mai hobby: "Dont Be So Crabby"- Crab Course in Hiroshima, Japan

Confession: Keeping up with a blog is much more difficult than I anticipated.

It's been 2 months since my last entry. Since the ending of November, a lot has happened.

Let's see.. in a 3 sec version- holidays, freakishly warm weather, holiday parties, holiday food, more holidays, gained weight, freakish snowzilla blizzard, more food, more parties, still gaining weight, and work-work-work-werk!

Meh. Not missing much. I have a few read-worthy experiences that occurred in Dec and Jan, so I will post them as I can. But no promises, remember my confession I started this blog with.

Last week, I got to reunite with my family in Hiroshima, Japan.
It was an unexpected and quick trip. Though the reason behind the trip was not a happy one, as someone that always tries to see the glass half full... I thought it was a memorable trip that brought all my family together.

I disconnected from work. I disconnected from my worries. I disconnected from social media (well, tried to for the most part) and I just focused on being with my family and experiencing every moment together.

It was great. Family is everything and I am so appreciative to be part of such a loving one.

One of the happier moments during the trip was when we got to celebrate my grandmother's 88th birthday at Kora, a crab speciality restaurant in Fukuyama. In Japanese culture, 88th birthdays are a big deal for Japanese women.

We indulged ourselves in a multi-course with everything crab. There were many side dishes- crab salad, vinegared crab dish, crab tofu, crab shumai, crab sushi, crab sashimi, and crab gratin. However, the highlight of the course was the main dish- Crab shabu shabu!

Shabu shabu is a Japanese dish that normally uses thinly sliced beef dipped in a hot broth. We used crab legs as a substitution for the beef. We swirled these ginormous crab legs in a hot kombu (seaweed) broth, and then dipped the crab leg meat in a citrus ponzu sauce before eating it. We also added vegetables, tofu, mochi, and cellophane noodles into the broth. The final part of this dish was adding some udon noodles. Udon noodles are thick white flour noodles. By the time the noodles were done, I was completely stuffed. I couldnt eat any noodles! I had to leave room for dessert!

Dessert was this interesting sweet potato dish. It was warm mashed sweet potatoes, covered in refreshing vanilla ice cream. The combination of enjoying warm potatoes with cold ice cream was amazing. The dessert was also not too sweet- The natural sweetness of the potatoes with vanilla went very well together.

Everything was so delicious!

We ended the night with bellies full and souls filled with happiness. We enjoyed our meals with lots of laughter. At the end of the course, my brother brought his ukulele out and we all sang silly songs for my grandmother. It was a very memorable night.