Photos from Japan

Fortune cookies Japanese?

A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.
Japanese Proverb

A statement once let loose cannot be caught by four horses.
Japanese Proverb

I'm off to Japan next week! Stay tuned...

In the meantime, some fun reading:

Fortune cookies Japanese?

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Fortune cookie history cropped up in the New York Times in an article written by Jennifer 8. Lee. Lee reports that the cookies were probably "invented" in Japan, but popularized in America in the middle 20th century post World War II by Chinese-American restaurants, hence our association of fortune cookies with Chinese cooking. Yasuko Nakamachi, a folklore and history graduate student at Kanagawa University near Tokyo, is Lee's source, and Lee writes, "Her prime pieces of evidence are the centuries-old small family bakeries making obscure fortune cookie-shaped crackers by hand near a temple outside Kyoto. She has also turned up many references to the cookies in Japanese literature and history, including an 1878 etching of a man making them in a bakery - decades before the first reports of American fortune cookies."

Lee's website, http://www.fortunecookiechronicles.com/

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One woman.
One great mystery.
One consuming obsession.
40,000 restaurants.
There are more Chinese restaurants in this country than McDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken combined.
In The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, author Jennifer 8. Lee takes readers on a remarkable journey that is both foreign and familiar: penetrating this subculture by traveling the world (and almost every American state) in her quest to understand Chinese food and the people who make it.
Her journey took her to the hometown of General Tso (a military hero immortalized as much for crunchy chicken as his conquests), the surprising origins of the fortune cookie (it’s not China), and to six continents in search for the world’s greatest Chinese restaurant. The book also sparks debates as to who really invented chop suey and why Jews love Chinese food, or as she puts it: Why is chow mein the chosen food of the chosen people?
The book is a tribute to immigrants and to America. If our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie, ask yourself, how often do you eat apple pie? Now how often do you eat Chinese food?

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Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie

