Nopy's Blog

I’m still sorting through all of the pictures and items from my trip, so I won’t have a post up with details of what I did until maybe this weekend. In the meantime, I’ve decided to write this post on the foods I tried in Japan and compare them to what we have in Canada. I was in Japan for a month, so I think my experiences there are representative of what you’d normally find and not just some fluke. Hopefully this will help someone prepare for their trip so it’s not so much of a shock.

Before I go into too much detail, I should mention that I do not like fish or salt so I do have a bias. Fortunately though, the Japanese don’t only eat raw fish on rice like some people think. I was actually surprised at how little fish I saw while in Japan. Yes, there are sushi restaurants everywhere, but they have non-fish sushi like shrimp, eel, octopus, egg, etc. Obviously, Japan has Canada beat when it comes to sushi, in both variety and taste.

Another famous Japanese food is ramen, or noodles in soup. I’m sure everyone has had instant noodles before, and I was expecting Japanese ramen to be like that but with some extra stuff thrown in. I was completely wrong. Here’s where my bias comes in; everyone says they put salt on food to add flavour, but I hate salty foods because they don’t taste like anything except salt. Unless you order miso ramen, your soup is going to be supersaturated with salt and MSG. I don’t know of any restaurant back home that makes noodles and soup like this, and I’m glad they don’t. Every time I went out for ramen, I’d need a lot of water afterwards. Another thing about ramen in Japan (or at least the places I visited), is that they barely put any meat in the bowl. You’ll get a few thinly sliced pieces of whatever meat you ordered, but that can easily be finished in one bite. Back home, all the asian restaurants put in tons of meat to keep the customers coming back.

While we’re on the topic, lets talk about meat next. I come from the province of Alberta, and we’re proud of our beef. You can find Grade AAA Alberta beef signs everywhere you go. I know in some other parts of the world, chicken is the meat of choice. In Japan, their main form of meat comes in the form of pork. If you’re muslim or just don’t like pork, you might want to reconsider going to Japan. Pork can be found in almost every restaurant in Japan, and it’s also found in many of their dishes. The most common pork dish is probably katsu-don, which is deep-fried pork cutlets and eggs served on top of rice. It’s a pretty good dish and if you’re in Japan, you should give it a try. What really surprised me though, was Japanese beef (in particular, Kobe beef). Like I said earlier, I come from Alberta and we like to think that our beef is some of the best in the world. I’ve had beef in other countries and it just doesn’t compare to what we have here, so I was skeptical about how good Kobe beef was. After trying it a couple times, I’m convinced that it’s better than Alberta beef (sadly), and worth the exorbatant price tag.

Although I approve of Japanese beef, there are some foods that I found sub-par compared to what I’m used to. The first is eggs. I love eggs, I put them in my dishes whenever I can and I can easily eat half a dozen a day. I should also mention that all the eggs I eat are grown in Canada or the U.S. In Japan, naturally, you have eggs that are grown in Japan. Before this trip, I thought that all chicken eggs were the same, but now I know better. Japanese eggs are disgustingly bland, which I found extrememly surprising considering they like to put eggs on everything like I do. If I were to fry a Japanese egg, I would not enjoy eating it plain. The other thing I didn’t like was Japanese rice, but this is more of a personal thing. I’m ethnically Chinese, and my family eats rice everyday. For over 20 years, I’ve been eating long-grained white rice. In Japan, you’ll be lucky to find any type of rice other than the domestically-produced short grain rice (due to high tariffs on foreign rice), which just feels weird. I don’t think this will be a problem for most people though, unless you’re picky like me.

Another thing that’s missing in Japan is cereal. Now, it’s not completely gone, you can usually find a box at a grocery store, but that box is 99% gauranteed to be frosted flakes. While I was in Japan, I did not see more than one type of cereal. I usually go for Cheerios when I have cereal, but I still like having a little variety to choose from. I know a lot of people that will only eat one type of cereal, so if you’re one of those people, you might want to consider bringing your own, unless frosted flakes is your cereal of choice.

One thing I want to point out is Chinese food in Japan. You’d think that a country so close to China would have good Chinese food, but it’s actually Japanese food made to look Chinese. It’s sort of like how back home we have Chinese restaurants that serve lemon chicken and ginger beef, but you won’t find that stuff in China. It’s a bit disheartening if you’re used to certain types of food but can’t find it anywhere.

Now that I have all the food bashing out of me, you’re probably wondering what I did find good about Japanese food. My favourite dish was unagi-don, which is eel with some kind of sauce on top of rice. Some foods that you can usually find along the side of the street are taiyaki (red bean paste wrapped in some kind of cooked batter) and takoyaki (octopus balls). Taiyaki was pretty much what I was expecting it to be, but takoyaki is much more delicious than I had imagined. If you haven’t tried it before, make sure you ask for all of the toppings to get the full experience. These two are like the equivalent of mini donuts and corndogs back home, but so much better. One surprising type of food that Japan makes very well is European desserts. For some reason, the Japanese seem to take their desserts more seriously and you can find cake shops here and there that have amazing desserts made fresh.

