Skunkvine at Olympics: Enoshima Yacht Harbor for Tokyo 2020 Sailing Competition

 

I don’t know why, but skunkvines are vigorous in Enoshima Yacht Harbor (; my post on June 30, 2017) where Sailings Competitions are held for Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Maybe these “looks-cute-but-smells-horrible” flowers do well with salty wind and sandy soil …

From tomorrow, medal sessions will start!

In order to survive Japanese summer: making Umeboshi, Part 2

 

Now let’s start the next stage for pickling Ume fruits. For 2Kg of Ume fruits, prepare 500g of perilla leaves (sans stems). Wash them under running water to remove dirt. Measure salt of 20% weight of shiso leaves. For 500g of leaves it’s 100g. Put 1/2 of leaves in a bowl and sprinkle 1/4 of salt over them. Begin gently massaging the contents with salt. After the leaves become soft, work them harder. Foamy bitter juice will come out of the leaves. Knead the leaves in juice a bit more, then squeeze them hard to remove the liquid. Discard the juice. Return the squeezed leaves to the bowl and add 1/4 of salt. Work the leaves with salt. The salted leaves will ooze out clear red juice. Squeeze the leaves again hard enough to remove the liquid as much as possible. Discard the liquid. Leave the squeezed leaves aside in a different bowl, and work with the remaining 1/2 of leaves in a same way.

Washed leaves with salt

The first kneading ends like this. Let’s squeeze it!

The beginning of the second kneading

It ends up like this. When we squeeze it tight,

the salted leaves yield this much of liquid.
 Please drain it.

Next, over the two balls of squeezed perilla leaves, pour white Ume vinegar out of the pickling jar. We can use just enough amount of liquid for the squeezed leaves to be loosened. To pickle Ume we may not need that much white Ume vinegar remaining in the container. Leave the vinegar just enough to cover the Ume fruits, and keep the rest in a sterilized bottle for daily cooking. Mind you, this vinegar is salty and VERY strong at least immediately after it’s out of pickling container. Using it for, say, vinaigrette may need some frequent tastings to make it right. Though, I found out if it is successful, in few years Ume vinegar can become extremely fruity, and even sweet. Now I have several bottles in my storage, keeping fingers crossed …

Ume fruits when I taken out from the container to have vinegar.
 They look fine. 😊

White Ume vinegar oozed out from the salted fruits

Let’s pour the vinegar over the squeezed perilla balls.

Gently massage the vinegar-coated leaves by hand. When shiso leaves turn bright purple red with the vinegar, stop massaging and squeeze the leaves gently. Keep the squeezed juice in the bowel. Unfold the worked shiso leaves without gaps on the Ume pickles, then pour the squeezed juice over the shiso-covered Ume pickles. Softly swirl the container in order for the juice to spread through the salted Ume fruits inside.

The salted leaves ready to be unfolded over the fruits.

Ume pickles covered by shiso leaves
 and coated with the salty shiso juice.

Seal the contents with plastic as the first stage, then put on the sanitized weight in the same kilograms of Ume fruit; if you start with 1Kg of fruits, the weight this time is 1Kg. Disinfect the inside wall of the container as before, cover the container firmly, and leave it in a cool and dark corner of your home as before. Check daily the condition of the pickles to treat the contents as before if it gets moldy. Now we wait until Japanese summer rainy season is over. It would take about 1 month or so, even under the condition of global warming. For Yokohama, these days the average date is in the last week of July for the Meteorological Observatory to declare the end of rainy season. When we can be sure rainy days are over, the final step for Umeboshi making begins.

Second pickling stage with weight.

In a sunny morning at the beginning of full summer, take out the perilla leaves from the container, squeezing them with a wood spatula and a tong to drop their juice in the pickling jar. Spread them over a sanitized bamboo sieve. Similarly, take out the Ume pickles, gently drain the liquid in the pickling container, and put them on the bamboo sieve next to the shiso leaves. You may be able to use stainless sieve but I’m not sure if metals can withstand acidity of leaves and Umeboshi. In Japan, around this time of a year, sales of bamboo sieves become strong. We can find large bamboo sieves in our nearby supermarket. Now only red liquid is retained in the container. It is another Ume vinegar, called red Ume vinegar. Pour it in a sanitized clear bottle.

