A great way to start the day... Happy May 1st, everybody!

This dead simple meal took about 20 minutes to prepare at home tonight (plus a little more time earlier in the day for the Shiraae spinach). I love Salmon, it must be my Oregon coast roots. I can't get enough of it. The meat dish (salmon) is not large. In fact, usually only one slice of salmon is served and the bulk of the meal is rice, soup and veg. Today an extra slice was added. Meat dishes in Japan are a kind of side dish rather than the main attraction.

Above: very basic meal that more or less follows Ichi ju san sai - One soup, three dishes
• Miso Soup with seaweed (wakame), mushrooms, carrots, egg plant
• Salad: Spinach mixed with tofu with seasoning and small veggies (Shiraae)
• Tofu, with sesame oil, soy sauce, topped with mizuna (watercress)
• Salmon with lemon
• Pickled cucumber (tsukemono)
• Asahi Beer

In an otherwise ugly cold lobby, this space under the stairs brings a tiny feeling of calm and the natural world. But really, this 1960s era office building is cold and devoid of artistic feeling save for this little area. Ack!
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I am much busier now and get loads more email, etc. But I am much happier now. Sumitomo Building in Osaka, Japan.

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Went for a run to the Temple today. Passed several farms on the way up. Here is a small plot of land which will yield rice in the fall. (Our house is in the distance, in the hills in the middle ground.)

iPhone snaps from the grounds of the temple.

Couple returns down the mountain after visiting the temple.

On the Keihan line in Osaka....

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A few lines from The Book of Tea (published in 1906) in a section that talks about Taoism and Zennism.

"A special contribution of Zen to Eastern thought was its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the spiritual. It held that in the great relation of things there was no distinction of small and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe. The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the reflection of the inner light.... The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life. Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical."

Sometimes you have to improvise and make due with what is available in the house (when you did not have time to go out and shop). Below is a dead simple meal that is pretty low in calorie but pretty good nutrition. It's not traditional Japanese; it's a kind of fusion I guess.

Steamed, Carrots and crunchy Endo mame (beans) with sesami dressing
Fried rice (white a some brown) with kimchee and a little lean hamburger meat seasoned with a kind of yakiniku BBQ sauce
Lettuce (to wrap the fried rice; you can then eat the rice like a sandwich)
Egg soup with a chicken stock
Ice tea (no sugar)

Above: Two students plan their presentation (this one on the benefits of traditional Japanese cooking vs. fast food) first by a kind of mind mapping and then in storyboards in their storyboard books.

Ichi ju san sai
Japanese cooking is more or less built on the principle of "Ichi ju san sai" or one soup and three side dishes (plus rice and maybe a few small veggies like tsukemono). Usually one of the side dishes includes soy beans in some form (such as tofu, etc.) It is very easy to follow the hara hachi bu principle (eat until 80% full) while still feeling quite satisfied. This formula is good for achieving a relatively low-calorie but nutrient-rich diet (most fast food reverses this equation -- high-calorie, nutrient-weak -- especially when sugary drinks are added). It's wonderful to see young college students in Japan concerned with the slow but steady shift by some younger people away from traditional Japanese food. These particular students see this as a troubling and foolish trend.

Above: Here is one of their slides sketched first on the whiteboard. The actual slide will look different, but this is the basic idea. Later they will search for images and then build the slide in ppt. (Once a couple of students sketched all their slides like this on a whiteboard and then took pictures of each sketch with text and used those full-screen images for their slides in ppt. It was different and effective and had a simple analog back-of-the-napkin feel to it.)

Above: One of their slides features the phrase 温故知新 (onko chishin) which means something similar to "visit the past to understand the new" or "learn from the past." My students are calling this "Back to the Future." That is, there is much to be learned, they say, from the past and that we are well advised to bring some of those things from traditional "old Japan" with us to the future, such as the healthy, sustainable, and delicious eating habits of the past. The secret to the future, at least when it comes to cooking and eating they say, is by looking back to Edo period and beyond.

I learn more from my students than I could ever teach.