By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: January 16, 2008
Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United States. But the crisp cookies wrapped around enigmatic sayings have spread around the world. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico, Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies. A surprisingly high number of winning tickets in Brazil's national lottery in 2004 were traced to lucky numbers from fortune cookies distributed by a Chinese restaurant chain called Chinatown.
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A Cookie's History
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A Cookie's Origins
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National Diet Library
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Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
COOKIE DETECTIVE Yasuko Nakamachi, a graduate student from Japan, traced the origins of the fortune cookie back a century or more to shops near Kyoto.
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Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
CRAFT OF THE CRUNCH At Sohonke Hogyokudo, handmade fortune cookies are formed in a wooden mold.
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But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.
Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.
Her prime pieces of evidence are the generations-old small family bakeries making obscure fortune cookie-shaped crackers by hand near a temple outside Kyoto. She has also turned up many references to the cookies in Japanese literature and history, including an 1878 image of a man making them in a bakery - decades before the first reports of American fortune cookies.
The idea that fortune cookies come from Japan is counterintuitive, to say the least. "I am surprised," said Derrick Wong, the vice president of the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the world, Wonton Food, based in Brooklyn. “People see it and think of it as a Chinese food dessert, not a Japanese food dessert,” he said. But, he conceded, “The weakest part of the Chinese menu is dessert.”
Ms. Nakamachi, a folklore and history graduate student at Kanagawa University outside Tokyo, has spent more than six years trying to establish the Japanese origin of the fortune cookie, much of that at National Diet Library (the Japanese equivalent of the Library of Congress). She has sifted through thousands of old documents and drawings. She has also traveled to temples and shrines across the country, conducting interviews to piece together the history of fortune-telling within Japanese desserts.
Ms. Nakamachi, who has long had an interest in the history of sweets and snacks, saw her first fortune cookie in the 1980s in a New York City Chinese restaurant. At that time she was merely impressed with Chinese ingenuity, finding the cookies an amusing and clever idea.
It was only in the late 1990s, outside Kyoto near one of the most popular Shinto shrines in Japan, that she saw that familiar shape at a family bakery called Sohonke Hogyokudo.
“These were exactly like fortune cookies,” she said. “They were shaped exactly the same and there were fortunes.”
The cookies were made by hand by a young man who held black grills over a flame. The grills contain round molds into which batter is poured, something like a small waffle iron. Little pieces of paper were folded into the cookies while they were still warm. With that sighting, Ms. Nakamachi’s long research mission began.
A visit to the Hogyokudo shop revealed that the Japanese fortune cookies Ms. Nakamachi found there and at a handful of nearby bakers differ in some ways from the ones that Americans receive at the end of a meal with the check and a handful of orange wedges. They are bigger and browner, as their batter contains sesame and miso rather than vanilla and butter. The fortunes are not stuffed inside, but are pinched in the cookie’s fold. (Think of the cookie as a Pac-Man: the paper is tucked into Pac-Man’s mouth rather than inside his body.) Still, the family resemblance is undeniable.
“People don’t realize this is the real thing because American fortune cookies are popular right now,” said Takeshi Matsuhisa as he deftly folded the hot wafers into the familiar curved shape.
His family has owned the bakery for three generations, although the local tradition of making the cookies predates their store. Decades ago, many confectioneries and candies came with little fortunes inside, Mr. Matsuhisa said.
“Then, the companies realized it wasn’t such a good idea to put pieces of paper in candy, so then they all disappeared,” he added. The fear that people would accidentally eat the fortune is one reason his family now puts the paper outside the cookie.
The bakery has used the same 23 fortunes for decades. (In contrast, Wonton Food has a database of well over 10,000 fortunes.) Hogyokudo’s fortunes are more poetic than prophetic, although some nearby bakeries use newer fortunes that give advice or make predictions. One from Inariya, a shop across from the Shinto shrine, contains the advice, “To ward off lower back pain or joint problems, undertake some at-home measures like yoga.”
As she researched the cookie’s Japanese origins, among the most persuasive pieces of evidence Ms. Nakamachi found was an illustration from a 19th-century book of stories, “Moshiogusa Kinsei Kidan.”
A character in one of the tales is an apprentice in a senbei store. In Japan, the cookies are called, variously, tsujiura senbei (“fortune crackers”), omikuji senbei (“written fortune crackers”), and suzu senbei (“bell crackers”).
The apprentice appears to be grilling wafers in black irons over coals, the same way they are made in Hogyokudo and other present-day bakeries. A sign above him reads “tsujiura senbei” and next to him are tubs filled with little round shapes — the tsujiura senbei themselves.
The book, story and illustration are all dated 1878. The families of Japanese or Chinese immigrants in California that claim to have invented or popularized fortune cookies all date the cookie’s appearance between 1907 and 1914.
The illustration was the kind of needle in a haystack discovery academics yearn for. “It’s very rare to see artwork of a thing being made,” Ms. Nakamachi said. “You just don’t see that.”
She found other historical traces of the cookies as well. In a work of fiction by Tamenaga Shunsui, who lived between 1790 and 1843, a woman tries to placate two other women with tsujiura senbei that contain fortunes.
Ms. Nakamachi’s work, originally published in 2004 as part of a Kanagawa University report, has been picked up by some publications in Japan. A few customers have bought senbei from Hogyokudo, the Matsuhisa family said. But otherwise, the paper has drawn limited attention, perhaps because fortune cookies are not well known in Japan.
If fortune cookies are Japanese in origin, how did they become a mainstay of American Chinese restaurants? To understand this, Ms. Nakamachi has made two trips to the United States, focusing on San Francisco and Los Angeles, where she interviewed the descendants of Japanese and Chinese immigrant families who made fortune cookies.
The cookie’s path is relatively easy to trace back to World War II. At that time they were a regional specialty, served in California Chinese restaurants, where they were known as “fortune tea cakes.” There, according to later interviews with fortune cookie makers, they were encountered by military personnel on the way back from the Pacific Theater. When these veterans returned home, they would ask their local Chinese restaurants why they didn’t serve fortune cookies as the San Francisco restaurants did.
The cookies rapidly spread across the country. By the late 1950s, an estimated 250 million fortune cookies were being produced each year by dozens of small Chinese bakeries and fortune cookie companies. One of the larger outfits was Lotus Fortune in San Francisco, whose founder, Edward Louie, invented an automatic fortune cookie machine. By 1960, fortune cookies had become such a mainstay of American culture that they were used in two presidential campaigns: Adlai Stevenson’s and Stuart Symington’s.
But prior to World War II, the history is murky. A number of immigrant families in California, mostly Japanese, have laid claim to introducing or popularizing the fortune cookie. Among them are the descendants of Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s. Visitors to the garden were served fortune cookies made by a San Francisco bakery, Benkyodo.
A few Los Angeles-based businesses also made fortune cookies in the same era: Fugetsudo, a family bakery that has operated in Japantown for over a century, except during World War II; Umeya, one of the earliest mass-producers of fortune cookies in Southern California, and the Hong Kong Noodle company, a Chinese-owned business. Fugetsudo and Benkyodo both have discovered their original “kata” black iron grills, almost identical to the ones that are used today in the Kyoto bakery.
“Maybe the packaging of fortune cookie must say ‘Japanese fortune cookie — made in Japan,’ ” said Gary Ono, whose grandfather founded Benkyodo.
Ms. Nakamachi is still unsure how exactly fortune cookies made the jump to Chinese restaurants. But during the 1920s and 1930s, many Japanese immigrants in California owned chop suey restaurants, which served Americanized Chinese cuisine. The Umeya bakery distributed fortune cookies to well over 100 such restaurants in southern and central California.
“At one point the Japanese must have said, fish head and rice and pickles must not go over well with the American population,” said Mr. Ono, who has made a campaign of documenting the history of the fortune cookie through interviews with his relatives and by publicizing the discovery of the kata grills.
Early on, Chinese-owned restaurants discovered the cookies, too. Ms. Nakamachi speculates that Chinese-owned manufacturers began to take over fortune cookie production during World War II, when Japanese bakeries all over the West Coast closed as Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps.
Mr. Wong pointed out: “The Japanese may have invented the fortune cookie. But the Chinese people really explored the potential of the fortune cookie. It’s Chinese-American culture. It only happens here, not in China.”
That sentiment is echoed among some descendants of the Japanese immigrants who played an early role in fortune cookies. “If the family had decided to sell fortune cookies, they would have never done it as successfully as the Chinese have,” said Douglas Dawkins, the great-great-grandson of Makoto Hagiwara. “I think it’s great. I really don’t think the fortune cookie would have taken off if it hadn’t been popularized in such a wide venue.”
Jennifer 8. Lee wrote “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,” to be published in March by Twelve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16fort.html?_r=2&sq=Fortune%20Cookies&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=all

