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《　今回のworkshop　》
○workshop参加人数：３９名（うち新人の方：５名）
○【前半】： Mexican Food – A guide to Street Tacos : Tijuana Style
○【後半】： Should Japan seek more immigrants?
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【前半】
Title:
Mexican Food – A guide to Street Tacos : Tijuana Style

Discussion Questions:
1.Do you cook for yourself?If so, please tell your specialties. If not, please tell the reason.
2.Have you ever eaten dishes with any sauce which was introduced in the article? If you have, which do you like best? If you haven’t, which do you want to try?
3.What kind of relationship exists between Japanese/Mexican food culture and their national character?
4.Let’s do some role-playing! Imagine you try to introduce any Japanese seasoning to foreigners.
Procedure
(1) One person in your table play the role of Japanese introducer, and others play the role of foreigners. Introducer can choose any favorite Japanese seasoning.
(2) After the introduction, foreigners give some questions, and introducer answer them.
(3) Change the roles and repeat until all the members play the role of introducer.
(4) Choose the best introducer of the table. At the last 5 minutes of the first half, he/she introduce the favorite seasoning to the member of neighbor table.

Reference:
Making Tijuana (TJ) Street Tacos – Carne Asada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHOYsqcqdY

Mexican Food – A guide to Street Tacos : Tijuana Style

Tacos come in various sizes and ingredients but a traditional Mexican dish consists of a corn tortilla with a variety of fillings, including beef, pork, chicken, seafood and cheese. Allowing great versatility and variety, tacos are generally eaten without utensils, often garnished with salsa, chili pepper, avocado, guacamole, cilantro, tomatoes and onions.

Salsa Roja – Red Sauce
The Chile de arbol (Spanish for tree chili) is a small and potent Mexican chili pepper also known as bird’s beak chili and rat’s tail chili. These chilis are about 5 to 7.5 cm long, and 0.65 to 1 cm in diameter.
Their heat index is between 15,000 – 30,000 Scoville units. The peppers start out green and turn a bright red color as they mature. Chile de arbol peppers can be found fresh, dried, or powdered. As dried chilis, they are often used to decorate wreaths because they do not lose their red color after dehydration.
Since they are largely for decorative and garnishing purposes, they are readily substituted in cooking. The Chile de arbol pepper can be replaced with Cayenne pepper (30,000-50,000 Scoville units) or Pequin pepper (30,000-60,000 Scoville units). The pungency-producing chemical is produced in the veins, not the seeds of the chili.
A guajillo chili (in Spanish, meaning big pod) is the dried form of chili pepper, and is the most commonly used dried chili in Mexican cuisine.
Zacatecas is one of the main producers of guajillo chilies. The two varieties are distinguished by their size and heat factors. The guajillo is the smallest and hottest of the two. In contrast, the longer and wider guajillo has a more pronounced, richer flavor and is somewhat less spicy.
Its heat (rating 2,500 to 5,000 on the Scoville scale) is considered mild to medium. Guajillo chilies have many applications and are used in a variety of preparations.
For instance, they are sometimes used to make a salsa for tacos; the dried fruits (chilies) are seeded, soaked or simmered, then pulverized or mashed/pureed into a paste, then cooked with several other ingredients to produce a flavorful sauce.
Guajillo chilies are used with fish and chicken, or added to salsa as a side dish.

Salsa Verde – Green Sauce
A type of spicy green sauce based on jalapeno and tomatillo.
The jalapeno is a medium-sized chili pepper of the species Capsicum annuum. A mature jalapeno chili is 5-10 cm long and hangs down with a round, firm, smooth flesh of 25-38 mm wide. It can have a range of pungency, with Scoville heat units of 3,500 to 8,000. Commonly picked and consumed while still green, it is occasionally allowed to fully ripen and turn red, orange, or yellow.
It is often used to prepare traditional Mexican foods in a mild spiciness level for chicharrones (porkrinds), or more spicy for tacos and quesadillas.
The tomatillo, also known as the Mexican husk tomato, is a plant of the nightshade family bearing small, spherical and green or green-purple fruit of the same name. Tomatillos originated in Mexico and were cultivated in the pre-Columbian era. A staple of Mexican cuisine, they are eaten raw or cooked in a variety of dishes, particularly salsa verde.
This green sauce comes in subtypes: cooked sauce, in which the ingredients are cooked and then ground; roasted salsa, in which the elements are roasted and then ground; raw sauce, in which ingredients are ground and eaten without cooking; and a combination in which some elements are cooked. A blender can be used for the grinding process. Cooking or roasting the tomatillo will enhance the flavor providing a sweeten salsa. After the sauce is prepared, it can be cooked again with a little oil.

