Explore everyday life in Japan
Now that the nights are cool again, sometimes even bordering on chilly, we have once again entered oden season in Japan. Oden is a one-pot dish, similar to pot-au-feu, and is considered a comfort food in Japan. It can be eaten throughout the year at outdoor food stands, corner restaurants, and some izakayas, but is only offered at convenience stores during fall and winter. When the Lawson’s and Seven-Elevens of Japan start advertising oden, you know that you have entered oden season.
Depending on the restaurant, and the arrangement and color of the ingredients in the oden pot, oden may not be the most appetizing dish you will find, but when cooked long and slowly, and when arranged well on a plate, oden becomes a robustly flavored and very appetizing dish.
It is made by simmering various ingredients in a soy-based dashi broth, and then keeping those ingredients at a warm holding temperature until they have been permeated by the flavor of the broth. Popular ingredients include daikon radish, minced fish balls, ground beef stuffed cabbage, konyaku (a very firm, flavorless type of gelatinized starch), hard-boiled eggs, fried tofu, chikuwa, squash, sausage, and various fish and tofu cakes mixed with shredded vegetables.
Oden is served with kurashi, a spicy Japanese mustard, and is ordered by the piece, so depending on your likes and dislikes you can create an individual order for yourself. After the ingredients are arranged in a shallow bowl, warm broth is spooned over the top of them. On a cool day or a cool night, tucking into a warm bowl of oden is a nice treat. If you find yourself in Japan during oden season, make sure to try this dish!
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting daily updates about life in Japan, please consider following me. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.