We are so blessed with Skype! I communicate with my cousin, Yuriko, and her husband, Nobutaka, via Skype once a week. They live in Miyakonojo, Miyazaki, Japan. My friend, Nari, helps translate from English to Japanese and he lives in Nishinomiya, Japan.
We occasionally speak about politics and world events, but our time is usually filled with talk about food, the weather, and our daily activities. After our conversation has ended, I call Nari back so I can help him with his English fluency. He reads an ESL article he has selected, I correct his pronunciation, and he has two questions he asks, usually about American idioms. The idioms are great fun because many originated in English and American farm culture, such as “putting the cart before the horse,” and some are obsolete and I have to look them up and tell him not to bother to memorize that one!
This week, he asked if I knew about Nogami bread, a luxury bread that costs $8.00 per loaf. I had not heard of it until I looked it up on the net and discovered that a 50-year-old baker in Osaka developed an irresistible tasting bread that people line up for, and he now has over 127 stores. We discussed how the Japanese seem to favor white bread and white rice over the healthier wheat bread and brown rice. We agreed that as far as rice, brown rice is associated with starving farmers of yesteryear and poverty, something an affluent society would rather not eat. I plan to visit Japan one more time next year, but tasting Nogami bread is not on my bucket list. I found a terrific blog post about the luxury bread here:
https://iamafoodblog.com/tokyos-famous-nogami-shokupan-people-are-lining-up-for-hours-for-this-fluffy-white-bread/
Photos are by Nobutake Watanabe