The Easter 2021 and the Easter book club during COVID-19
March came. The number of COVID-19 patients now seemed to be under control. Somehow, people seemed to have got used to the situation. One of the thing I noticed during COVID days is that we were not good at keeping social distance. The queue at the supermarket and train station were always packed, not many people seemed to be aware of the rule to keep distance anymore. I reckon it is partly because there is no penalty for rule breaking. It was difficult to keep distance from the crowd, but you need to go shopping for grocery and take public transport to go to job centre.
The number of COVID-19 patients was at one of the lowest in March 2021, with daily about 1,000 patients throughout Japan. Vaccine was gradually on roll out, and essential workers began taking vaccines. All we needed was a blue print when those who are not essential workers can get the jabs.
I felt the luck of festivity in this season. We do have celebration of “Doll’s day”, when families with little girls celebrate their health and grows by decorating the house with dolls and have feast of Sushi or Sashimi with clam soup. We skipped this event as there is no little girl in our house.
Other event was the Easter. The Easter in Japan is pretty much commercialized, with Tokyo Disney Land and UFJ advertising their special events during the Easter season. And there are some niceties available at shops, such as little chocolate eggs. Christian communities do celebrate the day by organizing egg hunt for kids, and one of my old friend is annually preparing for the day by boiling and colouring the eggs for the day.
With lack of festiveness, I planned an online reading event for the Easter. I wondered how it will go, because as far as I knew, there is no significant literature in Japan focused on the Easter.
On SNS, I created an event page and invited my reading friends. To my surprise, many joined for this event, especially those with little children as well as those who are interested in children’s literature. I was happy to see their reaction to this event. We spent a great month sharing thoughts on the books we came across.
I went to local library and searched for books. Indeed, most of the books titled “Easter” were children’s literature. Another theme was read anything about “Rabbit” or “Chicken”. I figured that it was time to go back to old days, and read books that I missed in my younger days.
Followings are the books that I came across during March to April. They were good reads, some of them made me that I wish I could come across them when I was very young. Also it was insightful because I only knew the Easter at surface level, and why it is important event in countries with Christian background.
Through books, I became interested in the Easter culture in Germany. In certain area in Germany, some people decollate trees with coloured eggs, and bake special sweet buns.
I came across with a recipe for a sweet bun for the Easter called “Osterfladen. (Easter flat bread”)
Some of the ingredients were just hard to find here I live, I skipped orange peels and coating sugar. The bun turned out to be like this. It was a delicious sweet bun rich with egg and raisin. I enjoyed the bun along with the Easter-egg like Matcha chocolate.
I have no idea how the real Osterfladen buns in Germany tastes like. But this gave me another hope to visit abroad. I will find out some day, when COVID is over and when I visit Germany during the Easter period.
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