Good reading books when you live in japan

I found two interesting books, one about food buying in japan, and the other one about kids in Japan.

A Guide to Food Buying in Japan by Carolyn R. Krouse
I recommend this book to foreigners who care about what they eat. This book has a lot of information about the food available in Japan with the japanese names and how to read them. The books axplains also how to read the labels on food. This is really a good reference for muslims living in Japan.









Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children by Diane Wiltshire and Jeanne Huey.

This is also a good reference for parents mainly if you live around Tokyo. The book contains many useful addresses.

Description
Every year, thousands of families visit or relocate to Japan. Fourteen years ago, Jeanne Huey and Diane Wiltshire made the crossing. Five children and six years later they wrote the first complete guide to entertaining and raising children in this fascinating but often baffling land. Now, eight years on they offer a fully updated version, with hundreds of new additions on:

• AMUSEMENTS festivals, theme parks, cultural centers, zoos, aquariums
• OUTINGS museums, beaches, parks, playgrounds, gardens
• TRAVEL TIPS moving, coping with jet lag, getting around town, day trips
• SHOPPING where to buy anything, from food to fashions to futons
• HEALTH CARE dentists and doctors, pregnancy and childbirth, medical emergencies
• EDUCATION daycare, international schools, the Japanese system, bilingualism
• ACTIVITIES talent agencies, sports, Japanese traditions, and extracurricular classes
• MAIL ORDER listings, catalogs, and the Internet...and much, much more Compact yet bulging with priceless information and hundreds of tips, the new Japan for Kids is essential reading for families heading for or living in this part of the Far East. From planetariums to petting zoos, educational materials to interactive museums, this handy reference book remains indispensable-a guide that no parent can go without.

Topvalue/Bestprice shokupan

I have already written a post about Bestprice bread by Topvalue to say that all the ingredients of this bread are from plants except of course milk. Now, I deleted it and replaced it with this post.

I received an email from a muslim sister living in Japan telling me that Topvalue uses margarine containing pork fat in the trays of the bread for baking.

A sister living in Gifu asked Topvalue, they said that there are many factories of Topvalue in Japan, each one uses its own ingredients. If you want to be sure about the ingredients of the bread and the type of margarine used for the trays, you need to call the topvalue factory in your area.


At the end, the factory in the area of Gifu uses only margarine containing ingredients from plants in the tray and no animal ingredients in the bread except milk.

One of my friends who can speak Japanese called the factory in Tsukuba and asked them about the margarine used in the trays. We live in Tsukuba. The company said that margarine containing pork fat is used in the trays of the bread for baking.


This is the list of the ingredients of Bestprice bread by Topvalue in japanese, as you can see, there is no information about the type of margarine used in the trays for baking:

小麦粉、砂糖混合ぶどう糖果糖液糖、マーガリン（大豆を含む）、イースト、食塩、砂糖、脱脂粉乳、発酵種（乳成分を含む）、乳化剤（乳成分を含む）、酢酸Ｎａ、イーストフード（小麦を含む）、香料（乳成分を含む）、ビタミンＣ、カロテノイド色素