Monday, January 26, 2015

Sweet Red-Bean Soup and "夫婦善哉, meoto-zenzai';

Zenzai, 善哉;
Sweet Red-Bean 'azuki 小豆' Soup, which we call ‘zenzai,善哉’ is one of my favorite winter sweets.   I made the one in the first picture a couple days ago; and the one in the second was the lunch post from 2,012 here.

"夫婦善哉, meoto-zenzai'    (meoto means married couple)
          This Japanese phrase came to describe "happy married couple".
The old Zenzai restaurant (opened 1,883) in Osaka serves two bowls of them for one person. This menu became SO popular and because of the menu is called 'meoto-zenzai', this phrase started to express the couple who are cooperating their marriage life each other through ups and downs. 
picture from restaurant's home page

Noble and movie were made with this menu title. And even the Enka song whose lyric I love was sung by one of the singer. It was released in 1,987; I was married 1,977 :-)  At that time I was helped by my husband's mental support after the infertility treatment for me didn't work.   Let me paste the video from You-tube introducing both the place and the song from last year.  Haha, I was happy to find this one.
(Sorry it's in Japanese and bit long, I'm happy if you could feel what Japanese Enka sounds like.  But this video is kind of for myself.  She is the original singer of this song.)


I couldn't find the lyrics in English, my poor translation only for the first passage;
          living like duckweeds,  you laugh  
          around our shoulders, alley autumn shower dancing
          even if we have nothing, my heart can be called a brocade
          I'll follow your foot steps, meoto-zennzai
          your back is my guidepost


Thank you very much for for stopping by,

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love enka. Lucky to get to listen to the beautiful enka "Meoto Zenzai" today. The lyric is poetic, while the accompanyinbg insrumental is soothing.

Hence looked up the meaning and origin of the song title. Thanks very much for the illumination your blog offers.

Edward Chong