Japanese Food

I’m pretty bored at work right now (I’ve been here for about 10min), so I decided to write a bit about how I’ve found the food so far. Basically, it’s about as different from Canada as I can imagine. I know we use a lot of the same ingredients and eat sushi and teriyaki and stuff, but the variability is still really different. In Canada you can get food from everywhere, but in Japan everything is Japanese. They make hamburgers and pasta at some places, but they are still just Japanese approximations. Hamburgers, for example, seem to not always have buns, but do have mayonnaise every single time.

Another thing that gets me is the texture of everything. For the most part things here taste pretty good, but the textures of some of the food is really weird. They seem to prefer sticky, slimy, or squishy things here, which can get a little gross.

That said, there are some pros to eating in Japan. Pretty much the nicest of all is that due to the relatively high cost of groceries it is often cheaper or the same price to eat out rather than cook for one person. Also, their restaurant food seems much healthier than ours (but it probably isn’t really).

Anyway, here are some things I have found that I like so far:

Tajima Beef: It’s usually called Kobe Beef because Kobe is much more identifiable than Tajima, but this type of beef actually comes from the area where I’m located. It’s pretty much the best tasting beef I’ve ever had. Apparently the cows are fed beer and massaged in order to get the right type of marbling. Its pretty expensive though.

Yakisoba: Basically this is just some fried noodles, some vegetables, and some chicken sometimes. It’s really good though, and lots of restaurants serve it.

Gyudon: Basically its fried beef, onions and rice in a bowl. It’s not really anything special, but I think pretty much everywhere sells it, and for the most part it tastes the same everywhere. I don’t know what that pink stuff in it is, but I don’t like it.