New York Times Article on Indian Schools,photos by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/world/asia/17india.html

2nd photo: The school in Lahtora was crowded and cold, so classes were held outside.

3rd photo: A teacher watched as her students took a math quiz. Among the poorest 20 percent of Indian men, half are illiterate, and barely 2 percent graduate from high school, according to government data.

4th photo: Two teachers at the school were absent on this day, and one teacher's aide had shown up more than an hour late, with a crying baby in her arms. Many parents in this largely Muslim village chose Islamic schools because they were seen to offer better discipline.

Favorite Recipes

Chocolate Decadence

From Williams Sonoma Chocolate (Recipes by Lora Brody)
This is an easy, no-fail recipe for a flourless chocolate cake. This cake is best made two days in advance.

1 pound high-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped (scant 3 cups)
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 extra-large eggs (or 5 large eggs) at room temperature
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream, whipped softly

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and position rack in middle of oven. Butter an 8-inch springform pan.* Line the bottom of the pan with a circle of parchment paper or waxed paper cut to fit precisely. (I trace the pan bottom on paper and cut with scissors.) Butter the paper and dust with cocoa powder (because flour would show white); tap out any excess.Place the chocolate and butter in a large heatproof bowl or the top pan of a double boiler. Set over a pan of gently simmering water, but don’t let the pan touch the water. Stir occasionally until melted and combine completely. Remove from the heat, and let cool slightly. Alternatively, you can do this step in the microwave.Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl. Using a large electric mixer (I use a KitchenAid with the paddle, not the whisk) set on high speed, beat until light, fluffy, and tripled in volume, 5 - 10 minutes. Reduce the speed to low, and beat in the 1 tablespoon of flour. Using a rubber spatula, fold one-third of the egg mixture into the chocolate to lighten it, and then fold in the remaining egg mixture, taking care not to deflate the batter. Pour and scrape batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.Bake for exactly 15 minutes. Let cool completely to room temperature. Do not refrigerate or the cake will stick to the pan.Cut into small wedges and serve each wedge topped with softly whipped cream. If you want to be truly decadent, and who doesn’t on occasion, also serve with raspberry coulis and crème anglaise on the side. I have never tried baking it in a regular 8-inch cake pan but want to try it because then it could be turned out onto cardboard circles and given away without giving away the bottom of the springform pan or, worse, trying to get it off the bottom of the springform pan.

A Tribute to Mama

Jean Elizabeth Cochran Judd

September 2, 1915 - August 19, 2007

Mama sayings:

summer 2002:
"at age 86, i can say anything i want"
"look, she's smoking dope" (to lisa sucking on a lollipop)
"i didn't see his face, but the rest of him sure was good looking"

18 december 2003
"there always seemed to be better things to do on sunday" (about going to church)
"i believe in the goodness inside a person"

"i was at longs and i came around the corner and almost ran into an old man. i said excuse me and he said - "did you say you'd squeeze me?" i think it's the lipstick.

