Celebrating With Spirits (Literally) By: itserinne 1 comment

   I was born during the month of August, while most Filipinos would remember this month as a month of eternal rain (okay, I might be exaggerating), I often associate my birthday to the Buddhist's (more popular in Japan than anywhere else) Obon Festival because I'm weird like that.

   As per Wiki : Obon or just Bon is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori. 

Obon during the late Edo Period

   So, in short my birth month is a Ghost month. It's actually not the entire month of August. Obon usually occurs between July 15 to August 15. Usually the end celebrations starts on August 15 and last for 3 days. Japanese have celebrated this festival since at least the 7th Century A.D. Although many events have changed and now go by different names, certain traditions remain. During the festival, everyone cleans their home and provide special foods such as fruits and vegetables in front of a “butsudan” (The Buddhist families altar). The butsudan is decorated with flowers and paper lanterns (chouchin) and with precise and delicate offerings.

   One of the common events during Obon is the Bon Odori originates from the story of Maha Maudgalyayana (Mokuren), a disciple of the Buddha, who used his supernatural powers to look upon his deceased mother. He discovered she had fallen into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and was suffering. Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this realm. Buddha instructed him to make offerings to the many Buddhist monks who had just completed their summer retreat, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The disciple did this and, thus, saw his mother's release. He also began to see the true nature of her past unselfishness and the many sacrifices that she had made for him. The disciple, happy because of his mother's release and grateful for his mother's kindness, danced with joy. From this dance of joy comes Bon Odori or "Bon Dance", a time in which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated. 

    The festival ends with Toro Nagashi, or the floating of lanterns. Paper lanterns are illuminated and then floated down rivers symbolically signaling the ancestral spirits' return to the world of the dead. This ceremony usually culminates in a fireworks display.

 Toro Nagashi (floating paper lanterns) are also common customs of Obon. People gather at the river on the evening and send off a tiny floating paper lantern, lit by a candle inside, each lantern lantern representing one ancestor as he or she joins the cavalcade of lanterns, floating down the river to the sea. Traditional Japanese beliefs state that humans come from water, so the lanterns represent their bodies returning to water (traditionally the sea in this case) 

   Since I'm an avid anime fan... All this knowledge (the above accounts are technical knowledge, okay I've researched them. Thanks to Wiki and Google) are just taken from anime. My favourite traditional practice during the month of August and Obon is the 100 Ghost Stories.

   In Japan, the month of August is the time where people worship their ancestors through an event called 'O-bon'. Prior to this, the event has become the gateway for the dead, as well as frightening stories about them. After a long time of worship, high summer is the season for ghosts.

  For this event you only need: A quiet room, candles, contestants, stories, a bowl of water. And it was said that you shouldn't break the story telling until you reached 100 or else something bad would happen. (Refer to XXXHolic's Episode 10)

Woodblock prints depicting ghosts

  Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales) was a popular parlour game during Edo period Japan.

The game was a simple one. In a room, as night fell, one hundred candles were lit. Guests and players gathered around the candles, taking turns telling kaidan. After each kaidan, a single candle was extinguished, and the room slowly grew darker and darker. The process was an evocation, with the final candle believed to summon a supernatural entity.

The origin of the game is unknown. It is thought that it was first played amongst the samurai class as a test of courage, and later became fashionable amongst the townsmen.

A true popular phenomenon, the popularity of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai combined with new printing technology created a boom in the publication of kaidan-themed books collecting appropriate tales from every corner of Japan and China. Books in this genre often used the term Hyakumonogatari in the title, and in fact the published tale’s popularity continued long after the fad for the game had faded.  

   Last year, I celebrated with my co-ghost month birthday celebrants. For this year, it's a bit solemn. Spent most of the day with Padre Pio and two of my soul sisters, Orange and Lany. It didn't rain during the day, but when evening came it rained quite heavily even after I prayed for it not to rain (maybe I should've done a sun dance and the cliche 'alay ng itlog' thing). 

PG Mode ON! (*^^*)

   Maybe my birthday wasn't as eventful as the actual Obon Festival, but my cousin and I did enjoy telling horror stories, when I say 'horror stories' those are stories of our childhood. Hmm... so maybe it wasn't as uneventful as I thought.

