母はお料理するのは自分の生きがいだと言ってました。
和食から中華、洋食、お菓子作りまでいつでも何でも美味しく作るお料理は、私の自慢でもありました。小さい時、特別な日は完璧レアに焼きあがったローストビーフが大好きでした。小、中学校の頃、毎週土曜日は母と一緒にさかな屋に行って、ハワイとローカルのマグロやサーモン、ウニなどのお寿司のネタを買ってきて、母が一人で５人分のお寿司を丁寧に握っている姿が今でも目に浮かびます。そして、その握り寿司を食べながら、家族そろって水戸黄門、ザベストテン、連続ドラマなど日本のテレビをビデオで観るのがいつも楽しみでした。
お誕生日は欠かさず手作りチョコレートケーキ。カナダにいてもお正月は必ず手作りおせちとおもちを年末から一生懸命作ってました。サブレーやチーズケーキなどのお菓子、ちまき、レモンチキンやビーフブロッコリーなどの中華料理、毎年ジューシーに出来上がったタ
ーキーも自慢でした。本当に幅広いレパートリーがあったからこそ、お料理の先生としても活躍できたのだと思います。
私が今、料理好きなのも母のおかげだと思ってます。

Our mother was amazing in the kitchen! She loved to eat of course, like everyone in our family, but her cooking and organizational skills in the kitchen were something else. When we kids were little, before a guest like a colleague of my father’s would come to visit our home, she would sit with her cookbooks and a pen and paper and write down ideas for the perfect menu. Then she would create a timeline schedule so she could get all the cooking and house cleaning done so that everything was pristine and prepared just so in order that she would be the ultimate hostess for her dinner.
Our special meals she would prepare for the family on Christmas or birthdays would be her always perfectly oven roasted rare to medium rare roast beef. Our Saturday ritual when I was in grade school would be she and I would go to rent some Japanese videos and then to the Japanese fish market. She would then by hand make enough nigiri sushi rice for the five of us (which would have been probably making 100 nigiri!) and delicately place all the pieces in individual sushi containers. Everything was always so perfect!
In later years, after I had left home, I know she spent a lot of time giving free cooking classes to her Japanese friends and I’m sure they appreciated her wisdom as well.
Even today, I particularly enjoy making her specialties: cheesecake, Chocolate roll cake, chicken teba, sanshoku gohan (with green peas).

Our mother was one of the kindest and most generous people in the world. She always made that extra effort to make our birthdays extra special from coming up with unique party themes (like a fashion show for one when I was about 8 years old) to making our favorite dishes and baking and decorating the birthday cake herself. She always remembered all our special days and passed that on as a family tradition that we continue and will continue. And I always appreciated her handwritten birthday cards that she would always include with the neatly wrapped present. I remember the countless number of gifts she gave over the years to friends and family as well. Winters always were a time she would buy, package and send all our relatives in Japan a goodie package of cod roe for the special New Year’s meals. And for her friends in Vancouver, she would spend days making omochi for them for their New Year’s and taking them to their houses. She was a very giving person with both her time and gifts.