I thought that perhaps food was one of those things that certainly deserved a blog entry of their own. Also, I decided to give it an entry just because I love food. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t like food, I love it. Forget all about candies and sodas, I’m more of proper-good-fulfilling-meal kind of a girl.
However, the difficulty with the food that I eat in Japan… I don’t even know what I’m putting in my mouth most of the time. I can’t read the names (yet), I can’t tell all ingredients apart from just looking or tasting the food, and some of the ingredients I haven’t even heard of or seen before. So food, as it’s own category, is an adventure on its own.
This picture is actually of the first week in Sapporo, taken at the Autumn Festival. We bought mochi in three different flavors: macha (green tea), strawberry and vanilla. These little beauties were filled with red bean paste which is really common filling in Japan. I know, it sounds disgusting but the taste isn’t actually that bad.
Me and Agné also tried tagoyaki which is basically… a ball of fried octopus with mayo on top. It was alright but not as yummy as it looks. There is actually a funny story related to this food that has to do with that rubber band you can see beside the container. So after we ate, I tried to put the rubber band around the container so we could neatly throw it away but no, no, the gods of Japan apparently hate me and decided it was a good time to make it clear. The band accidentally sprang from my mayo-covered fingers and smacked a poor Japanese girl right in the middle of her forehead at the table next to ours. I’ve never been so mortified in my entire life. I just arrived to Japan and I had already assaulted a person on my first day! How do these things happen to me, I don’t understand.
This one was called imomochi. The black on top is seaweed and I remember the thing had a sweet, perhaps a little fishy taste even though apparently it was fried sweet potato and mochi. The more you know. But it was good, even better than our tagoyaki!
The picture below was my first meal at Hokkaido University. In the bowl I had a dish called sammon which had cooked fish, spring onion and sauce on top, and rice underneath. I also had one extra piece of fried chicken:
This is one of those things I bought from conbi (convenience store) on a whim. The pastry is hot and fluffy and inside this little bun was meat/curry filling. It’s really good as a quick snack but unfortunately they stop selling warm food in conbis around 12pm. It’s such a shame, this would be a wonderful hey I’m super drunk, let’s eat something! snack:
Now let me tell you about the beauty below. Now this is it, my favorite food so far here: katsudon. At the bottom you have rice (of course, it’s no meal without rice, goddammit), topped with sauce, fried chicken, runny-egg and spring onion. The perfect hangover food. And I had to come all the way to Japan to find it, jeez. This can also be called oyakodon, which basically means that you’re eating the mother and the child at the same time. As in, you eat egg and chicken:
Because I love katsudon I needed to try all of its variations, of course. This one is miso-katsudon, so the brown sauce on top has a miso-soup base:
This one was a bad buy. Not everything in here tastes amazing; there are things that make you wrinkle your nose. These are soba noodles (I don’t remember the exact name anymore) but the dish was ice-cold! The noodles, the sauce, the egg; everything was cold. The sauce/soup tasted a bit like smoked fish and the egg had a strange, foamy consistency. Not recommended unless you want to try something weird and disgusting or if someone lost a bet:
So far, from food-related experiences I have learned to always check two things:
- Is there a table-charge in the restaurant?
- Are my noodles going to be hot or cold?
Because yes, some places charge you for using the table. The charge is usually around 200-500 yen per person, so from 2-5 euros. First time we came across this we were totally ripped off though… Not everyone in Japan is nice.
The desserts have been good as well! I really relate to Japanese people when it comes to ice-cream: soft-ice is so much better than regular ice-cream. They have some weird-ass flavors though. Who eats cheese flavored ice-cream?
Franziska’s birthday party! Afterwards we went to ferris wheel to check out Sapporo from above at night. …wasn’t much to be seen as it rained.
Birthday food! We had onion rings, potatoes and mayo, tortilla pizza (…yes), taco-egg salad and caesar salad. Sundaes a few pictures above were our dessert. At this point I’d like to mention that pizza is freakishly expensive in here. You might have to pay 20 euros for fresh pizza.
Last but not least, I’d like to introduce you guys to this only-available-in-Japan special food product: McDonald’s Halloween special. As in, french fries covered in chocolate-pumpkin sauce. And yes, it tastes just as weird as it sounds.
We have tried many things in here outside of these pictures too, it’s not like I take pictures of everything I eat. And sometimes I’m just too hungry to take the fucking picture. Eh, ごめんなさい.
