Today I took the time to meet with Regina Brown, a macrobiotic specialist and business owner in Tokyo.
Regina is a very spiritual person who has trained in
various energy healing techniques. Regina also runs her own healing wholefoods
academy classes. Theses classes are held bi-weekly on the half and full moon
each month. Her classes are always based on traditional healing
foods/methods or energy based healing methods. Regina trained in macrobiotics
in New York with Christi Turner and also studied under George Ohsawa at the Lema Macrobiotic school here in Tokyo.
Regina was born was raised in America but came to Japan every
year as a child with her Japanese mother. Regina notes that she has also
been very lucky to have traveled the world as an expat while working for Nikko
hotels. She claims her love and passion of food and its healing benefits have
come from the fact that she has been able to taste so many varieties of food while
living abroad and seems to be able to recreate and cook food after just one tasting.
Regina returned to Tokyo six years ago. She notes from
growing up in America she has always loved bagels but could not seem to find
bagels in Tokyo that she enjoyed. This lead her to begin her own business of
making bagels. She says that since she began baking her bagels her own
body and health has become so much better.
When Regina is not baking or running her healing
workshops she can be found doing her other main passion - swimming with
dolphins in Hawaii, where she visits numerous times a year.
I visited Regina at her beautiful shop in Yoyogi-Uehara, called “ Lily of the Valley”. Immediately upon entering the
shop I could feel the passion and the homely feel about the shop. With her son
and herself baking while I watched on it truly felt like a family run business.
Via her training in macrobiotics, Regina understands the
healing benefit and power of good ingredients in food. She told me that she
came up with the concept of her bagels as a power food. She noted that
the shape of her bagels is that of the navel (or “heso” in Japanese) in the
center with the umbilical cord wrapped around it. She notes that she hand rolls
each bagel and believes that the personal touch increases its power.
Regina notes that her bagels are based on three
ingredients, yeast, flour and salt. They are then mixed together with different
toppings such as nuts and dried fruits to differentiate each taste. She notes
that the three main ingredients are sourced within Japan and are deliberately
taken from different areas as the quality is of utmost importance to the
finished product.
The flour is 100% domestic flour from Hokkaido. She uses 100% sea salt and the natural yeast is
sourced form a natural park in Northern Japan. The brand name of this natural
yeast is Koami which in Japanese means “spirit”. She notes
that she makes 10-14 different flavors of bagels to suit all tastes. After
tasting 5 different types, I cannot decide which is nicer as they are honestly
the nicest wholesome bagels I have ever tasted!
If you would like to purchase some of these delicious
bagels pop along to her shop in Yoyogi-Uehara. Regina also
has a stall at the Aoyama farmers market every Saturday.
