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Most people view pancakes as breakfast food, though IHOP and Ron Swanson might disagree. Since moving to Japan, we have eaten many random foods we would have never considered as palatable in the states. I can say, without a doubt, that we have definitely expanded our food horizons (and our definition of edible).
It seems like everywhere you turn in Japan, there are large food advertisements, enticing you and your taste buds to try something new. It’s great, but we still don’t always know what we are eating. Our recent food adventures have taken us to Okonomiyaki お好み焼き, which we have seen defined on many menus as “Japanese Pancake.” I’m not sure I would call it a pancake, although it is kind of flat and in the shape of a circle. Perhaps a thin, circular, grilled casserole would make for a more accurate description.
I’ll be honest….it looks kind of horrible. In fact, it looks kind of disgusting the first time you see it, so we have always avoided these okonomiyaki restaurants. This all changed last fall while we were in Kyoto. I think we were really just tired of walking, but whatever the reason, we stumbled into an okonomiyaki restaurant. What a pleasant surprise! It turns out we picked a good place to start eating okonmiyaki, as it originated in nearby Osaka. Though it is prepared differently in various regions of the country, the notion of the “pancake” remains the same. Basically there is some flour batter and you can add whatever you want to the dish!
We chose mochi, shrimp, and beef, and watched as cabbage and noodles were added as well. Some restaurants allow you make your own on a grill in the middle of the table, but we like paying other people to make our food. In any case we tried a new food that is delicious, and in true Japanese style, we properly drizzled our meal with a copious amount of mayonnaise!
Please look at the picture below. This melon costs ¥5780, or about $75. For one melon! And believe it or not, this is fairly cheap for a gift melon. In Japan, high end fruit is often given to show your appreciation for someone who has done something for you, or for an important guest or client. Most of the ones I have seen in our area cost about $100, but they can go as high as $300 or $400. And for perfect or rare fruits, you are looking at thousands of dollars. In 2008, a pair of melons from Hokkaido broke records when they sold for 2.5 million yen!
Gift melons are perfect in shape, and they are carefully hand tended and cared for throughout the entire growing process. Any fruit that is deemed imperfect doesn’t make the cut. I saw an ad in Tokyo that showed the fruits being grown in greenhouses at the top of skyscrapers. I wish I’d taken a picture of the ad so I could have found more information about these skyscraper fruits. I have never had a gift melon, so I can’t say what they taste like, but I would hope they taste amazing for the price. It should be noted that these are fruits you only buy for others. If you were buying a melon for yourself, you would buy the $10 or $20 one at the regular grocery store. (I know….I still haven’t adjusted to fruit prices here!) I have also heard there are square gift watermelons and black watermelons, but I haven’t seen either of these. Right now is a gift-giving season (I believe) because the stores are suddenly full of expensive gift fruit. I can’t imagine spending this much money on fruit….can you?
Coming to Japan we expected the food to be mainly raw seafood with some Chinese instant noodles. We were a little surprised to find curry shops everywhere, as we are in Asia but very far from India. Trying the curry, however, we discovered Japanese curry is very different from the Indian and Thai varieties… but supremely awesome. Curry rice is a national dish and can be found everywhere you go in Japan. You can get it over white rice, with udon noodles, and even inside baked bread. Ordering what looked like a coconut flaked doughnut one morning we discovered it to be filled with vegetable curry! Who knew? Not quite spicy hot, Japanese curry generally has a few vegetables in dark powder sauce, with a few traces of shredded beef sneaked in. Being Japan, there are of course regional varieties generally seafood themed, with the wildest being whale curry from northern Japan. The history behind curry in Japan is not that ancient, as it has been traced to English merchant ships in the late 1800s introducing a shipboard variety which was dubbed “Western Curry.” This has evolved into today’s curry available literally EVERYWHERE you go, including vending machines. Fast food here in Japan involves real food over the greasy mess served in America. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force traditionally serves curry on Fridays, and we have discovered on base at the Japanese air terminal delicious curry rice with a more peppery sauce than we usually find out in town. I could seriously eat curry rice everyday… it has been a pleasant surprise find here. Pictured below is a delicious seafood curry with calamari and shrimp. Come visit and taste test, nothing like it in the States!
Stuck in Asia and missing good Louisiana Hot Sauce? Don’t bother looking for Tabasco, grab a bottle of Wasasco, your local Wasabi based pepper sauce to spice up your food! Order a mackerel/squid/roe topped pizza from the local Pizza-La but need to kick it up a notch? Look no further than Wasasco! Your mouth will never taste again!
I’ve really come to love Ramen since living in Japan. And not instant ramen, but awesome, homemade, served in a huge ceramic bowl ramen. I prefer miso based broth, but James often gets a soy based, spicy broth. The ramen at Japanese noodle shops is very filling, with thick broth, heavy noodles, vegetables, meat, and sometimes eggs.
I crave ramen on cold, rainy days, and with it being the rainy season, I’m craving it quite often. We have a ramen shop down the road that I enjoy, but my new favorite is about 20 or 30 minutes away. We probably pass at least 20 ramen shops to get there (and this is a low estimate, trust me) but this ramen is well worth the travel. Upon entering the ramen shop, you are greeted with a deep bow, and met with an electronic ordering machine. You insert your money, choose your dinner, and out comes a ticket with your order, which you then give to the wait staff. I love the ambiance of this particular shop, and I love the food even more.
