Saturday, November 22, 2008

cute kids

About once a month I go to a mother's and kids English group. Even though I don't have a kid I am a novelty English item, so they let me join. I love it! The kids are adorable and the parents are really great. It's a lot of fun. In fact it's probably my favorite day of the month. Plus it's a potluck, so I get to try lots of delicious homemade Japanese food. Yum!



Persimmons

It's persimmon season in Japan. (And chestnut season for that matter, but you already know what chestnuts are.) What is a persimmon you ask? Well, let me tell you.
It's a fruit that grows on trees
like this one right across the street from my junior high school. (I wish the camera on my phone had zoom!) The trees are everywhere; there are gardens everywhere too if I haven't mentioned that.
There are sweet and bitter persimmons. The sweet kind you can eat fresh and the bitter kind are usually dried or soaked in alcohol to make them sweeter.
They have a tough skin which is not edible and fairly large seeds, rather like the seed in a plum. The texture is somewhat like a soft pumpkin, and
the flavor is slightly similar to a cantaloupe. As they ripen the get very sweet. Apparently they grow in the U.S. too, but I have never seen them before.