Hana Japanese Market

Taken from their Facebook page.

After doing some research looking for Japanese markets in DC I found only two.  There is one in Rockville and one in DC.  The one I went to was in DC.  A few minute walk from the U-street metro stop, Hana Japanese Market is a small store that sells Japanese goods, obviously.  When I say it is small, I mean it is small.  When I went there were people with a camera and a microphone filming and interviewing customers while they shopped (I was unable to escape them.  They asked what I was buying and what I was planning on making and if I had visited Japan and what my favorite Japanese food was.  I was nervous.) and with them it was super crowded.  I had to be very

Onigiri!  I used to eat these a lot in Japan.

careful not to knock things off the shelves with my basket, and getting around other shoppers was a challenge.  Not only do they sell prepackaged goods, but they also sell fresh and frozen produce and they even sell onigiri by the register!  Hana is run by an older Japanese couple, and them and the one young woman who was working there were very helpful while I was trying to find ingredients.

Because it is one of the only Japanese markets in DC I was worried that because it is so small that I wouldn't be able to find what I needed for dango.  But boy was I surprised.  They had everything!  I guess it's true when they say that big things come in small packages.  They had the ingredients that I needed to make the dango along with the ingredients for the mitarashi sauce.  They even had other stuff I could use as toppings like adzuki bean paste (ogura-an) and soybean flour (kinako).

Joushinko and Shiratamako

Mirin, Soy sauce, Ogura-an, Kinako, and Katakuriko

Their prices were a bit higher than I expected, but beggars can't be choosers especially when there's no where else to get this and it's imported.  Now all that's left to do is pick a recipe and attempt to make them again this weekend.  I can't wait.  It's going to be abso-foodie-licious!