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jennaria...or any of the multitude of other anime about how awesome Japanese food is! (Which, honestly, even regular shows regularly dwell lovingly on characters' favorite foods, see also: Naruto and ramen.) This post is for you!
Full disclosure: I did not set out to Try Specific Japanese Food, and I in fact managed to spend two weeks there without any ramen whatsoever. (Gasp!) But Japan tends to offer, well, their way or the highway when it comes to food - unless you're actively seeking out alternatives, you're gonna be eating Japanese-style (and honestly even if you are seeking out alternatives, you might still find that the pizza places offers way more sardines on their pizza than you're used to). So here's a selection of food, and my reactions thereto.
Cold soba with shrimp tempura. Anime reference: the cold soba part is apparently the favorite food of Shouto Todoroki from BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA? The things you learn from fanfic of a show where you only watched one episode.
I enjoyed it, although not as much as Wife. The oddest part of it is honestly the dipping sauce with it. Or perhaps the instructions that we were given, of which I took a photo and will share on request, which begin with the instruction, "First, you eat to only Soba," and go from there. Apparently to wind things up, you're supposed to pour the leftover soba water into the dipping sauce and drink it. I desperately hope this was trolling the tourists.
Chicken Kaarage - fried chicken, as usual served with rice, cabbage, and miso soup. Because miso comes with everything in Japan, or close enough. I love fried chicken regardless of country of origin (although it doesn't always love me back), but the best of Japanese Kaarage is that you tend to have a lot less breading on the outside than American fried chicken.
So if you go to a really nice ryokan (traditional Japanese-style inn, usually in a hot springs resort like Hakone), one of the things frequently on offer is a Really Elaborate Dinner Featuring Local Delicacies. This photo is from our first night in Hakone, and features :deep breath: greater amberjack tuna sashimi, pen shell sea bream sashimi, "yuba" tofu-skin with konjac, stem of taro and wild yam, and a garnish of wasabi; then in the lower box, we have Jellied White Fish in Broth, Egg and Raisin Paste, Grilled Japanese Spanish Mackerel with Egg, Kelp with Herring Roe, Small Sweetfish, Salmon Rolled with Radish, Fava bean, and Seasonal Sesame Tofu. :peers at picture: Oh, wait, the jellied white fish is in the upper box, my bad.
(I copied the list off the official menu we got. It's the only reason I remember.)
Also, these are the first two courses of six. We started at 8 PM, and didn't get out until 9:30. Here is the thing: really elaborate dinners are, uh, usually the kind of thing you might need to work up to? As opposed to eating when you're starved and just want Regular Food? The pictures are super pretty, but the food was…less optimal..
Also food should never involve anything with the consistency of snot. Ever. See also: the Jellied White Fish in Broth. No, I will not entertain arguments.
This was the third course from the same Really Elaborate Dinner. The menu says this was Grilled Abalone with Potato and Ise-ebi Lobster with Americaine sauce. Prying them out of the shells with chopsticks was not beginner-level, to our dismay. Also the Americaine sauce tasted like tomato soup. Cold, unseasoned tomato soup. Boo, says this American.
This was from another night of Really Elaborate Dinner. The menu listed it as Chirashi-sushi, which is apparently almost the same as Kaisendon, except the former used vinegared sushi rice and the latter uses plain rice. Both involve sashimi over rice.
Why involve Kaisendon, when it's not what I ate? Because, two weeks after this dinner, I watched an episode of Isekai Izakaya, which is a show that spends half the show with your standard japanese-restaurant-in-another-world trope of 'people from another world eat Japanese Dish Of The Week, it's super effective!' and then the other half showing you how to cook the dish in real life, or real life places around Asakusa where to get the food in question. …kinda wish I'd watched this show before going to Japan, but whatever. Regardless, episode 4 is devoted to Kaisendon, and the RL host spends several moments waxing lyrical. "A dish like this makes me feel glad to be Japanese," he says.
For those of us who aren't Japanese, though? Depends on your feelings on raw fish, fish eggs, soy sauce, and wasabi.
(I felt very American, and not necessarily in a pleasant way, after these dinners.)