Squeezing perilla leaves with spatula and,
 for me, chopsticks.

Taken out contents from the pickling container.

Let the Ume fruits, shiso leaves and red Ume vinegar sun-bathing in your garden or balcony. Please turn over the fruits and leaves once during a day. At dusk, withdraw them from outside, and take them out again next morning. Do a turn-over once again in the second day and retract them at the second nightfall. The third day, with one more flip-over during day, leave the entire fruits, leaves and vinegar outside to expose them to night dew. If it is difficult having 4 consecutive fine days, please take a day or two off until sun returns. I’m not sure if it is OK for more than 5 days to complete the process … Just ensure 3 days and one night exposure to outdoors for the shortest period. i.e., Reading weather forecast to spot the best timing for drying could be essential.

At the beginning of the second day

At dusk of the third day before the exposure to night dew

In the morning of the fourth day, Umeboshi is ready. The final step is how to store them. For the most general approach, dunk the semi-dried Umeboshi in red Ume vinegar, gently drain them then put them in a sanitized container. It will make Umeboshi redder and softer. Or, you can just store the semi-dried Umeboshi in a container without vinegar-coating. It will make the skin of Umeboshi hard, loved by samurais in Edo = Tokyo. For perilla leaves, you can dunk them in the vinegar and store them in the same container of Umeboshi. Or, they can be dried further under sunshine until they are parched completely. We then make them into powder called Yukari which is a convenient seasoning for Japanese dishes. If we can harvest more than enough red Ume vinegar for Umeboshi-coating, we store them in a bottle as white Ume vinegar. Red vinegar is also good for cooking. The taste is stronger than the white Ume vinegar, but it can also age superbly. My collection of yesteryears’ red Ume vinegar bottles is sitting neatly in a dark corner of our home, while I’m waiting for them to be sweet …

My 2020 Umeboshi in a storing jar,
 coated with red Ume vinegar.

I secured them tightly in a jar
 and stored it in a dark place.
 Why not eating immediately?
 Please see below …

Our homemade Yukari powder

I’ve found out the timing vinegars turn sweet comes suddenly. It’s like “yesterday morning they were salty, but today they become very fruity …” Homemade Umeboshi also ages gracefully. We can start eating them after 3 days of sun-bathing, but they definitely taste better 1 or more years later. Legend says there is Umeboshi in Kyushu made in 1576 … Wow. The owner of this Umeboshi has not tasted it as it is impossible to replenish the container once it’s gone. Of course. The beauty of homemade Umeboshi is this longevity and maturing. Supermarket version often contains chemicals, and the drying process is forced by mechanically created hot wind. Such Umeboshi cannot last even for a year … Er, well mine won’t last 450 years. We’ve already finished our 2018 version. During VERY hot and humid summer under Climate Change, we need something very sour and salty to survive ... Oh, by the way, you can skip “sun-bathing” to eat pickled Ume fruits. For such strategy, it’s not necessary but I recommend draining Ume fruits and shiso leaves from red Ume vinegar and store them separately from the liquid. This is like preserved lemons, as it becomes quickly “Ume paste.” Leaving the fruits and leaves with vinegar, the product would be waterier, you know … I don’t know how long they can last. I suspect their shelf life is not that long as Umeboshi.

If you find a problem in the greenery of north-half of Yokohama, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau
横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016

FAX: 045-316-8420

Seasonal task: making Umeboshi, Part 1

 

In Japan, the most traditional way to deal with Ume plums (Prunus mume) is making Ume pickles, aka Umeboshi. It’s a sort of life-long mission to establish “one and only” kind of recipe for Umeboshi … There are several nonagenarians (such as she, or she) who are still honing today their 70+ years of Ume pickle making career. Naomi is a sort of new-born baby in front of these incredible seniors … But, actually, the recipe for making pickles is simple. The real crux of the matter lies in somewhere else, like the condition of fruits, weather, climate, or mental condition of the pickler … Anyway, this week and the next are for my recipe of making Umeboshi.