Salsa Especial – Special Sauce
The Scoville rating of the serrano pepper is 10,000 to 23,000. They are typically eaten raw and have a bright and biting flavor that is notably hotter than the jalapeno pepper. Serrano peppers are also commonly used in making salsa, as the chili is particularly fleshy compared to others, making it ideal for such dishes.
The second most used chili pepper in Mexican cuisine. The states of Veracruz, Sinaloa, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas produce about 180,000 tons of serranos per year.
The habanero chili comes from the Amazon, from which it was spread, reaching Mexico. A specimen of a domesticated habanero plant, dated at 8,500 years old, was found at an archaeological site in Peru.
An intact fruit of a small domesticated habanero, found in pre-ceramic levels in caves in the Peruvian highlands, was dated to 6500 BC.
The habanero chili was disseminated by Spanish colonists to other areas of the world, to the point that 18th-century taxonomists mistook China for its place of origin and called it the Chinese pepper.
Today, the largest producer is the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. Habaneros are an integral part of Yucatecan food, accompanying most dishes, either in natural form or puree or salsa.
In 1999, the habanero was listed by Guinness World Records as the world’s hottest chili, but it has since been displaced by other peppers. Breeders constantly crossbreed subspecies to attempt to create what will break the record on the Scoville scale.

Guacamole – Avocado Sauce
Traditionally made by mashing ripe avocados and sea salt with a molcajete y tejolote (mortar and pestle). Recipes include lime juice, cilantro (パクチー), onion, salt and milk. Modern recipes include sour cream, tomatoes, basil, or even peas.

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【後半】

Title:
Should Japan seek more immigrants?

Introduction:
Japan’s parliament has approved a controversial new law allowing hundreds of thousands of foreigners into the country to ease labour shortages. From next April foreigners will be allowed to take up jobs in sectors such construction, farming and nursing.
Japan has traditionally been wary of immigration but the government says more foreigners are needed because of Japan’s ageing population.
Under the new system, more than 300,000 foreigners could be allowed to work in sectors facing a labour crunch.
The law creates two new visa categories. Workers in the first category will be allowed in for five years if they have a certain level of skill and some proficiency in Japanese. Workers with a higher level of skills would qualify for the second visa category and would eventually be allowed to apply for residency.
The opposition has argued that an influx of foreign workers would depress wages and lead to exploitation of migrant labour.
Businesses in Japan have long argued for changes to immigration rules to recruit workers from other countries. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed the proposed law is not an overhaul of immigration policy and Japan will only accept foreigners “who have specific skills and can work immediately to address serious labour shortages, only in sectors that genuinely need them”.
The topic is very controversial and we need to discuss more the future of this country.

Discussion Questions:
Q1 What do you think is the advantages and the disadvantages of loosening of immigration rules? Do you agree or disagree with it?
Q2 In your workplace, in your school or in your daily life, have you noticed any change caused by the new law? (Ex, We have more foreign colleagues now. We are planning to accept more employees who are from outside of Japan.)
Q3 If you look at what has happened in some European and North American countries, accepting more immigrants are pretty scary scenario (rise of populism, hate and anger towards immigrants). What can we do to live with harmony and peace both Japanese and foreigners?
Q4 Current policy is about accepting more blue-collar workers. However, development of AI technology would eliminate their job, which means Japanese policy goes against the times. What can managers do? Should we allow managers to accept more blue-collar workers? (Normally, small and medium enterprises will benefit from workers from Asian countries. Unethical immigration brokers make money from it.)

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