Moving on, lets talk about fast food. Like most places, you can find big-name restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC, but they’re slightly different in Japan. McD’s in Japan has a burger that we don’t have called the ebi fillet (shrimp fillet). I tried it out when I was in Odaiba and it was surprisingly good. The patty is like a bunch of shrimp squished together into a patty shape and then deep-fried so the outside is crispy while the inside is juicy. I didn’t notice any other burgers at McD’s that I couldn’t get here, so during my other trips there I tried the regular stuff and it tastes the same as in Canada. The next international fast-food chain I tried was KFC. Once again, their food tastes basically the same, but they also have this spicy chicken on their menu which I don’t think they have here. If I hadn’t watched Code Geass, I probably wouldn’t have thought of going to the next place: Pizza Hut. One of the weird things about Pizza Hut in Japan is that they do not have any restaurants in Tokyo. If you want to get Pizza Hut pizza in Tokyo, you have to order delivery, and not all of their staff speak English, so you might run into some trouble during the ordering process if you don’t know Japanese. Their pizzas are also completely different; stuff like pepperoni, hawaiian, and meat lovers pizza aren’t anywhere on their menu. Instead, they have a wide variety of toppings including shrimp, squid, korean bbq, and other seafood. The last place I tried was a Burger King, but I didn’t notice anything different on the menu and the food tasted the same.

Besides well-known international fast-food chains, Japan also has a lot of local restaurants. My favourite was Mos Burger, a burger place that serves uniquely Japanese tasting burgers. If you hate American burgers for some reason, go try out Mos Burger, whatever ingredients they use makes a big difference in the taste. Besides burger places, Japan also has these semi-fast-food restaurants that serve rice and noodle dishes. The two I went to most often were Yoshinoya and Nakau. In both restaurants, there are vending machines at the front where you purchase a ticket for whatever you want and bring the ticket(s) up to the person at the counter or your table. The food usually comes out a short time (1-3 minutes) later. I should mention that the vending machines have pictures, so these places are very tourist-friendly. The food isn’t as good as an actual restaurant with menus and waiters, but for the speed and price, I think it’s worth it.

Drinks are another thing that you will find different in Japan. Back home we have a choice between water, Coke products, or Pepsi products. I was expecting the same thing in Japan, but they have way more variety. While Coke and Pepsi are undoubtedly the biggest beverage companies in Canada, Suntory and Kirin appear to be the biggest beverage companies in Japan. I’m not going to even try to name all of the drinks that I saw, but I will point out my favourites. By far the best drink is Afternoon Tea’s Lemon Tea. While most iced tea in Japan is actual tea (u’know, with the leaves), Lemon Tea is a sort of hybrid between that and the sweetened stuff we have here. I don’t know how else to explain it other than it’s tea that tastes like sweet lemons. If you’re going to be walking around a lot in the sun, I recommend stocking up on Aquarius, which is a sports drink that is similar to Gatorade, except better tasting. An alternative is Pocari Sweat, which has more of a baking soda taste. One weird drink I came across was Chocolate Sparkling. As the name implies, it’s a carbonated drink that tastes like chocolate. The weird thing though, is that it’s clear, with only a slight tint of brown. It’s worth a try if you ever find it. I only saw it in a vending machine in Osaka, near (but not in) the Juso area. Just a note, if anyone is a root beer addict like me, it’s extremely hard to find in Japan. The only two places I know of that have it are a store in Decks in Odaiba, and a vending machine in Akihabara, inside a building just west of the main street, but still in the anime area.

The last thing I want to talk about is convenience store food. Unlike in Canada, where the food is usually expired and over-priced, Japanese convenience stores restock their shelves every night and have some decent-tasting food. Most of the time I tried various buns, but I also tried some sandwiches, sushi and onigiri. The buns are interesting because there’s so many different kinds; if you included all the major convenience stores, there’s probably enough variety to try a different one every day for 3 weeks. I found the sandwiches to have too much mayonnaise, but they were good otherwise. The sushi is cold, and depending on how long its been sitting there, it might be dry sometimes. If you get a fresh pack, the sushi will probably taste better than some restaurants found in North America. As for the onigiri, they’re good for a snack but I wouldn’t make a meal out of them. They come in this plastic wrapping that keeps the rice and seaweed separate until you open it (by pulling the tab, not ripping the sticker off like I did at first). Like I said earlier, I’m not a fan of fish so the tuna and cod onigiri didn’t taste too good to me. I did like the seaweed onigiri though, which seems to be popular amongst the Japanese as well since it’s usually sold out or is down to just a few whenever I buy some.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about food. If I were to recommend one thing to try, it would be Kobe beef, and one thing to avoid would be ramen (unless you like salt/msg). Other good things are okonomiyaki, and yakiniku. Anyways, here are some food pictures that I managed to find in my pictures folder, it’s still a mess though:

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