One of the past issues of the Japanese Eat Magazine has an interesting article about 6 festivals from different parts of the world, including Japan, and the corresponding 6 festival dishes. All the festivals occur anywhere from late November to the New Year. Article was written by John Paul Catton, photography is courtesy of Hioki Takeharu.

Let’s start off with Japan. A traditional dish around New Year is called mochi or o-mochi, usually dipped in soy sauce. Mochi is made of rice, ground into sticky and smooth paste that can be difficult to chew and swallow for any untrained gourmet. Therefore, the Japanese tend to remind senior citizens around this time of year to be careful while eating mochi as statistically every year about a dozen people choke to death on this dish.

When you survive the dangerous mochi, you can head over to the Middle East and eat some konafa, a dough pastry with added butter, milk, sugar, cream or tapioca, water and lemon juice.

We’re still hungry. Let’s travel to China and order chiao tzu which is known in Japan under the name gyoza. The dish is oriental dumpling, filled with pork or vegetables.

From China, we take a boat to the United States, find a 24-hour supermarket and fill up the shopping cart with a magnificient cooked turkey that will be eaten for Thanksigiving.

Our food crusade takes us to Israel where we drool at the sight of the mysterious latkes which is a type of deep-fried potato pancakes.

We’re on the way to our last destination, Britain, where Prince Charles invites us to dinner with grandiose Christmas Pudding, made of dried figs, raisins, sultanas, apple, pine nuts, almonds, candied peel, honey and mixed spices that are all held together with eggs, breadcrumbs and suet.

In this time of planetary economic crisis of the millennium it’s not surprising if we don’t have money to buy meat. Just when you thought it won’t get better, the Japanese have come up with a creative solution: a special web site where you can cook and eat four types of virtual meat. The only thing that’s missing is the aroma.
Be sure to check out the Air Yakiniku site here. (Flash needed for viewing)

I think we all know about corn soup, but a cold drink made of corn soup? Not something you’d expect! Tastes like a corn yogurt. There are other versions as well, like sweet potato and Japanese pumpkin (kabocha).

As you might know, sushi comes in all kinds of flavors, colors and shapes. A lot of restaurants in Japan offer home delivery. Here I scanned one of the fine menus they frequently drop off in our mailbox among other daily junk mail.

Garlic Legend – what? No, this is not the title of a new Harry Potter sequel, but rather a small bag of purple/pink colored garlic cloves with a fancy name “Garlic Legend” which is considered some sort of snack food in Japan.

There is no artificial coloring, so what gives the cloves such color? It’s shiso (紫蘇 – Perilla; Japanese basil) with a strong minty taste. Shiso is a Japanese herb considered rich in vitamins and minerals, stimulates body’s immune system and is also used to preserve and sterilize other foods.

The taste? Hmm… Something between sour and bitter crunchy garlic and mint candy. Something like that. Thus, probably not for everyone.

Here’s something for the real seafood gourmets. In stores in Japan, sometimes you will find packages of dried octopus tentacles stacked on the shelves along with peanuts, almonds, potato chips and alike.

The octopus character says “Onaka ippaaaaai!” (I’m full!)

Nothing beats a dried octopus snack on a hot summer day! What do you think? Want to try?