27 April, 2007

the capital of the feudal lord and special chicken

The final stop of the bullet train we took was Akita city, which was of course, the capital of the local feudal lord, Mr Satake in the edo period, in this country. After this my first walking around here, I came back to this city on business (again! if you have a chance to look at my very previous weblogs (NY's and Hong Kong's), you'll find that I often come back to the former "walking places" usually on my way of a business trip).
I remember that it was at the beginning of December, maybe in 2001, and a snow day when I returned here. At the time, I and my colleagues reserved rooms at not a typical hotel that people usually use for a shot-term business stay, but a so-called tourist home, or I can say, a traditional Japanese style cheap guest-house. The guest house was really cheap, I remember, one night stay with a dinner and breakfast was about US$30 or US$40 (of course, we paid by JPN, Japanese Yen). The elder landlady of this cheap house always welcomed us with smile and saying in strong Akita dialect. I enjoyed its dinner and breakfast that were full of Akita local dishes, in other words, plenty of local sea foods and chickens.
By the way, one of the most famous special products in Akita prefecture is chicken. It is not an ordinal chicken, but special one, of course, its taste is so good. The chicken's name is "hinai-ji-dori". "Hinai" means the name of a particular region in Akita pref, and "ji-dori" means "local chicken". So, we can call it "hinai-chicken", just like famous "kobe-beef".
Anyway, here was Akita city, Japan.

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