First we have to prepare fruits for pickling. For Umebobshi, preferably, Ume plums have ripened to yellow, not in unripen green. But I found we can use still young green fruits. The preparation method is exactly the same as for making Ume compote (; my post on June 21, 2019), except for perforating the fruits with bamboo skewers. As fruits are fully ripen, we do not need to hasten the “detoxification,” i.e. no need for nicking. When we use green Ume, we soak them in water longer, and still no need to puncture the fruit. Making pickles is easier than cooking Ume compote, I tell you.

Washed and prepared Ume fruits.
 Yeah, they are still green but not so much.
 It’s OK to use this level of ripening.
 Could you see their skin does not have punctuation?

Second, sprinkle distilled strong alcohol, like vodka or gin, over the fruits and gently smear the liquid to the entire Ume by hand. At the same time, sprinkle the same alcohol to the sanitized pickling container. It’s to make it easy for salt to be attached to the whole fruits. Next, weigh salt for pickling. Once it was standard to use salt in the amount of 20% of weight of Ume fruits for Umeboshi. So, if the entire Ume plums prepared was 1Kg, the salt to be used was 200g. When we consider health problems of too much salt, this recipe was … er, risky. So, these days standard recipe for Umeboshi recommends 15-18%, or even 12%, of weight for fruits. But, I tell you, for novices, reducing the amount of salt is tricky. Especially for hot and humid Japanese summer, insufficient amount of salt will make the pickles rotting quickly. After many tears dropped, I’ve settled at 18%.

Alcohol-smeared fruits.
 I used Shochu, distilled Japanese beverage.

Leave 1/3 of salt for the final coating and sprinkle enough salt from the rest over the bottom of pickling container. Gently place liquor-coated Ume fruit one-by-one to cover the entire base of the container. When the bottom becomes invisible due to the fruits, scatter the salt over the fruits and make the second layer. Repeat this until the entire fruits are neatly stored in the container. Cover the top layer with the saved 1/3 of salt.

The bottom of the pickling container

The top layer with 1/3 of salt over it.

Seal the salted Ume fruits with plastic wrap. Avoiding the exposure to outside air is the best for the pickles not getting moldy. Considering the problem with plastics, there would be better way to seal Ume pickles … I still cannot find it. So sorry. Next, put on sanitized weight over the salted and covered Ume fruits. Ideally, the load is 2 to 3 times heavier than the fruits. If you use 1Kg of fruits, the weight would be 2-3kg. We can use lighter weight, as sometimes the container cannot have that large mass. I’ve found the lighter the weight, the longer it takes for the fruits to reach to the final process. If you want to make pretty pickles, I recommend to follow “2 to 3 times heavier” standard.

After sealing the pickles with plastic wrap,
 I place a small plate to hold weights
 without crushing the fruits.

My weights.
 They are rocks of Tanzawa 丹沢 harvested from
 Yadoriki Water Source Forest やどりき水源林. 😊

Clean the inside wall of the container with sanitized cheese cloths or paper towel. Cover the container tightly and leave it in a cool and dark corner of your home. Check daily the condition of the pickles. In about a week or so, clear liquid will ooze out. It’s the sign pickling goes OK. If you cannot find the liquid after 7 days, your weight is too light. Better considering more load over the fruits. The fluid is white Ume plum vinegar, salty but very useful ingredients for our daily cooking. Just leave them as such for 2 to 3 weeks more. If the contents start getting moldy, gently remove and discard the molded part (fruits and vinegar), spray strong distilled alcohol to the remaining pickles, and clean the inside wall of the container with paper towel dampened by vodka or gin.