Living in one of largest cities in Asia allows us to enjoy food from all over the region. One of our favorite local Thai restaurants serves absolutely amazing fried spring rolls, perhaps the best I have ever had. They are handmade upon ordering, and although they take about an hour to arrive to your table, the wait is definitely worth it. They also serve a coconut curry panang that is simply amazing! The restaurant is in a building right next to the train tracks, meaning we deal with shaking plates every few minutes. The shaking building, long wait, awesome spring rolls, and Thai language makes for a great culinary experience.
My preconceptions about Japan proved false in thinking that I would not particularly care much for the local food. 
I only thought of sushi and raw squid. We have been pleasantly surprised how diverse and delicious Japanese restaurants are. I think I only miss Chick-fil-A. While you can get high priced sushi here, we have recently been enjoying bowls of steamed Chinese noodles, known to “poor” college students in America as Ramen. The winter here is cold and dry, but relief can be found in a 500 yen bowl of awesome. Of course the ramen is very diverse here, much more than the cheap instant noodles I was used to. The Japanese add different base broths depending on which region of the country you are in, but usually it is a soy based broth, whether miso or soy sauce.
They add anything you can think of to the soup bowl, including seafood and pork. You do get a spoon to slurp up liquid, and you are expected to loudly slurp the warm, delicious noodles.
Traditional Japanese noodles are not the instant Chinese delicious ramen, but are wheat based known as soba and udon. Soba is thin buckwheat noodles that are best in summer cold, in my opinion. 
Udon are thick wheat base noodles that are sort of chewy. I usually do not order udon, but bought a curried udon in Kyoto last weekend when it was -5 Celsius out. It was great and warm, but not what you would expect as far as traditional pasta is concerned. So despite what you may think about Japanese food, it is in fact very diverse. Our eating experiences here have been great, and we are enjoying trying all the new food!
A few weeks ago, we discovered an amazing restaurant a few blocks from our home. And since the discovery, we have been frequent visitors (to say the least). It’s a yakiniku (which literally translates as “grilled meat”) BBQ place, where you can grill your own meat at the table.
We’ve been to a few of these types of restaurants in Japan, but this is by far our favorite. And the best part about it….it’s very close! It’s a local favorite, and there are not many Americans who visit, which makes me like it even more. There are no English menus, so we just told the waitress to bring us whatever they thought was good, with the exception of tongue, which I’m not strong enough to try yet. My favorite is galbi (which I pronounce kalbi), and is thin strips of beef. The meat is already flavored, and it’s a great experience all around. James sums up the restaurant experience with “meat and beer.” No more words are needed. Come and visit so we can take you here to eat!
Okay, so these aren’t really mushrooms. They are just chocolate cookie treats shaped like mushrooms (yummy). These little fungi are by far my favorite treat in the Japanese candy aisle to date! So cute!
I never imaged my lunch involving a conveyor belt, but sitting in our booth at the local Sushi-Go-Round, that’s exactly what happened. As we sat down, I was mesmerized by the yellow and white plates slowly moving past me with bright oranges, reds, whites, and pieces of fish I couldn’t decipher sitting on perfect rectangles of rice. How fabulous! 
We pulled cups from the stand above the conveyor belt, and an old Japanese man sitting behind us motioned for us to get water out of the faucet at our table. We filled our tea cups with scalding hot water, and were then instructed to pour two scoops of green tea powder into the mizu (water), which he demonstrated for us. Hai, Domo arigato gozaimasu! Though he also laughed at me a few times, he was extremely helpful. I thought he was going to fall out of his seat laughing when I dropped a piece of sushi that didn’t quite reach my mouth from the chopsticks. I’m sure he told all of his friends about the funny American girl who couldn’t eat sushi with chopsticks. But, after he stopped laughing at me, he motioned for me to eat it with my hands. So I followed suit and found it to be much easier.
Sushi-Go-Rounds are fast food sushi restaurants, where you literally pick the sushi you want off of the conveyor belt. James, Cliff (one of James’ co-workers visiting from the states), and I enjoyed a fast-food sushi lunch before heading to 
an office barbeque. While it’s not the best sushi you can get in Japan, it’s fast, cheap, and convenient. The best part about the Sushi-Go-Round is you can try something without having to order a lot of it. Each plate has one or two pieces of Sushi on it, depending on the type. And if you don’t like it, no worries! The sushi chef isn’t there to offend, so you can just leave it on the plate. It gives you the opportunity to be adventurous without having to spend a lot of money and without having to eat something you don’t like. The perfect combination for us! Our local Sushi-Go-Round is on the 2nd floor of the grocery store, and each plate is only 105 yen. That’s basically a dollar a plate. There are other things besides sushi on the conveyor belt, like sides and desserts, and those have different prices associated with them. At higher end Sushi-Go-Rounds, the color of the plate will coincide with the cost. When you have finished eating, you ring the bell for the waitress to come, and she counts the number of plates you have eaten. In her hand held device, she punches in the number, and out comes your bill. It is a must see in Japan, and I can’t wait to take all of our visitors to experience our local Sushi-Go-Round!
