Happy New Year! And hello, nice to meet you, I'm Yukino.

My first post will be a repost of my trip to buy crabs on New Year's Eve. I had decided for a long time that my first post would be on crabs.

On 31 December 2013, he woke up at 5am, got ready in 30 minutes and hurried to Teradomari with his father.

Yes, Teradomari (Nagaoka City), a historic port town on the Sea of Japan, has a fish market called 'Ameyoko'.

Teradomari Fish Market Street: http://www.niigata-inet.or.jp/teradomari/ameyoko/ameyoko.html

A huge crowd even though it's 6am. This place is busy on holidays, but New Year's Eve is exceptional. Many people gathered here to buy seafood for the New Year's Eve feast, or perhaps for Osechi cuisine.

What makes this day extra busy is that everyone is after one particular 'freshness essential' item. Yes, crabs!

Crabby crabby crabby crab!

Crabs can be found in the shop fronts of 11 shops. Most of them are frozen, though.

Teradomari attracts all kinds of seafood from all over the country and abroad, not just from the Sea of Japan. The most famous is Kakue Gyorui, which also operates in the Kanto region.

I bought a couple of Hokkaido snow crabs from this guy's place.

In Teradomari, in addition to tastings, there are also restaurants where you can eat seafood bowls and sashimi. Fresh seafood is available locally. The speciality is hamayaki.

Voila.

I always eat scallops or squid because they are so good, but this time I'm buying sea urchins as well, so I have to be patient.

An acquaintance who had moved from the Kansai region once complimented me: 'I had hamayaki in Teradomari and was amazed at how good Niigata fish is! I was surprised at how good Niigata fish is! I'm glad to hear that, but I think that because this is a catchment area, the fish is often not locally produced. I think so. The sea urchin I bought was also from Chile.

But cheap and tasty! But of course we also sell local fish.

The fish market is indeed known as the 'Ameyoko' of fish. It is no wonder that many tourists from outside the prefecture stop by.

Teradomari Fish Market Street: http://www.niigata-inet.or.jp/teradomari/ameyoko/ameyoko.html

The desired items were purchased and returned home. The New Year's celebration of the Yukino family has begun.

Everyone has their own way of eating crab, but I only eat the body of the crab. So I gave all the legs to my crab-loving father and begged for the body instead. I was furious because what he gave me was the body without the miso and the right half of the body.

After eating the fish, I put a little leftover miso and meat on the shell, filled it with Koshinohomare Junmai Daiginjo and heated it slowly on the stove.

What luxury, shell wine.

It was very tasty. But I might have enjoyed the crab flavour more if I had used cheaper sake that didn't insist so much, instead of daiginjo. Incidentally, I can hardly drink sake, so I heated it well to remove the alcohol content.

More and more, I hope it's not a Daiginjo...

Thus, in my family, it is customary to eat crab after the New Year's Eve feast. Crab is an additional treat because it is rarely eaten.

However, there was originally a custom of eating a certain fish on this Echigo-Tsumari New Year's Eve as a 'New Year's Eve fish' to welcome and celebrate the new year. What has happened to that custom now...

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