My pickling jar.
 Originally, this container was for making miso paste.
 The mouth of the jar is a bit small for Umeboshi making.
Now I’m searching for a better container
 in a reasonable price range …

In Japanese supermarket, 2-3 weeks later from yellow Ume plum fruits appeared for sale, red shiso (perilla) comes. It’s the sign we should start second stage for Ume pickling. I’ll tell you how next week. Please stay tuned. 😉

If you find a problem in the greenery of north-half of Yokohama, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau
横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016
FAX: 045-316-8420

Kindergarten of baby pines: Koyurugui Greenery of Oiso 大磯こゆるぎ緑地

Although the rim of Sagami Bay 相模湾 is adorned by greenery, often they are not natural vegetation. The coastline of Miura 三浦半島 and Izu 伊豆半島 Peninsulas is less intervened area, as the mountains of the peninsulas rapidly descend and dive into the bay. i.e. Not much flat area is available for humans … That would be one of the reasons in Atami City 熱海市 with massive debris flow and lots of death. In a fashionable resort city of Atami, people tried to have nice-view houses in upstream, reclaimed land by filling natural valleys, and triggered humongous collapse of the mountain … In contrast, from Zushi 逗子 to Odawara 小田原, the coastal land is relatively flat or having alluvial fan. People lived in these smooth area for millennia. The problem is, such place is easy to be eroded by Pacific Ocean. Sandy beach will bring constant mini-sandstorms on sea breeze … Worse, once tsunami comes, all could be washed away. So, people have tried to deal with the problem in one way or the other. Creating greenery along the coast is one of such traditional approach.

Pacific Ocean

I told you my adventure for tending such artificially created “forests” near Tsujidoh Beach 辻堂 (; my post on October 12, 2018). They were about 60 years old with tall and lush enough pine trees sufficient to prevent sandy wind from constant ocean wind. Yeah, inside, their forest floor on sand is not much as in forests of Tanzawa 丹沢 or Hakone 箱根. We keep crossing our fingers they will sustain the ground from rising sea levels of global warming … Of course, before reaching to such working stage, any seaside protection forest must start from somewhere. Unlike for fertile land, for sandy ground to have a sustainable forest, it would be better to nurture seedlings that would stay there without disturbance of their root. i.e., People plant seeds on the shore, and nurture them patiently. Actually we can visit and enjoy such baby seaside protection forest in Oiso Town 大磯. It is called Koyurugui Greenery こゆるぎ緑地.

In 1986, following the National Trust model of the UK, Kanagawa Prefecture established trust fund to secure greenery especially in urban area of the prefecture. At the same time, the prefectural assembly established public interest incorporated foundation named Kanagawa Green Trust かながわトラストみどり財団 that raises and manages the fund. By this scheme, in 2003 Oiso Town and the Green Trust bought a sliver of ocean-facing land, 0.17ha to be exact, almost glued to the former summer house PM Saionji Kinmochi 西園寺公望 (12th and 14th PM), and later of the 14th Governor of BOJ, Ikeda Shigeaki 池田成彬 (; my post on March 25, 2021). The volunteers of Oiso Town are sowing pinecones since 2008 and tending seedlings there. Now they are pine kids standing neatly in the secured land, with nice strolling path for human visitors.

The strolling path for Koyurugui Greenery

The access to Koyurugui Greenery is easy. First, please go to the residence of the final Crown Prince of Korean Empire, Prince Yi Un 李垠, which is now currently undergoing complete reconstruction (; my post on March 24, 2021). At the corner of the west-most part of Crown Prince’s place, there is a small way from National Route 1 国道1号線. The entrance part of this small road is the gate for PM Saionji’s summer house, but the alley itself is sneaking further to the sea and Seisho Bypass Motor Way 西湘バイパス. Please take this. It’s slightly going up, and at the “peak” of this sandy hill on our right, there is small steps with a sign saying “Koyurugui Greenery.” Welcome to the kindergarten of black pines.

Please turn left here.

Then,
we see this former summer house for PM Saionji on our right.

Please just go straight.

Here it is. The sign post.

The “forest” of black pine kids is spreading along Seisho Bypass Motor Way but we can see the Pacific Ocean beyond the toll road. It is a very bright forest, almost an oxymoron of forests in Kanagawa. As trees are 2-3 meters high at a max, and 10 or so centimeters in diameter at the fattest, there is no imposing atmosphere whatsoever from the pines. The forest floor is the same as the sandy beach so that we cannot find much undergrowth. A pedestrian route runs flat in the middle of the forest, demarcated at around 50cm high ropes. It’s almost a garden, and a quiet place. The strolling path has stools here and there so that we can relax in this well-lit forest with tea in hand, gazing blankly the Pacific Ocean over there … Although the trees are still young, they bear lots of pinecones. Many of them are rolling around the sunny forest floor. The trees look healthy and fine. Yeah, it’s a nice kindergarten!

