Memories of Yokohama

Giulia Coccoli shares the Japanese products that remind her of Yokohama.

My name is Giulia and I lived in Japan for 6 years. It is where I first lived by myself so I kind of became an adult in a Japanese environment and many things still influence my everyday life even in the UK.

I have started kyudo in Japan (modern kyudo ENKF) and restarted it in London in September 2021 (Honda ryu). I practice every week with other people in a gym in South East London. In 2 weeks time we have a weekend of seminars and inka examinations with people coming from a Honda Ryu dojo in Poland. Everything we use is made in Japan: yumi, ya, kake, just to say the most important. Martial arts are great in teaching us about discipline and respect, kyudo is a good way for me to train my focus, my awareness of my own body and also to relax every Saturday after a stressful week. It also teaches patience as, albeit being a combination of 7/8 movements that are always the same in order to shoot, there is always something to learn and every change in equipment or location might mean that you'll have to adjust your own body.

I have also restarted playing Go (although I know that originally the game comes from China). I did it the first time 20 years ago, in Italy, and I decided to start again here in London. I still have my own goban and glass stones, plus some go problems book.

I am using my Japanese flatmate’s rice cooker, as there is no better way to cook rice, although I would love to have one for myself: I must say I struggle to find rice cooker that aren’t Chinese and therefore quite different to the Japanese ones.

To this day I am more comfortable cooking wish ryoribashi and I treasure the donabe I was given as a gift from my ex-colleagues in Tokyo. Nabe is still the best thing to have during the long English autumns and winters. As for ingredients I put a pinch of wasabi flavoured salt in all of my dishes as it gives everything a special kick in flavour and ITOEN green tea is still my favourite, I try to always find someone who can send me some seasonal flavoured sencha (at the office we always have sencha, genmaicha or houjicha to choose from). I was used to cook Japanese every day, but in the UK it is quite expensive so it’s now something I do only 2 or 3 times a month. My next project though is to prepare my own umeshu with the ingredients that I can get in London and see what happens.

I regularly get Japanese sweets from visiting colleagues from Japan, from the most modern ones like YOKU MOKU and Shiroi Koibito, to the more traditional ones filled with anko.

I still have washi notebooks or decorated letter paper, as I was studying design in Japan I have watercolours, tomboy keshigomu and tracing pens (which I am rebuying instead of trying other brands as I really love those ones).

I have a great deal of other objects I use every day, the submission could be way longer, but I will only add that my favourite wrist watch is from Star Jewellery, a Japanese jewellery brand which design is still one of the few in the world I really like.