The Foodie By: itserinne 2 comments

     I've always had an interest in cooking, but I'm not the type to try to learn the technicalities about it. I'm more the youtube tutorial type. I usually download the video, watch it and see if I'd be able to copy it. And since most of the food that I'm interested in cooking have ingredients not readily available in supermarkets here, I learned to substitute.


    My first attempt at following a youtube cooking tutorial vid. This is kimbap/gimbap:

Image not mine. Taken from Wiki

Gimbap or kimbap is a popular Korean dish made from steamed white rice (bap) and various other ingredients, rolled in gim (sheets of dried laver seaweed) and served in bite-size slices. Gimbap is often eaten during picnics or outdoor events, or as a light lunch, served with danmuji or kimchi.


  
  


    There are a few ingredients in kimbap that I wasn't able to find until later, so instead of the actual steamed ham they used on authentic kimbap, I used the regular cheese dog I was able to buy at the local supermarket and skipped the fermented radish. It turned out fine for the first time. So the next pictures are mine.

Before it gets sliced, it really looks ugly

Tada! Sliced and packed!

   If you're interested in making gimbap, here's a step by step guide for you. It has pretty pictures too! Kimbap 101

   Then I did rice cakes during New Year. I made Gyeongdan, this is a type of rice cake that has sweetened red bean paste inside. I decided to make it when I saw a packet of glutinous rice flour during one of my supermarket trips. The process was easy, but actually shaping the rice cakes was pretty difficult since you need to handle them while they're still malleable. They get hard if you left it too long. And the mixture sticks to your hand like glue, I decided to put olive oil on my hand at first so it won't stick, then I read that you're supposed to put flour on your hand instead.

    My rice cakes look more like mochis (a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape ) than those pretty korean rice cakes I see online. Here are some pictures:

Aren't they pretty?

    These type of rice cakes are usually served during weddings (traditional weddings, that is. They say if the married couple eats this, they would stick/stay together forever or something like that) and New Year celebrations (mostly during the Chinese New Year, not the Western one).

    The next picture is a Japanese mochi. This is how mine would look like but imagine it being more messy.

I just wanted to add this, kawaii ne?

    Having seen those pictures, you'd probably have an idea how badly I failed at doing this project. So the next photo would be my lame attempt at trying to copy the cute mochis you see on the photo above (minus the faces). Oh and before I forget,  a mochis (or maybe it's just mine) shelf life is really short. Mine laster for about 24 hours. After I removed it from the fridge it looks ugly as hell, I admit even I didn't want to eat it.

Lame, isn't it?

    My next projects are egg dishes. The first one was an egg roll. It looks easy when you see the tutorial video. But when I attempted to do it, it wouldn't, ummm roll. After a few tries I was able to make a decent looking one, when I say 'decent' I mean it looks like this

The picture's not mine, I wasn't able to take a photo of my dish,
but just so you'll have an idea

    But this is what it would actually look like if done perfectly:

I want to make something as yeopo as this! ;A;

    The egg roll ingredients are simple, it's just like making an omelette. You just need to roll it. Speaking of omelettes, my recent project is Omurice.

    Inspired by Park Ha from the Rooftop Prince. This is the first dish that Crown Prince Lee Kak and his entourage tasted after they got transported to modern Korea. It originated from Japan, as per Wikipedia: Omurice is an example of contemporary Japanese fusion cuisine consisting of an omelette made with fried rice and usually topped with ketchup.

Courtesy of KBS' Rooftop Prince

    This is one of the simplest dishes to prepare, you just need to cook fried rice, that's going to be your stuffing and then you fry two beaten eggs in a large pan. the instructions says to fold the egg... How would you fold the  fried egg into a sqaure if it's not big enough to cover the rice? That was my main problem. the first attempt was a failure, then my Mom decided to intervene and told me that I was putting too much rice. When I have about three or four tablespoon of rice in the middle of the fried egg, I tried folding it again and TADA! I was bale to make this.

Thanks Orange for the picture! ^^

    I still have soooo many other dishes I want to work on but I don't have time (and the budget) to do all of them. And I wish I'd be able to taste the real ones, you know what I mean, go to Korea and eat everything my stomach allows me to eat, then maybe I'd be able to perfect those dishes and make a few more to add to my collection.

**if you're interested in other Korean dishes, you can visit these sites: Aeri's Kitchen, My Korean Kitchen or if you're not much of a cook, you can just drool over the pretty pictures. ^.^