What I didn't realize while in Japan was how many aromatic ingredients the Japanese traditional cooking relies on. When I thought of Japanese cuisine, I usually wouldn't think of herbs and spices--I was more inclined to associate them with exotic cuisines like Thai and Indian, not my mundane Japanese food. But living in a foreign country, where the mainstay of Japanese herbs and spices are hard to come by, has made me realize that there are, indeed, a lot of aromatics involved in the Japanese cooking. And by gory, good ones are hard to find.

Ginger is probably the easiest to find, although the "shin-shoga," fresh ginger shoot just growing out of a thin, not-yet-plump ginger root (that looks a bit like fa fingerling potato)--a delicacy that powerfully signifies the advent of early summer--seems impossible to find. Dried spices like sansho (prickly ash) are also stocked in Japanese markets. When it comes to fresh herbs, things get a bit tougher. Fresh herbs--like cilantro-like mitsuba, sharp and tangy kinome (young leaves of sansho; prickly ash), and pale but potent myoga--are sometimes found in Mitsuwa, a large, suburban Japanese market, but they're invariably expensive and I can't say they're the freshest of all. Citrus fruits are the worst: the USDA doesn't seem to like the idea of importing of citrus fruits of any kind from abroad (which is not surprising, considering the danger of the citrus canker). So, if I wanted yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu, which all have generically citrusy yet unique flavors, I don't have any choice but to go for overpriced and odd-tasting bottled juices.

Until very recently, shiso was one of the elusive herbs. (It's the green leaf with rugged edges and pointed tip that you sometimes find on your sushi plate.) Granted, many Japanese people grow their own shiso (including my green-thumbed mom whose green genes I don't seem to have inherited), and I could grow my own--if only the apartment were a bit sunnier. Granted, too, shiso is available at Mitsuwa for not so bad of a price at about $1 for 10 leaves. But somehow, getting the shiso from Mitsuwa doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps it's the precise calculation that each leaf costs 10 cents that makes me reluctant to use them extravagantly. Combined with their short shelf life (about three days before dark marks appear), my strange reluctance to use them in large quantities often leaves three or four dark, soggy leaves perishing in my fridge. So, as much as I like their minty and floral aroma, I've mostly stayed away from shiso. Until recently, that was.

When I was studying the perky herbs in the Tai Nam food market on Broadway the other day, I saw a bag of "pink mint" and picked it up. On the front, the leaves were green; on the back, purple. They looked like a smaller and little bit sturdier version of the beloved shiso leaves. I snuck a glance up and down the aisle, and seeing that there weren't anyone around, I pinched the tip of a leaf that was sticking out of the package. Sure enough, the leaf smelled exactly like shiso. I picked up a package, biked home and started cooking. This time, with a large bowl full of pseudo-shiso bursting out of the tight plastic bag, I felt I could be extravagant with them.

I had a handful of shiitake mushrooms and about half a pound of ground chicken in the fridge. An idea quickly formed in my head. I started by chopping up a generous--truly generous--amount of pink mint. The back side of the leaves were beautiful--its purple, tinged with green and a hint of gold, was almost ethereal. I admired the color for a moment, then mixed the chopped shiso leaves with ground chicken, an egg, some corn starch, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Stuffed onto the shiitake mushrooms and sautéed in a pan, the shiso-infused chicken meatballs became a refreshing and satisfying entrée. For the sauce, I mixed equal parts of soy sauce and mirin with a chopped pickled plum. There was so much pseudo-shiso that I even used them for garnish (gasp!). It felt good to use my favorite Japanese herb without worrying about the cost and calculating how many there are left in the fridge.

As it turned out later, pink mint (or tia to in phonetic Vietnamese) was a popular Vietnamese herb among the ex-pat Japanese people craving for the familiar taste of shiso. It was kind of funny to see so many food blogs scattered all over the world--from Bangkok to Paris--by Japanese cooks substituting shiso with tia to. So many of them expressed delight when finding this superb substitute for the familiar herb, often after a long search and an even longer dry spell. Though I don't know any of the bloggers personally, I felt a strange connection, maybe even a camaraderie of some sort, with the fellow ex-pats. All thanks to my unplanned move to a foreign country full of ethnic immigrants.