June 26, 2022

Today is another sweltering day. I did laundry this morning, but I think I will just be lazy for the rest of today. I will golf tomorrow and on Tuesday so I will probably be very sore on Wednesday. I will bring my car into the shop for its two-year safety inspection in the morning and will see my foot doctor in Akishima in the afternoon. On Thursday, I would like to get a massage for my (I am sure) aching muscles from Monday and Tuesday. But weeding my gardens must be done. This will take me several days to finish. I have much time since I am off thill July 11 so I can take my time. Luckily, I enjoy weeding, but it is difficult for me to get started. When I do start working, I work very hard and get a lot done. I will drink a lot of water and if I feel weak or dizzy, I will quit working and take a cold shower. With these COVID restrictions, I have been getting more and more lazy. I can’t wait until I can start socializing again.

Highway rest stops in Japan aren’t just places to stretch your legs and gas up your car. They’re also excellent spots for souvenir sweets shopping, as they’re generally stocked with all sorts of locally produced snacks using regional ingredients.

So, on a recent drive through Nagano Prefecture, our Japanese-language reporter Haruka Takagi made sure to pull into the rest area and browse its store shelves, and that’s where she came across these.

The green box contains okaki, a kind of Japanese rice cracker, and the yellow one manju, sweet dumplings. So why are the illustrated characters on those packages screaming? Because they’re made with bugs, specifically locusts for the crackers, and wasp larvae for the dumplings. Bugs aren’t eaten in most parts of the country. However, Nagano does have a cultural culinary tradition of eating locusts and larvae. However, the practice is getting less and less common with each generation, and so even the makers of the locust okaki and wasp larvae manju realize that more modern Japanese people will react with a scream of terror than a cry of joy when presented with the opportunity/challenge of eating insects.

However, even though Haruka didn’t grow up in Nagano, she’s tried wasp larvae before. A few months back, she dined on hebomeshi, a bento box filled with rice and wasp larvae that she picked up in, you guessed it, the Nagano area. To her surprise, it had tasted delicious, with the soy sauce-based seasoning combining with the larvae for a sweet and salty flavor and as she’d bitten into the bodies of the baby wasps a milky liquid that reminded her of the flavor of salmon roe them.

So, basically, Haruka’s experience with eating wasp larvae was that they taste great, but they’re pretty gross to look at. So, as she got set to open her 519-yen box of wasp larvae manju, her taste buds were looking forward to it, but her eyes weren’t.

Haruka recommends these snacks to anyone who’s intrigued by the idea of eating bugs but wants to start off with something that’s going to taste good and not freak them out visually.

“Stocked” means “tables or shelves are full of things to sell.”

“Regional ingredients” means “cooking ingredient from that local area.”

“Browse” means “to look around.”

Locust is “inago” in Japanese.

Wasp larvae is “hachinoko” in Japanese.

“Came across” means “saw or found.”

“Culinary” means “talking about cooking.”

“Salmon roe” means “salmon eggs.”

“Pretty gross” means “rather bad or disgusting.”