had nabe with one of the few japanese i know the other day, and she was really shocked when i said that we should get eggs to put into our nabe.. i dont know why my comment resulted in such a huge reaction, but it makes perfect sense to me when egg in steamboat is so so delicious, with the yolk still runny while the white floats around in the soup :)
the thing about nabe is that it's so rigid. there are several different types of nabe stock that you can buy in ready-made packets from the supermarket, and the stock you have determines what you put in your hotpot. so you wouldnt find seafood and chicken or pork floating in the same pot, because you have one stock for chicken nabe (which requires a somewhat fixed set of other ingredients like leek, chinese cabbage and beansprouts) and another stock for the seafoody things. so so different from steamboat at home, where you just dump whatever you feel like eating - which in my experience usually involves fish, prawns, chicken and tonnes of other yummy stuff) into the pot haphazardly. did i mention that in nabe, food of the same kind tends to be grouped together? so the chicken is with the chicken, and the tofu is with the tofu and so on, all neatly grouped and separated.
it sort of reflects japan in general, where there are set periods for everything, and once that period is over, that's it. like how with the passing of the new year, all the shops started having their winter clearance sales and are starting to sell spring fashion, even though the coldest winter month - february - has yet to end. i think this is most clearly reflected in the stock of clothes at uniqlo. there was this point in time when all you saw in there was brightly coloured - or garish, depending on how you view them - puffy winter jackets, and another time everything was fleece; they've also cleared all their heat-tech inner wear sometime ago, and have removed all their fleece items, even though people like me were beginning to feel acutely the need to buy really warm stuff*. once it's gone, it's gone, and it's never coming back till next year. i suppose their assumption is that people are meant to buy clothes in preparation for a season, and everyone has to be so in touch with fashion and the seasons that if you start buying this season's clothes when this season is in full swing, you're already too late and hence fashion-unsavvy. whatever. just because the new year has passed doesnt mean that it's time to flood the stores with valentines' day products as well as back-to-school goods and sakura prints, especially since the season for the latter wont be here till april!
*: the silliest thing about uniqlo was that they removed all their heat-tech inner wear and replaced it with fleece pyjamas sets**! it made absolutely no sense to me, as i really really dont see how you need to buy a particular type of sleep wear in winter when you can just wear more layers, turn up the heat and snuggle under the covers or kotatsu! whereas you cant not wear heat-tech inner wear when it's so cold outside, unless you're fine with wearing more layers of bulkier material.
**: these patterned pyjamas sets didnt make sense either. they cost about 3000yen, whereas a non-matching set - they were mostly basic colours like black, grey and brown, which means they can be matched quite easily actually - could be obtained by buying a fleece top and a bottom for 1000yen each, if you do indeed really need fleece pyjamas. i dont see how that doesnt beat buying some snowflake-print fleece top and bottom set.. :P
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