After visiting Kiyomizu Temple, Martyn, Anna and I stopped by a sweet shop for a snack. Anna is a vegetarian, and Martyn told me that in the UK, rice cakes includes gelatin, so she can't eat them. When I heard the story, I thought they're not real rice cakes. In Japan, we never add gelatin when making rice cakes. I wanted to introduce them mitarashi-dango (みたらし団子), which are grilled rice cakes covered with a sweet soy sauce glaze. We had them with matcha tea. They loved the combination of sweetness and bitterness.

Later, we had lunch at a vegan restaurant. To be honest, it's hard to find began restaurants in Japan because vegetarianism or veganism aren't common. I have no friends who are vegetarians or vegans, so I'd never experienced a meal for vegan until I had one with Anna.

We ordered vegan curry, and it was good. Eating with her made me think I should appreciate animals more. I take eating animal meat for a granted, but they actually give us their precious lives. We should respect that and avoid wasting any part of the meat.

In the first paragraph, I wrote about rice cakes, so I'd like to introduce a seasonal rice cake called kashiwa-mochi (柏餅 かしわもち). Although it doesn't relate to Martyn and Anna, I bought some the other day. They are wrapped in oak leaves, and eating them on Boy's Day is a part of our tradition.

When you peel the leaf, you'll see a rice cake filled with sweet red bean past inside.

Here's a different kind of rice cake. It looks like みたらし団子, which Martyn, Anna and I ate, but these skewered rice cakes have a different flavor from roasted soybean flour and sugar. This type is also very tasty.

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