The first things I bought were these kawaii bowls:
Closeup of one of them:
As if we didn't have enough bowls already! But I hope to use them as matchawan, and I wanted bowls which had a design on one side only. In Japan, we were shown how a tea ceremony works. You are served your bowl of matcha with the "beautiful" side of the bowl facing you. Then you put the bowl on your palm and turn it with the other hand, twice a quarter of a turn, so the beautiful side faces the host, thus showing respect and humility.
I don't know yet if they are really large enough to whip up matcha in them. I will report back when I have tried that. At the moment I am drinking Lapsang Souchong (heavily smoked Chinese tea) and I don't feel like drinking matcha.
Furthermore, I bought these potholders:
I like to have a spare set in case one of the two sets we have gets scorched. One strange thing here in Switzerland is that they mostly sell one mitt and one cloth together.
On Saturday, Ben and I went shopping at Migros together. We bought these silicone cooking tweezers:
Ben said, "Do we really need 'training' cooking chopsticks for beginners? We are not babies anymore." And I replied, "But unlike the wooden saibashi we have, these are dishwasher safe." That won the argument.
We also bought this "sushi" lunchbox, although we have lots of clic-clac boxes already:
I think Ben let me have it because it has variable compartments.
The last thing I bought was this set of hashioki:
And yes, we have the stainless-steel hashioki (shown in front), but I wanted to have "suteki" hashioki :) Besides, they are not as high as the stainless-steel ones, and thus work better with shorter chopsticks.
The one thing Ben didn't let me have was this ginger grater:
Honestly, what can you do wrong at a price of 4.90 Swiss francs? But as a teacher of mine used to say: "The things you buy cheap are the things that are effectively expensive, because the quality is not as good as with expensive things, the cheap things won't last that long, and don't work that well." Good thing that we are now in a situation where we can afford this philosophy from the start.
Wow, what a nice collection of Japanese kitchen items!
ReplyDeleteAs for your teacher, he or she may change his mind if he visits one of those 100-yen shops in Japan. While they carry some cheap and nasty items, most of the items they sell are cheap and good enough.
Yes, that's the way it used to be in Germany (where we come from) as well. We have a microwave we bought cheap when it was on sale at a big hypermarket over ten years ago, and it still works perfectly. But here in Switzerland, it is different. They have a saying here: "Was nüt koscht, isch nüt wert" - what costs nothing is worth nothing. And here, I have encountered some nasty surprises when I bought electric and electronic devices when they were on sale cheap.
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