Pacific Ocean over there

Sturdy stools

Healthy kids!

The other side of the entrance

The pedestrian way of Koyurugui Greenery runs on the ridge of sandy hill. The Greenery itself is rapidly descending to Seisho Bypass. Between the motorway and the forest, there is a pedestrian/cyclist route running along the Seisho Bypass. It’s a part of Pacific Cycling Road of Japan, running from Chiba Prefecture 千葉県 to Wakayama Prefecture 和歌山県 to Osaka 大阪. For Oiso Part, the beginning is at Oiso Fishing Port 大磯漁港 where we can borrow a bike for in-town usage. Last spring, the town opened a new café in the port where we can enjoy fresh catch of the day for nice lunch. Instead of entering Koyurugui Greenery from National Meiji Memorial Garden 明治記念大磯邸園, you can walk/ride from the Fishing Port along the Pacific Cycling Road, with packed lunch purchased in the port. Anyway, this summer, the Oiso Town again decided to close Oiso Northshore 大磯北浜 due to COVID-19. It might give us a chance to enjoy less-congested ocean side of Oiso Town in summer … (Whoops, the Town recommends “Not to Come!”)

Pacific Cycling Road

The Café in Oiso Port

If it had been fine,
we could have admired Mt. Fuji
 beyond Hakone mountains …

Oiso Town Hall 大磯町役場
183 Higashikoiso, Oiso-cho, Naka-gun, Kanagawa, 255-8555
〒255-8555 神奈川県中郡大磯町東小磯183
Phone: 0463-61-4100
Fax: 0463-61-1991
http://www.town.oiso.kanagawa.jp/isotabi/index.html http://www.town.oiso.kanagawa.jp/oisomuseum/index.html

If Violetta was not ill; Camellias in Olympics/Paralympics Village for Tokyo 2020 Games

Olympics/Paralympics Village for Tokyo 2020 Games stands on one of the oldest reclaimed lands in Tokyo Bay. The area is called “Harumi 晴海” which means “the place where we can observe sea under always clear sky.” The construction of the land was completed in 1931. 90 years later, we’ll have the Olympics/Paralympics Village on it. So, the soil beneath the Village is not natural, but brought from the other places. Moreover, as Harumi is the area once it was sea, especially garden section has sandy composition stabilized by plant and grasses artificially introduced there … Well, it’s inevitable when we try to create land from not-so-shallow bay. Do you know even today the deepest point of Tokyo Bay is 700m?

The skyscrapers in Harumi where
 half of Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee resides.

The vegetation in the Village is all planted recently by the developers. The trees are still thin. I’m sure the landscapers will take care of the young garden plants during the Games meticulously, staking Japan’s international reputation on the line. Yet among those very new trees and shrubs, it seems to me, one kind is already showing their resilience. They are camellia.

From the Village,
we can observe the entire Toyosu Market,
 the central wholesale market of Tokyo.

Common camellia, Camellia japonica, is Japanese endemic species, spreading along the coast of Japanese archipelago from Okinawa to Hokkaido. They do not care much about the soil structure, as long as the place is not so cold. Yeah, they prefer not being under direct sun, but the plant is anyway capable to survive in sunny pedestrian area. The camellias in the Village are young. They are transplanted from some professional nurseries. Yet, they have many, very large and shiny fruits dangling and smiling. Strong babies. I guess they will be established trees in 10 years’ time, whatever COVID-19 would do to the Tokyo 2020 Games. They might be a hidden symbol tree of this strange Olympics/Paralympics …

Hmmmmm. Large fruits!

I’ve found out there are several Japanese forest-related elements for Tokyo 2020 Games. I try to report them to you during the Games. Please stay tuned!