Things I might miss after I go back to Japan

I moved to California from Japan in April 2010. I’m enjoying and getting familiar with living in the U.S. Since I started living here, I have found some items which I can’t get in Japan. I really think that I’ll miss these things after I go back to Japan. I will introduce one of them today; half and half. Half and half is a light cream typically used in coffee. It’s called half and half because it is half milk and half heavy cream. Half and half is not sold in Japan.

I love coffee. Usually I prefer strong coffee and drink coffee black. After I came to the U.S, I began to enjoy the taste of the combination of coffee and half and half. In Japan, the cream for coffee is mostly made from plant derived oil. It’s not made from milk. I don’t like this because that kind of alternative cream has very little taste.

You might feel that I should use whole milk. In fact, whole milk is better for coffee than the artificial cream, but I don’t like the smell. Most whole milk is homogenized. I don’t like the flavor of the combination of coffee and whole milk because the smell of milk is strong.

I think that when homogenized milk becomes hot, the smell becomes bad. The coffee favor is masked by a strong flavor of milk.

When I visited the UK, I was amazed by the rich taste of milk in the UK. That milk is not homogenized. It tasted terrific and had an excellent flavor. Of course it was absolutely suitable for both tea and coffee. I’m hooked on the good taste of non-homogenized milk.

Since this experience in the U.K, I have been longing for good milk for coffee. Fortunately, I found out that the taste of half and half is pretty much the same as the non-homogenized milk that I had in the U.K. For coffee, I would say it is even better than British homogenized milk.

Unfortunately, half and half is not sold in Japan and it’s hard to find non-homogenized milk as well. I hope that half and half will become popular before I go back to Japan. If it’s not, I guess I’ll make half and half on my own using heavy cream and whole milk. I’ll start researching how to make homemade half and half from right away.