FOOOOOD

Over the last week I've tried to take pictures of all the food that was in front of me or the other people around me. There are many Japanese dishes that will be missing, but as I eat more everyday, I'll continue to post random food pictures.

Tempura set meal てんぷらセート - fried vegetables and jumbo shrimp, tempura sauce, white rice, and miso soup with seaweed (wakame/わかめ):


Curry Udon カーリうどん- curry on top of udon noodles - Jeff noted that this one was a little watery:


Oyakodon おやこどん- chicken and raw egg over steaming rice:


Sashimi さしみ　- raw fish, here there's raw tuna, river fish, and salmon:


Takoyaki たこやき　- it's basically a hush puppy with octopus inside (much easier to eat than raw octopus):


Grilled Squid with mayonnaise:


Korean Kimchi:


Yakisoba やきそば - Chicken and buckwheat noodles:


Mochimochi もちもち - this comes as either smashed rice or potato and fried like a hashbrown, served with lots of butter - I'm sure no one is surprised to find out that this is one of my favs despite the fact that it tastes nothing like a hashbrown:


Jyoza じょうざ - Chinese dumplings


Pickled vegetables - I stay away from these:


Here is a plate of mini corndogs, french fries, fried chicken, and fried something else:


Here I am eating a french fry with chopsticks, but after I took this pic the Japanese people that I was eating with told me I could eat them with my fingers:


Edamame えだまめ - a classic Japanese appetizer of salted beans


Here's a mix of yakitori (chicken on a stick), wieners, and meatballs (I'm not sure what was actually in them but they were tasty):


Salad - every salad that has come with my meal already has dressing on it and it's always the same dressing - 1000 island:


This is an obento lunch that you can get at any convenient store. It's cold and comes with a light sauce. It's noodles with egg, ham, cucumber, and radish.


Onigiri おにぎり - a triangle rice filled with either plum, tuna, or something mysterious and wrapped in seaweed:


Bread - it's huge here, literally - slices are an inch thick and come in bags of about five slices:


Japanese pear - it tastes like a pear, but looks like an apple:


Okonomiyaki おこのみやき - the meal where you cook it yourself at the restaurant - You tell them which ingredients you want, they bring it along with the egg and batter base, you oil the grill, you mix and layout your food, it cooks, you flip it like a pancake, you add bbq sauce or any other sauce, you eat it. We are sitting on the floor here by the way.





So far I've been surprised by the amount of mayonnaise that has come with many foods. At my second welcome party, there was Japanese pizza that was really just thin pizza crust with garlic and mayonnaise all over it. Packets of mayonnaise come with nearly ever noodle obento. The only milk that is available is 3.7% fat, so it's basically whole milk or no milk. Since I found out how much calcium is in seaweed and sesame seeds, I've stopped drinking milk and started eating seaweed and sesame seeds everyday.

I've gone out to eat a lot in the last couple weeks and in every single restaurant there has been at least one person smoking. Usually half the room is smoking though. That was shocking and slightly disturbing to me. The only places where smoking is banned is school property and maybe the library. Otherwise, smoking happens indoors and outdoors, everywhere. Cigarettes are very cheap and very available in vending machines, so I guess that explains half of it. The other half might be explained by the fact that the Japanese government has a large percentage of stock in the tabacco industry.

A bonus for eating out - there's no tipping! Even if you try to tip, someone will run after you outside of the restaurant to return your money to you (so I've heard). Once I forgot a pen in a restaurant and our waitress ran after me in the parking lot to return it, so I'd believe the same for money.