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We decided that we want to visit Japan again this year. We’ll be aiming at visiting the Tohoku region around mid-April, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom there. We’re doing research on how to get there, and what spots we want to visit.

Of course, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 2011 is still fresh in everyone’s memory. There are some specific spots to commemorate, such as the 3.11 museum, but there are a lot of ‘generic’ touristy spots that have been touched by the tragedy. You’d look through a list of recommended spots, and there’s a field where a farmer grows rapeseed and makes a maze out of it — a fun activity for the kids! And that’s all fine and dandy, but then you read that he started doing this to process his grief over losing his parents and his two young children in the 2011 earthquake/tsunami and suddenly it doesn’t feel so lighthearted and fun anymore.

Or a spot for cherry blossoms, and there’s a link to a site about it, with pictures and reports of all the past years. And then you translate the page, and you see that the first entries were from 2012, when the village was closed off because it was in the nuclear exclusion zone around the Fukushima power plant and the city workers got special permission to enter the village to photograph the cherry blossoms so that the residents would not have to feel so lonely and isolated from their village…

The exclusion zone is now a lot smaller, and the radiation outside of that zone is similar to background radiation in other places. Japan expects around 33 million foreign visitors this year, but I expect there to be a lot less tourists in Tohoku. And there are some beautiful spots there, we’re really looking forward to it.

And then yesterday there was another large earthquake, this time centered around the Noto peninsula. Less than half as powerful as the 2011 quake, but it still did a lot of damage. Luckily the subsequent tsunami was not very powerful. It’s a stark reminder that Japan is basically a collection of volcanoes, and that nature is unpredictable.

Several of the YouTube channels we follow are of people based in Japan — they go to interesting places and we get to go with them. Sometimes it inspires us for a place to visit for a future trip. Some of them are sponsored by Sakuraco, which is a subscription snack box. The snacks are all semi-traditional snacks (though they have another box called Tokyo Treat which is more modern/trendy) and of course they unpack ’em (and eat!) on video to show what’s in there.

The subscriptions are expensive, and the shipping really kills it, but I was in a contrarian mood so I got myself a six-month subscription. And it took the box a long time to get here, but today it was delivered!

The box is smaller than I had thought it would be. Every month has a theme, and every month they partner with snack makers from a specific region. This month’s theme is “Valentine’s Bliss” and the region is Osaka prefecture — which is why there is a design with Osaka castle on the front, I think? Not sure where that crab comes from, though…

The booklet explains the origin of each snack, but also contains information (and gorgeous photos) of the region-of-the-month.

Underneath is the assortment of snacks! There’s quite a bit there, and apparently Valentine’s means strawberries, because many of the snacks contain strawberries.

Such as this strawberry dorayaki. Dorayaki are two fluffy pancakes with sweet red bean paste in between. This variant had strawberry jam mixed in the paste, and it was very fragrant and sweet. (If you’re curious about dorayaki and an (the sweet red bean paste), I can recommend the movie “An”.)

Every box contains a ‘table-ware’ item. This time it’s a “soup bowl”, with a nice bird motif on the outside. It’s plastic, of course, but it may make for a nice serving bowl for snacks.

It’s a nice bit of fun to get the box, to open it up and to eat the snacks. Not sure I will continue beyond these six months though.