Chihiro Iwasaki

While in Nagano last year I was lucky enough to visit the Chihiro Art Museum in Azumino which houses the artwork of Chihiro Iwasaki, one of Japan’s most loved artists. (There is also one in Tokyo.)

Chihiro created water-colour paintings of children, flowers and nature throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Her method of painting was unusual as it combined traditional Japanese ink drawings with European watercolour. She aimed to capture the personalities of children.

I picked up a book of her illustrations at the museum and it’s filled with some of her lovely quotes. She said of her paintings in 1963, “Children get muddy and dirty when they play. Shouldn’t I depict them that way in order to make them look more like real children? Instead, a dreamlike sweetness always seems to pervade my illustrations. But no matter how dirty children get, or how ragged their clothes are, I can’t help seeing them as beautiful children whose minds are filled with dreams.”

A Japanese friend told me that Chihiro drew the children’s features until they were only 60% complete, so that the viewer could fill in the remaining portion in their mind, and the faces would appear to resemble children they knew.

During the Vietnam War, Chihiro drew children playing happily to illustrate her hope that they would grow up in a world free of war, and the Chihiro Art Museums promote peace and happiness. The museums feature galleries of her work, a library of thousands of picture books, a huge park and a shop where you can buy prints, postcards and books of her work. I think I bought 17 postcards when I was there. Randomly, you can also buy her postcards online at this Austrian website.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ cookies

Is it me or do these tiny cookies look like they’ve popped out of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland? Miniature in size, each cookie is about the size of a $2 coin (3/4 of an inch in diameter). It’s like they were shrunk to fit through the door to wonderland and be served at the mad hatter’s tea party. They came all stacked up in a little tube and I really only bought them because they were so tiny. They are shortbread with rainbow sprinkles and icing. I just don’t know why they’re so small! What can you do with such mini cookies?

Candy love from Japan

My adorable friend and fellow Hello Kitty fan Charlotte sent me a surprise candy care package from Japan! It included Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma halloween chocolates. Thanks Charlotto ^_^

biscuit inside!

The Rilakkuma ones had custard pudding inside.

Cute sticky tape on the package! ^_^

Happy times

How could these smiley-face sponges (from a 100 yen store in Osaka) not make doing the washing up a more pleasurable experience?

Adriano Zumbo

After reading about Adriano Zumbo patisserie on Lee Tran’s gorgeous blog and hearing about her haul of crazily flavoured macarons on their “Macaron Day” (including Chupachup flavour, toasted marshmallow flavour, burnt toast & butter flavour, vegemite sourdough flavour and blue cheese & pear flavour), I had been meaning to visit Adriano Zumbo in Balmain for ages. Finally made it there today thanks to a tour of Balmain’s foodie spots with Liz and Sarah. ( ^_^ ) Picked up a bunch of macarons in very cool flavour combos. The peach-coloured one is peach and pink grapefruit, the green one is fig and something else, the black one is black sesame, the purple one is mango and black sticky rice, the red one is strawberry and balsamic vinegar, and the white one is lychee flavour.

 

They couldn’t help but remind me of the technicolour macarons I tried in Osaka, Japan in a shop in Shinsaibashi (below)….. they were really that bright!

American pie

Happy Thanksgiving for last Thursday, and for any Americans in Sydney, you’ll be glad to know that you can find the integral pumpkin pie ingredient, Libby’s pumpkin, at Thomas Dux! I was surprised to see it there last Friday, after having a Thanksgiving dinner sans pumpkin pie (pecan pie was substituted). I think they imported the Libbys especially for Thanksgiving. Each tin is about $9. (A lot cheaper than a flight to America to bring it back.)

Strawberried M&Ms

It’s not often you see limited edition American candies in these parts so I was excited to find these Transformers Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms in a convenience store in North Sydney. (It’s also not often that ’strawberry’ is used as a verb…) Anyway, they’re like normal peanut-butter M&Ms but there’s “more than meets the eye” ^_^  They’re ’strawberried’. The pack contains red, yellow and brown M&Ms, and the yellow ones have red speckles all over the sugar coating.

If you like peanut butter M&Ms (or PB&J sandwiches) you would <3 these! The strawberry and chocolate combine with the salty peanut butter filling to form a magical flavour combo. Strawberry + peanut butter + chocolate.

They were released in America back in June for the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. M&Ms also released Pirates of the Caribbean M&Ms (white chocolate) called Pirate Pearls and Star Wars M&Ms (dark chocolate) called Darth M&Ms.

Vegie galore KitKat

When my Tokyo friend Jess told me a few weeks ago that the latest KitKat flavour was a collaboration with a popular fruit & vegetable juice and was pale orange in colour (because of the carrot content), I was a bit scared. But she was adamant that it was great! Despite my initial hesitation, I couldn’t wait to try it, and lucky me, Jess sent me one!

Oh boy! It even has carrots on the packaging. (Although it also says on the pack that it is just 0.25% apple/carrot/veg juice.)

It smelled just like you’d imagine fruit/vegie juice flavoured white chocolate to smell (a bit like carrot, a bit like apple). Note – fruit/vegie juice in Japan doesn’t contain any tomato juice, usually it’s carrot or berry flavoured, so it’s still relatively sweet.

In the end I’d have to agree with Jess, it tasted pretty yum! The dominant flavour was an appley, fruity flavour but you could taste just a hint of carrot. I wouldn’t say it’s the best KitKat in the world, but it’s not every day you can say you managed to fulfill your 5-a-day fruit and vegie quota by eating a bunch of KitKats….

The sweetness of Japanese vegie juice is explained on the Ito En website… “Mixing vegetable and fruit juices, ITO EN has made vegetable juices easier to drink by bringing out the natural sweetness of vegetables. In 2004, we launched the Ichinichibun no Yasai (a day’s worth of vegetables) line of 100%-vegetable beverages, which use—in a single pack—the equivalent of the recommended daily intake of vegetables specified by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.”

Totoro bread

Before I left for Japan, visiting the Studio Ghibli museum was at the top of my list, but it sounded like such a troublesome procedure to organise tickets that in the end I never made it there. Now I’m back I wish I had. T_T

Anyway, I’m sure these Totoro rolls are as cute as the stuff at the Ghibli museum (although I hear you receive an actual animation cell as part of your admission price when you visit the museum… so cool). They’re from the bento book Waku Waku Kyarakuta No Obento from Kinokuniya.

PS Check out these amazing home-made Totoro cupcakes.

Whip it

In the Japanese chocolate-coated biscuit stick market, you’re either pro-Pocky (the market leader) or, if you like going for the underdog, you’ll prefer Pocky’s biscuit stick competitor Fran. I’ve always been a Pocky girl but check out this packaging for Fran Whipps strawberry and cream — 2 pretty !! They’re called Fran Whipps coz the cream is apparently the texture and thickness of whipped cream.

Chocolate biscuit sticks covered in vanilla whipped cream, then strawberry white chocolate with strawberry bits inside. The strawberry flavour is so intense it’s like you’re munching on fresh strawberries…… in a whole field of strawberries. The whipped cream flavour is more subdued.

These are a bit exxy in Japanese supermarkets but they’re definitely worth it if you like strawberry-white-chocolate coated whipped cream coated-chocolate-stick thingies. And who doesn’t? The girls at 8 tokyo tried these in Chocolate flavour too. Yum.