Season of the plum rain

The rainy season has arrived in Tokyo. It is called 'Tsuyu' or　梅雨 in Japanese, meaning 'plum rain'.

In supermarkets and vegetable stores, you'll find green plum fruits are being sold in this season. They are used for home made plum wine, plum juice or pickled plum called ume-boshi, or dried plums.

Ume-boshi is kind of a soul food for  Japanese people.
It is one of the most common ingredient of rice ball. Or if you see a red round -shaped pickles at the center of white rice in a boxed lunch, that's ume-boshi. By putting ume-boshi, it help prevent cooked rice and other foods get rotten, especially  during a hot, humid Japanese summer.

ume-boshi and rice balls

Though ume-boshi can be bought  at supermarkets or even in online stores,  for many Japanese people, the best ume-boshi is their own mothers' or grand mothers' homemade one.

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(by Seiko)