Welcome to The Avocado’s weekly discussion of Japanese pop culture! It’s January DECEMBER 22nd, do you have your holiday food plans figured out? If not, might I humbly suggest some Japanese-inspired dishes to help you celebrate the Christmas season and the dawn of 2022? As many of you probably know, fried chicken is something of a Christmas staple in Japan, which you can get a local convenience store (konbini) and, of course, KFC, which sells special sets with holiday themes every year. Let’s take a look at some of this year’s menu options!
Christmas dinner for the family! That’s a chocolate cake and some kind of lasagna dish. And, of course, the special plate! Why do I want that plate?
You can also get a whole roasted chicken, smaller meal sets, and sets with nuggets, strips, fries, biscuits, etc. Lots of options! But I would totally just want the set pictured above. You get cake! However, I don’t live in Japan, so instead we1By “we” I mean my husband. He’s an amazing cook and has seriously perfected this dish. make karaage every Christmas Eve. I wrote about this in detail last year, if you’re looking for some recipes.
After Christmas, you can start preparing your Osechi Ryori! If you start on the 28th, you should have everything ready by New Year’s Day. Or, if you live in Japan or near a really good Japanese grocery store, you can buy your New Year’s bento! Or, or, if you’re exhausted this year you can skip the whole thing and just make sure you have a nice bowl of soba on New Year’s Eve. That’s what I’ll be doing. Well, I might make a couple of my favorite Osechi Ryori dishes from last year…just a couple. Curious about what all goes into creating this elaborate and delicious New Year’s bento? I wrote all about it in January! And if you want to prepare a nice bowl of soba to ring in the near year, that’s right, I have an old post all about that too! I’ll also leave you with this great explanation by my favorite Japanese food writer, Makiko Itoh, of the significance of New Year’s soba that I shared last year:
Eating a bowl of soba noodles to mark the end of the old year and pass into the new is a tradition that became widely established in the early 19th century, although its roots may be even older than that. There are several theories as to why soba was chosen as the noodle of choice for the season. One is that buckwheat is a symbol of strength, since the grain is very resilient to cold and bad weather; another is that the long, thin noodles signify a long — yet quiet and uneventful — life. But today, the best symbolic reason to eat soba noodles is that they can be easily bitten, representing a clean, no-regrets break with the ending year. Other names for the year-end bowl of soba include nengiri (“cut off the year”) soba and engiri (“cut off relationships”) soba, both of which seem apropos, too.
Japan Times
For one final recommendation, if you’re looking for a very good anime episode to watch as you ring in the New Year, you can’t go wrong with Laid-Back Camp‘s season 2, episode 2 (featured in the header image). Of course, there’s always Fruits Basket too! (You knew I wasn’t going to get through this whole post without mentioning Fruits Basket).
And, as always…
What have you been watching/reading/playing/eating/listening to lately?
Happy Wednesday! 🙂