Happy Girls’ Festival 🎎✨
The 3rd of March is the traditional and representative spring event day called “Hina-Matsuri” in Japan.

Hina-Matsuri means Girls’ Festival! There is a tradition if the baby is a girl, the parents of the mother give a traditional dolls called Hina-kazari (Traditional dolls of Emperor, Empress, their servants and accessories on the tiered stand) to their daughter’s family. This day, parents having daughter invite their families and friends to celebrate this event. They display Hina-Kazari and serve guests traditional dishes, like Chirashi-zushi (garnished sushi), hard-shell clam clear soup, hishi-moshi and hina-arare (pink and white grilled piece of rice cakes).

When I was a child, my parents invited the Hina-Matsuri party for me and my younger sister every year. So this event reminds me of my childhood and I loved it.

It was my daughter’s first girls festival day today. I made a clear color soup with using cherrystone clam and chirashi-zushi. She cannot eat them this year since she is 4 months old… 👶🏻 Hopefully, next year!

Zunda mochi! For sweets lovers, don’t forget to taste this local sweets in Sendai city. This is a mochi covered with crushed and sweetened edamame beans. Zunda mochi is so popular in this area, so you will see many zunda flavor products at the station or convenience stores etc. (Even KitKat product!!!)

There is a zunda mochi recipe on this website and also on my free recipe app “Recipe by YJC”. Please download the app and try it out!

Gyu-tan (cow’s tongue)! It sounds a bit strange but this dish is one of the popular and “must-eat” gourmet food in Sendai city. It’s always nice to eat sliced and steak style but my family really enjoyed tsukune style.

To add more, we ate the best Tamago-Kake-Gohan (We call this “TKG” in Japan!) with the egg from beautiful Fukushima region. This is the simple home meal with raw egg yolk topped over the rice. This restaurant also served shredded yam with egg yolk. The egg yolk is so orange and the flavor was fascinating!!!

My family and I visited Sendai city the other day and had one of the popular Yoshoku (Western food/Western inspired Japanese food) , which is Napolitan spaghetti. I know some of you doubt about this pasta but we call “ナポリタン・スパゲッティ” in Japanese. For this dish, we usually use brown mushroom, green pepper, sausage or bacon and season with Japanese ketchup. Some people garnish extra parmesan cheese or tabasco on top.

We luckily could eat the No.1 champion Napolitan spaghetti at HACHI (http://www.maido-8.com/) ! This shop is famous for hamburg and napolitan spaghetti. For their Napolitan spaghetti, they use onion, brown mushroom, shrimp and their pasta is a little bit thick and has chewy texture. It tastes between Italian pasta and Udon?! This menu had a fried cutlet aside. Of course, we ate all of it! After eating pasta, it’s ice cream time!!!

I had an interview by Forbes JAPAN (https://forbesjapan.com/). I introduce my entrepreneurial stories, the art of Ramen & Gyoza making, the secrets of my class and vision for the future etc. To read this article (*only in Japanese), please click here.

YUCa’s Japanese Cooking – Media coverage

On the 3rd of February, we have the day of “Setsubun” (seasonal division) in Japan.
Setsubun has been an important time-honored rite to welcome the New Year by banishing evils and keep the house from calamity.
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Unfortunately, we decided to discontinue our recipe app for smart phone. You can watch our movies on Youtube. Thank you!

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I have an exciting news today! Guess what? (Some of you might noticed from the title! )
Yes, I finally launched my recipe app!!! I’ve been teaching Japanese cooking at my private kitchen here in Tokyo and met many Japanese food lovers. I’ve always wanted to teach many more Japanese recipes in the class. But it was hard because the duration of the class and guests’ travel itinerary etc. That’s why I started to create my recipe app with my team. My recipe app “Recipe by YJC” is a FREE app dedicated for YOU, Japanese food lovers! I will keep adding new recipes once or twice a week. You can always check Japanese food recipes anywhere (i.e. grocery shopping at Japanese supermarket!)  Download now and enjoy Japanese cooking!
* Now, Recipe by YJC is available for Android, too!!! (As of June, 2020)