1. The size of tofu in a pack is about 11cm x 8cm x 4cm.
2. I have used canned boiled bamboo shoots strips. You can buy bamboo shoots as a whole shoot, rectangular cut pieces or thin strips. You may also find boiled bamboo shoots in a vacuum pack. If you are using a whole or rectangular pieces, just julienne them.
3. If you are a vegetarian, substitute it to vegetarian dashi which you can find in Varieties of Dashi Stock.
Instead of making dashi stock from scratch, you can buy a pack of dashi powder at Asian grocery stores and just add the powder into water. Please refer to the instruction on the pack of the dashi power for the ratio of powder and water.
4. There are several different kinds of soy sauce in Japan and nowadays you can buy almost all of them at Asian grocery stores or definitely at Japanese grocery stores. Please visit Japanese Dressings where I talked about soy sauce varieties.
5. I know it is very hard to remove the strings on both sides of the pea pod. Quite often, you can only remove one side, sometimes not at all. If you can’t remove the strings, don’t worry. This is just the typical meticulousness of Japanese-style preparation.