Let's go to Japan

I have been toying around with the idea of "visiting" different countries via our home for a while now. It's something I wanted to implement during the winter months to give us something to look forward to. I thought it would be lots of fun to cook food from another country, learn about the people and then pray for that nation over the meal. It didn't really work out during the winter months, however two weekends ago we were finally able to take our first trip.


In light of the recent natural disasters we chose Japan as our first nation. Certainly they could use our prayers.


Step Number 1: Research
We are blessed to have a great library! I was able to find an abundance of cook books to choose from and finally narrowed it down to one. Then I was able to find a travel dvd that talked about Tokyo and Kyoto. And I topped that off with a book on Japanese customs. We were all set for our trip.


Step Number 2: Shopping
I picked out a simple recipe and went to my normal produce store for the veggies we needed.We also happen to have one of the largest Japanese supermarkets in the country in our backyard so that was helpful. It actually feels like you are in Japan because many of the products have no english so you have no idea what they are. We bought some sushi rice, udon noodles, cookies and aloe drinks.

Veggies I used

Everything from Mitsuwa (Japanese Market)

Step Number 3: Learn about Japan

We watched the video and it was great. We both really felt like we learned about some Japanese history and much more about the culture. We got to "visit" those major cities and see how similar and different they are from our own. 

Step Number 4: Cook

As I mentioned before I chose a very simple meal of udon noodles and veggies. I also made some rice cakes but didn't read the directions very well and they had to refrigerate a while so we had those the next day. I was going to make green tea smoothies but it was too cold so we had some green tea instead along with our Calipco drinks. 

Ready to eat!

Rice Cakes

Dinner

Step Number 5: Eat

We opted to say a quick prayer before the meal so the food would not get cold. The noodles were very simple but really yummy. We actually have an extra package too so I look forward to making this very modest meal again sometime soon. The tea was, as always, very soothing. The aloe drinks were really good. John got strawberry and I had lychee. They kind of tasted like watered down flavored milk with a slightly acidic taste. And the cookies were good too. Overall, the meal was a great success!

Step Number 6: Pray

After the meal we had a prayer time. Probably just like 5-10 minutes but it was prayer focused specifically on Japan and the people there. We had a time of reflection after our prayer too where we just talked about the night. We both agreed that it was a great experience. We felt like after watching the video we knew better how to pray for the people. The video and the food put us in the right frame of mind, to a limited degree, to focus our full attention outside of ourselves for a little while. 

I don't know where we are going next or when but we'll be sure to update you on our "travels."