nostalgia and a bit of green tea

I don't think of myself as a particularly nostalgic person but sometimes, out of nowhere, it hits me like a slap. This story about kooky food in Osaka did it for me. Amy Richardson has a really perky blog called pretty yum yum about food and fashion in Japan. But it was her interview with inside out that really got the natsukashii (nostalgic) juices flowing in me. All that colour. All that odd stuff. In the name of food. Oh how I remember it. Like mayonaise on everything. Including onigiri (rice balls). And nori (seaweed) on top of spaghetti napolitana. Mostly my nostalgia centres on the good stuff like the creative use of green tea for flavouring food. My memory of going to Uji, a famous tea region and having green tea udon, green tea dango and green tea ice cream. And cycling through old parts of Kyoto like the north-east side of the Kamo River and smelling the scent of roasted green tea in the air. And having macha in Ippodo an old tea house on Teramachi dori in Kyoto. Ok so it seems my nostalgia is mostly about all things tea. Well that's nothing new is it?