"i just throw it all in, close my eyes, and let it go"

"i took a taxi to my hairdresser. he says that he's been married 3x's and is 50 years. how about you, he asks. well i said, im 86 years old. after that he lost interest.

"lola keeps trying to hit on russ, but he won't have any of it" (the stuffed animals)

Mama Memories:

When a waiter was taking her order, she would always say, “I’ll have the soup and a real gooey dessert.” The waiter would always look confused, not knowing if she wanted her dessert with her soup, or which dessert on the menu would fall into the category of being “really gooey”.
Her strong grip.
Her carnation milkshakes, cinnamon toast and potato salad.
She was called “Cornette” by her family when she was a little girl, because of her love for corn.
Shopping at Windward Mall.
Getty up in the middle of the night to eat chocolate and then blaming the 24 hour aid of stealing it the next day.
Her bright pink/red lipstick. And the lipstick she discovered that was black but came out pink when applied.
Trips to Kailua , down duck road and lilikoi road, trips “around the island.”
When Papa was in the hospital, she drove away in Bertie, saying “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Then she drove over the curb separating the stalls in the parking lot. Jeffy and I followed her home.
Talking to the shamas.
Her vanilla beans, from the yard, selling them to Foster Gardens , putting them in vodka for truly delicious vanilla extract.
Collecting “poppers” from around the house and putting them in a little jar.
Her sunglasses.
Her “workshop.”
Her answers when someone complimented a piece of jewelry. For instance, “This? Oh, this I got when Walt and I were in England , shopping at…” If the item was a necklace, she would feel it, to remember what it was that she had on that day, and then begin to tell the story. And usually if it was a necklace it was she who had made it.
Pointing her feet and pretending she was dancing, as she held on to her walker.
“Hello dear.” (To salespeople, anyone.)
“I wish I could squash you.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Isn’t it fun?”
Pointing out a mountain above Hakipu’u and saying she once went down it in go-aheads. When asked what go-aheads were, she started to explain that during the war they found a cheaper way to make shoes with car tires. Eventually I realized she was talking about slippers!
Poems about Bertie, etc.
1) Bertie was often very dirty, and sometimes a little flirty…
2) Were the road ahead the way to go, I’d know. North, south, east or west, take the one that you know best.

About Mama:

From my father, Chuck Hill:

I never did get to have was bad mother in law stories. She was the best one anyone could ever have!

From my sister, Jeffy:

Tonight i went to mama's house on riverside, stepping out of the car, and searching, pleading for a sign of mama. One last sign that she was watching over me, telling me she was fine - that i would be okay without her physically here. And i know she was there, with Papa, and her parents, and dogs, and long lost friends in the background. And this is what i felt while there ....

oh mama - where have you gone
i see you up in the treetops so tall
so little - no, not anymore
lofty and lengthy, in size you have shifted
but in heart, no in heart, you are pure
helping us to stay lifted
my heart breaks for you
with the passing of a bird
a line of script
or a fallen leaf
but i know - i do know -
that you are here in the beat of a wing
in the words on a card
in the shape of a leaf
and in my heart always.

From my Italian friend, Roberta:

She'll always be in your hearts with her love. She was really a perfect grandma, she lived 92 years so she has been very lucky, she was a strong, fant- spec- amaz- wond- woman and you are surely proud of her!

From my caring boyfriend, Adam, who my grandmother adored:

...this is the responsibility of the living to the deceased. As it is now the responsibility of my girlfriend and her family to remember “Mama’s” love of art, her appreciation of dance, and, of course, the way her face would light up anytime the words “Hershey’s chocolate bar” were mentioned.

On Grandmas:

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie:

I can do this: I set aside some time to reflect about her life and her accomplishments, about her love for her family, and about how much of what I have become derives from who she was. And I think about those who are important in my life whom I have been neglecting. And I call them.

Tobin Belzer:

...hearing about her family’s lives became a substitute for her own. She spent her days sitting and reading in her living room, doing crossword puzzles and talking to her children and grandchildren...I’ve continued to think of my life as a narrative I’m writing for her. That’s how I’m keeping her spirit alive.

San Francisco with Lissa and Maggie

Visiting Hearst Castle and Cambria with Jenna