I long for 'evening drinks on the engawa'.

I love the engawa (veranda). I'm not entirely sure what the definition of an "engawa" is, but
I love the spaces that serve as an engawa in Japanese homes, as well as the connecting corridors that surround rooms.

I still remember the image of my grandmother's house where I spent my summer and winter vacations as a child,
and when I close my eyes, that scenery comes clearly to mind. I can hear the sound of spring water from the mountains constantly flowing into the pond. It was a truly wonderful house, with an engawa that also served as a connecting corridor leading to a detached room. The detached room and the pond are gone now, which is very sad for me, but I suppose it couldn't be helped since it must have been a lot of work for the aunts living there to maintain.

Perhaps because of that longing for my grandmother's house, I have always dreamed of a home with an engawa or a connecting corridor, to the point where I would want to live in such a house if I could build one. But it probably wouldn't suit the climate in Canada.

A few years ago, when we decided to do something about our backyard, I thought about whether a wooden deck or interlocking bricks would be better,
and I struggled quite a bit because I really wanted to create an engawa-style space there.
I thought about making it completely Japanese-style, building a wide, connecting corridor-style wooden deck, and placing a low table there to sit directly on the floor, or perhaps building it as a detached gazebo. But if I built it separately from the house, I felt that just having to walk out of the house to get there would make me use it less often.
If I went with the style of sitting directly on the floor, it wouldn't be very comfortable for Canadians, so I would need tables and chairs. That would require a large space, and then it would drift further and further away from the image of an engawa I had in mind...
My head is always spinning like this.

In the end, I decided on a 3-in-1 approach, making it possible to use the space in three ways: a space with a table and chairs for regular meals,
a place with a sofa to relax, and an engawa-style space.
I aim for a place that isn't too biased toward either, being Japanese-style while also being friendly to Canadians.

And for the sofa and engawa-style space, I built a gazebo so that it would be fine even if it rained. I had my own particular preferences for even the smallest details, and I built it by making specific requests for how I wanted things done.
At first, my husband said, "You wouldn't go outside if it rained anyway, so don't you need a gazebo?" but I wouldn't budge on that. I insisted that it wasn't about whether I would actually go outside when it was raining, but that "being able to go outside and be there even when it's raining" is very important. I like watching the rain.
Personally, there is one thing that still bothers me: there is no roof in the 2-3 meter space between the door to the backyard and the gazebo. Even if it's raining, the gazebo area has a roof and is fine, but I get wet in the one second it takes to get there.
I've been thinking, "I wish there was a retractable awning here..." and I'm currently negotiating with my husband. I think it would be perfect if I had this! I need to sell my husband more on how wonderful an awning is.

My engawa fever has run wild, but since the period when you can comfortably spend time on an engawa is quite limited in the Canadian climate, I want to enjoy it to the fullest when I can.
And what I wanted to do this time was have evening drinks on the engawa. The image is sipping alcohol while gazing at the stars and the moon at night.
I don't usually drink alcohol at all, but I like the atmosphere of drinking.
It makes me feel happy when I have a little bit of alcohol, after all.

Aiming for the image of evening drinks on the engawa, first I need a table.
I have two tables I made before, but one is too small and the other just doesn't feel right. Since I'm at it, I wanted a table that I could say "This is it!", so I was thinking of making a new one.
When I was looking online for something to use as a reference for making it, I found an IKEA table. Come to think of it, the chairs I have on the engawa were bought at IKEA, so I thought it would be better to get a table from the same series rather than making one myself, and decided to do that.

I'll assemble it. I quite like assembling IKEA furniture.

When I opened the box, even though it was supposed to be furniture from the same series, the color of the wood was different.
I was like, "Huh?" but oh well. The size of the table is a bit larger than I expected.

Now that the engawa setting is ready, next are the drinks and food.
Since it's my first dinner on the engawa, I thought sake would be best.
I'm going to the LCBO, the liquor store run by the province of Ontario.
Toronto itself is multicultural, and because there are many people of Asian descent in the area where I live and in the city of Markham north of Toronto, the local LCBO carries a lot of Japanese whiskey and sake.

I really don't drink alcohol lately, and I'm not knowledgeable about sake to begin with, so I chose it just by how it looked. It's black overall and looks sharp and cool.
It was $27 at the LCBO. I think it was about the middle price among the sake they had. It's listed as 1,947 yen in Japan, so I don't think there's that much of a difference. It seems that taxes on alcohol are very high in Canada, and there's a strange situation where Canadian whiskey is cheaper to buy in Japan than in Canada.

Once the drink was decided, next was the food.
If it were evening drinks after a meal, just a little snack would have been fine, but I wanted to have dinner and evening drinks together, like an izakaya at home, so I wanted side dishes that go well with alcohol.
I don't know what kind of sake it is or what it tastes like, and I don't know what kind of food goes well with it, so I looked it up online.

https://www.masumi.co.jp/product/kuro/

This sake seems to be made in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture.
The site also introduced dishes that go well with the sake.

So there are foods that go well and don't go well with sake depending on the type, huh.
There was a site that introduced foods that go well with different types of sake.

https://www.nodaya-sake.co.jp/food.html

The "Masumi Shikkoku KURO" I bought this time is a type called Junmai Ginjo, and it said it goes well with light ingredients and dishes seasoned with herbs or condiments.
Other good pairings are white fish sashimi, grilled fish, salted yakitori, shabu-shabu,
tofu, and vinegared dishes.

I'll use this as a reference to think about the menu.
I definitely want to try the dishes introduced as going well with the sake I bought this time.
Since it's introduced by the person who surely knows this sake best, I'm looking forward to it, thinking it will definitely go well with this sake.

Thinking about what would be good, I decided on 6 dishes.
* Pork shabu-shabu and eggplant with ethnic sesame dressing (this is what was introduced as going well with Masumi Shikkoku KURO)
* Pork shabu-shabu and tomato salad (the pork shabu-shabu overlaps, but my husband doesn't like eggplant much, so I made something different too.)
* Yellowtail collar grilled with herb salt
* Chicken seasoned with kabosu pepper
* Deep-fried vegetables soaked in sauce (grilled instead of deep-fried)
* Edamame

Well then, let's eat.
When I bought the table, I thought it might be a bit different because it was larger than the size I had imagined, but it was almost too small when I put all the dishes on it, so I'm glad I made it on the larger side.

It was delicious and fun. I'm the type who gets cheerful when I drink, so I think I was talking more than usual.
My husband said that if this is what life after retirement is like, then he's looking forward to it.
Well, even if we don't drink every day, I hope we have plenty of time to enjoy delicious food, drinks, and conversation.

The most popular items on today's menu were the grilled vegetables soaked in broth and the yellowtail collar grilled with herb salt. I initially planned to make sashimi and went to a fish market run by a Japanese person, but when I saw the yellowtail collar, I thought my husband might prefer that, so I changed from sashimi to grilled fish, and
choosing the collar was the right decision.
The grilled vegetables soaked in broth is a simple dish where you just quickly grill vegetables in olive oil and soak them in homemade noodle soup base, but it's delicious.

Noodle soup base recipe
Water 400ml
Soy sauce 150ml
Mirin 100ml
Sugar 20g
Bonito flakes 25g
Put the ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes. Wait for it to cool down a bit, then strain it with a coffee filter or similar, and it's ready.

I also want to have evening drinks while looking at the moon sometime soon.