11/6/2005 - A Little Japanese Surprise

For those of you familiar with anime, you may have already encountered the little treat pictured above.  What you see there is a o-musubi - a rice ball wrapped in nori.  American dubbing crews have often mislabeled these as jelly doughnuts - of all things! - because of the red stuff that usually stuffs the rice balls in many anime.  The red stuff is actually umeboshi, salty-sour pickled plums that are a traditional summer treat in Japan.  The musubi I recently had at Makati's JiPan (plural: o-nigiri - I'll explain why in my next post) were large, good, satisfying.

One of the rice balls I had was filled with two umeboshi.  Oddly enough, the salty-sourness of the plums worked very well with the blandness of the rice.  The sweetish kampyo (pickled strips of gourd mixed with soy sauce and sesame seeds) pictured above was also very, very good. 

It's a culinary experience I encourage everyone to have.