Plum blossoms at Odawara Castle
While on a bit of a hunt for real estate recently I tried to track down an apartment I had seen advertised in Shiroyama, which is probably Odawara’s most expensive residential district. I hadn’t been there before so it was an interesting wander. It has quite a different feel to some of the other areas, thanks to having larger blocks of land allowing for spacious gardens and bigger dwellings. Also due to being on a hill, there are some rather nice views of Sagami Bay to be had, as well as glimpes of Odawara Castle from certain locations. It is nice to also stumble onto unexpected things like Okubo-jinja Shrine – rather small and not of any great significance, but I like how these little outposts of greenery and respite pop up here and there.
I didn’t the apartment I was looking for, although we later checked it out by inspection (and found it may have been very well suited as a massive and extravagant bachelor pad of, say, the late 1970s, but seemed to be well past its prime). But despite the cold weather I did find some nice flowers out already including plum blossoms at Odawara Castle.
I also discovered that Aoyama has a bicycle track that attracts gamblers and apparently some “seedy” elements (though they weren’t in evidence when I went past). What I did see in plenty of evidence was gross underemployment, as is not uncommon in some service industries in Japan, with each entry to the carpark having from about 6 to 10 people to wave people into it.
Hardly egg-selent: in search of a happy egg
Jan 18
Posted by js in Commentary, Food, Japan | No Comments
Picture via Creative Commons via Awesomesauce Studios / flickr
I often start the day with an egg, and value their taste and nutrition but also I’m concerned about the welfare of the chickens doing the laying.
Australia has an increasingly good range of eggs available for sale, with several options offering organic, free range, bio-dynamic and so on. We have become accustomed to this being our “normal” household eggs. The fact that such eggs are available in reasonable quantity even in mainstream supermarkets now means that we are by no means alone in seeking out “happy eggs”.
In Japan, without being able to read the fine print of the various types of eggs, (and/or due to being someone’s house-guest), I haven’t had a lot of say in what sort of egg to consume. So for this prolonged stay I thought I ought to take steps sooner rather than later to solve this little “egg” issue, which I hoped would be a simple one.
Well, it transpires that finding a “good egg” in Japan if no easy task. That is not to say they aren’t tasty. In fact, I would say a basic Japanese egg tastes better than what I remember a basic Australian egg tasting like, and they have to have a consistency and cooking properties that “feel” like a better class of egg.
So I started to ask some questions. I assumed price was a reasonable indicator of quality and also – more importantly – of the welfare of the birds involved, since more square metres per bird, better food, organic farming, etc, would all have a natural tendency to push up the price. On that basis, I chose the most expensive eggs available at the local Robinson’s supermarket to see what I could find out.
My first surprise was that all the eggs were blue! I hadn’t seen naturally blue eggs before, but it turns out certain breeds do in fact lay blue eggs at times, and the blue colour permeates right through the shell (unlike with a brown egg, where only the outside is coloured). Blue eggs (as well as more greeny coloured ones) commonly come from a South American breed of chickens known as Araucanas.
Inside a blue egg shell. Creative Commons by Jannie-Jan / Flickr
The second surprise was that despite these eggs costing around four times the price of the regular eggs, they’re produced in the same way. Conclusion: these are an egg fashion accessory for people who happen to like blue or something a bit out of the ordinary.
It reminded me of the availability of double-yolk eggs in Japan. Since getting a “double-yolker” is considered to be good luck, some bright spark decided it would be a good thing to screen all the eggs and separate the doubles out and sell them in “double dozens”. These would make a good gift, I imagine.
We then tried a nearby shop that had a small-scale rural outlet feel to it, pretty pictures of farmers and grass and eggs and so on. “Yes!” I thought. Close to home, a good little micro-business to support and ethical eggs. What more could one want? Well, again there were eggs of different price levels, including some that looked sufficiently expensive to be on par with the best quality Australian eggs. But it turned out from the glossy brochure that these weren’t all they had cracked up to be: they use pesticides only when necessary, which still doesn’t sound great, and all of their eggs – even the very expensive ones – are from caged hens.
Unwilling to be beaten, when next at the local JA outlet (an agricultural cooperative), I discovered in the far corner that there are in fact free range chickens in Japan. Eggselent! The Senior Egg Man had gone to roost for the day, so I couldn’t find out whether they were organic or not – in all likelihood, I doubt it – but I’ll try to look on the sunny side and say it’s a good start.
Until nest time.
Tags: eggs, farming, organic