or eggs. Sushi toppings may be raw, cooked, or marinated. Sushi as an English word has come to refer to the complete dish (rice together with toppings); this is the sense used in this article. The original term Japanese: 寿司 sushi (-zushi in some compounds such as makizushi) in the Japanese language refers to the rice, not the fish or other toppings.In the Western world, sushi is often misunderstood to mean only clumps of rice topped with raw fish, or to refer to other raw-seafood dishes, such as sashimi (sushi and sashimi are considered distinct in Japan).There are various types of sushi. Sushi served rolled in nori (dried sheets of laver, a kind of pressed and dried alga) is called maki (rolls). Sushi made with toppings laid onto hand-formed clumps of rice is called nigiri; sushi made with toppings stuffed into a small pouch of fried tofu is called inari; and sushi made with toppings served scattered over a bowl of sushi rice is called chirashi-zushi, or scattered sushi.

Yakitori (Grilled Chicken on Skewers)

Yakitori being cookedYakitori (焼き鳥, やきとり), lit. grilled bird, is a Japanese type of skewered chicken. Also known as kushiyaki (串焼、くしやき), lit. skewer grill. Traditional yakitori consists only of various chicken parts and vegetables, but in modern usage refers to any sort of beef, pork, fish, seafood or vegetable kebab, which get skewered on skewers named kushi. Yakitori is typically served with salt or tare sauce, which is basically made up of mirin, sweet sake, soy sauce and sugar. The sauce is applied on the skewered meat and is grilled until delicately cooked and is served with the tare sauce as a dip. Yakitori is a very popular dish in Japan and throughout Asia. In Japan, many working people grab a yakitori and a beer from yakitori stalls on the way home from work. Yakitori is a common, cheap accompaniment to beer in izakayas.Common yakitori dishes yotsumi (四つ身, chicken breast) atsuage tofu (厚揚げとうふ, deep-fat fried tofu) enoki maki (エノキ巻き, enoki mushrooms wrapped in slices of pork) pīman (ピーマン, green pepper) negima (ねぎ間, green onions and chicken breast) nankotsu (軟骨, chicken cartilage) rebā (レバー, liver) tsukune (つくね, chicken meatballs) torikawa (とりかわ, chicken skin) tebasaki (手羽先, chicken wing) asuparabēkon (アスパラベーコン, asparagus wrapped in bacon) butabara (豚ばら, pork belly) ikada (筏, welsh onion)

Onigiri (Rice Ball)

Onigiri (お握り) also known as Omusubi (おむすび) is a Japanese (short grain) rice ball snack most commonly formed into triangle or oval shapes and wrapped in seaweed (nori). Traditionally, the onigiri is filled with pickled ume fruit (umeboshi), salted salmon (sake), katsuobushi or any other salty or sour ingredient. If a person pours vinegar on the cooked rice for onigiri, it is transformed into the basis of sushi, a different kind of food. In practice, however, either pickled filling or vinegar is used for preservation of the rice. Since the onigiri is one of the most famed and popular snacks in Japan, most convenience stores in Japan stock onigiri in many popular flavors. Specialized shops, called Onigiri-ya, offer handmade rice balls for take out.

Miso Soup

Miso soup (味噌汁, misoshiru in Japanese) is a traditional Japanese soup consisting of a stock called "dashi" into which is mixed softened miso paste. Although the suspension of miso paste into dashi is the only characteristic that actually defines miso soup, many other ingredients are added depending on regional and seasonal recipes as well as personal preference

Gohan (Boiled Rice) Japanese cooked white rice that has undergone a precooking process of washing, rinsing and soaking to remove as much starch as possible. This lengthy process can take up to an hour and reduces stickiness in the finished rice.

Besides these there are other Japanese dishes, to name a few like:

Beef Sukiyaki
Chicken Teriyaki
Yaki-Soba (Fried Noodles)
Ozoni (New Year's Soup)
Sweet Peanut Mochi (Rice Cakes)
Ramen (Noodle Soup)
Broiled Salmon

Kiyomizu Temple

The following is the list of 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World, alphabetically:
The Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, Japan has been included in this list.

1 Acropolis, Athens, Greece
2 Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3 Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia
4 Chichen Itza Aztec site, Yucatan, Mexico
5 Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
6 Colosseum, Rome
7 Easter Island Statues, Chile
8 Eiffel Tower, Paris
9 Great Wall, China
10 Hagia Sophia church, Istanbul, Turkey
11 Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
12 Kremlin/St.Basil's, Moscow
13 Machu Picchu, Peru
14 Neuschwanstein Castle, Fussen, Germany
15 Petra ancient city, Jordan
16 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
17 Statue of Liberty, New York
18 Stonehenge, Amesbury, United Kingdom
19 Sydney Opera House, Australia
20 Taj Mahal, Agra, India
21 Timbuktu city, Mali

The Kiyomizu temple or Kiyomizu-dera (or Kiyomizudera, 清水寺) refers to several Buddhist temples but most commonly to Otowasan Kiyomizudera (音羽山清水寺) in Eastern Kyoto, and one of the best known sights of the city. The temple dates back to 798, but the present buildings were constructed in 1633. The temple takes its name from the waterfall within the complex, which runs off the nearby hills - kiyoi mizu (清い水) literally means pure water.

The main hall of Kiyomizu-dera is notable for its vast veranda, supported by hundreds of pillars, which juts out over the hillside and offers impressive views of the Kyoto city. The expression "to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu" (「清水の舞台から飛び降りる」) is the Japanese equivalent of the English expression "to take the plunge". This refers to an Edo period tradition that held that, if one were to survive jumping from the stage, one's wish would be granted.

This appears plausible: the lush vegetation below the platform might cushion the fall of a lucky pilgrim, though the practice is now prohibited. 234 jumps were recorded in Edo period and of those, 85.4 percent survived. The fall is indeed only 13 metres, which remains impressive for a wooden construction.

Beneath the main hall is the waterfall Otowa-no-taki, where three channels of water drop into a pond. Visitors to the temple collect the water, which is believed to have therapeutic properties, from the waterfall in metal cups. It is said that drinking the water of the three streams confers health, longevity, and success in studies.

The temple complex contains several other shrines, notably Jishu-jinja, decidated to Okuninushino-Mikoto, a god of love and "good matches". Jishu-jinja possesses a pair of "love stones" placed 18 metres apart, which lonely visitors attempt to walk between with their eyes closed. Success in reaching the other stone, eyes closed, is taken as a presage that the pilgrim will find love. One can be assisted in the crossing, but this is taken to mean that an intermediary will be needed. The persons romantic interest can assist them as well.

The complex also includes all the fixtures of a popular temple, being one of the most-visited attractions of the city: hawkers offering various talismans, incense, and o-mikuji (paper fortunes ranging from "great fortune" to "great ill") abound. Indeed the high popularity of the place means that tourists will find it difficult to take pictures on the main temple's platform.