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Oden 

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Oden is a Japanese winter dish consisting of several ingredients such as boiled eggs, daikon radish, konnyaku, and processed fish cakes stewed in a light, soy-flavoured dashi broth. Ingredients vary according to region and between each household. Karashi (Japanese mustard) is often used as a condiment. 

Oden was originally what is now commonly called miso dengaku or simply dengaku; konnyaku or tofu was boiled and one ate them with miso. Later, instead of using miso, ingredients were cooked in dashi and oden became popular. 

Oden is often sold from food courts, and most Japanese convenience stores have simmering oden pots in winter. Many different kinds of oden are sold, with single-ingredient varieties as cheap as 100 yen. 

In Nagoya, it may be called Kantō-ni and soy sauce is used as a dipping sauce. Miso oden is simmered in hatcho-miso broth, which is lightly sweet taste. Konjac and tofu are common ingredients. 

In Kansai area they are sometimes called Kantō-daki and tend to be stronger flavoured than the lighter Kantō version. 

Oden in Shizuoka use a dark coloured broth flavoured with beef stock and dark soy sauce, and all ingredients are skewered. Dried and ground fish (sardine, mackerel, or katsuobushi) and aonori powder (edible seaweed) are sprinkled on top before eating. 

Udon restaurants in Kagawa Prefecture in Shikoku almost always offer oden as a side dish, to be eaten with sweet miso while waiting for the udon. 

Japan arrests woman who lived with cult fugitive 

A woman claiming to have lived with a senior member of the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways turned herself in and was arrested

Tuesday for helping him evade police for nearly 17 years. 

Akemi Saito, also a member of Aum Shinrikyo, gave herself up after Makoto Hirata surrendered to police on New Year's Eve, 

according to police and Saito's lawyer. 

Hirata has refused to explain how he managed to keep underground for so long despite being one of Japan's most-wanted fugitives. 

He is suspected of involvement in a cult-related kidnapping-murder in 1995.

High Food Prices, Revolutions, and the Future

Food prices are down from their record highs in February. But prices are still higher than they were a year ago. In a year of Arab protests, high food prices helped fuel the anger against oppression, corruption and poverty. 

Many experts think the political fires that burned across North Africa and the Middle East started last year in the wheat fields of Russia. A combination of heat, drought and wildfires during the summer of twenty-ten destroyed one-third of Russia's winter wheat crop. World food prices rose after Russia halted wheat exports. 

Shenggen Fan is head of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. He links higher food prices to the uprisings in Egypt and other Arab countries. 

The last time food prices jumped was in two thousand eight. At that time, Egypt was also was among the countries where food riots and demonstrations took place. 

Ghiyath Nakshbendi is a professor in the Department of International Business at American University in Washington. He agrees that food prices played a part in the Arab revolutions. 

Cornell University economist Chris Barrett says another problem is that gains in farm production have slowed. 

He says food supplies are not growing enough to meet the demand of seven billion people. The world is expected to add two billion more by the middle of the century. And people in emerging economies like China are eating more meat, which requires more animal feed. But in twenty-eleven, for the first time, the United States used more maize, or corn, for biofuels than for animal feed. 

The good news is that high prices always encourage farmers to grow more. A record harvest in twenty-eleven is helping to ease food prices in many parts of the world, but not all.