Here, let's switch to something more pleasant: Katsudon! As seen on Yuri!!! On Ice, among other anime. Involves fried pork over rice, and then egg poured over top. Got this at a little hole-in-the-wall diner sort of place down the street from the Myo-shinji Buddhist temple complex, and it was absolutely delicious in the way of all hole-in-the-wall diners. Did not inspire me to go sexy dance with an ice skater, however.
Hambagu steak, which is somewhere between hamburgers and meatloaf apparently. (And a fried shrimp, because why not.) Should come with a red wine reduction sauce, and in practice came with a small ramekin of A1, which is Not The Same. Anime reference: the favorite food of Kyoyo Hibari and Tsunayoshi Sawada from KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN!
I liked it, which wasn't surprising - I like hamburgers and meatloaf, too. Not impressed with the sauce, but you can't really expect a red wine reduction from a family restaurant up on the top floor of a department store. And coming with a small salad and rice made it a lot less heavy than the American standard mashed potatoes and green beans.
Okonomiyaki (which is a Japanese savory pancake, made with flour, eggs, cabbage, and probably chicken) and yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick). Both of which regularly pop up in anime, so I'm not going to cite specifics. I think so does the tamagoyaki, which is the bright yellow rectangle: that's a rolled egg omelet, which unlike the vast majority of eggs as served in Japan is cooked all the way through.
This meal is, unfortunately, a prime example of texture issues. The yakitori was weirdly soft, like the inside of chicken nuggets rather than actual chunks of chicken. And the okonomiyaki was slightly gooey. I'm glad I tried it, but I wouldn't seek it out.
Curry! Which was Japanese curry, not Indian curry - this particular version was a little on the spicy side, but still a noticeable difference. The soup was a delicate mushroom soup, which surprised me by how much I enjoyed it. The bright green drink is melon soda, which was honeydew melon flavor turned up to Mountain Dew intensity levels. I am bitterly disappointed that you can't find any melon soda in the US for love nor money.
Finally, cake! This is not the archetypal Christmas Cake, but solely because of timing (May as versus December). It's still the type of strawberries-and-cream cake that I've seen in, for example, the Christmas sequence of Initial D's Stage 3: light, creamy, delicious and undemanding.
Full disclosure: I did not set out to Try Specific Japanese Food, and I in fact managed to spend two weeks there without any ramen whatsoever. (Gasp!) But Japan tends to offer, well, their way or the highway when it comes to food - unless you're actively seeking out alternatives, you're gonna be eating Japanese-style (and honestly even if you are seeking out alternatives, you might still find that the pizza places offers way more sardines on their pizza than you're used to). So here's a selection of food, and my reactions thereto.
Cold soba with shrimp tempura. Anime reference: the cold soba part is apparently the favorite food of Shouto Todoroki from BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA? The things you learn from fanfic of a show where you only watched one episode.
I enjoyed it, although not as much as Wife. The oddest part of it is honestly the dipping sauce with it. Or perhaps the instructions that we were given, of which I took a photo and will share on request, which begin with the instruction, "First, you eat to only Soba," and go from there. Apparently to wind things up, you're supposed to pour the leftover soba water into the dipping sauce and drink it. I desperately hope this was trolling the tourists.
Chicken Kaarage - fried chicken, as usual served with rice, cabbage, and miso soup. Because miso comes with everything in Japan, or close enough. I love fried chicken regardless of country of origin (although it doesn't always love me back), but the best of Japanese Kaarage is that you tend to have a lot less breading on the outside than American fried chicken.
So if you go to a really nice ryokan (traditional Japanese-style inn, usually in a hot springs resort like Hakone), one of the things frequently on offer is a Really Elaborate Dinner Featuring Local Delicacies. This photo is from our first night in Hakone, and features :deep breath: greater amberjack tuna sashimi, pen shell sea bream sashimi, "yuba" tofu-skin with konjac, stem of taro and wild yam, and a garnish of wasabi; then in the lower box, we have Jellied White Fish in Broth, Egg and Raisin Paste, Grilled Japanese Spanish Mackerel with Egg, Kelp with Herring Roe, Small Sweetfish, Salmon Rolled with Radish, Fava bean, and Seasonal Sesame Tofu. :peers at picture: Oh, wait, the jellied white fish is in the upper box, my bad.
(I copied the list off the official menu we got. It's the only reason I remember.)
Also, these are the first two courses of six. We started at 8 PM, and didn't get out until 9:30. Here is the thing: really elaborate dinners are, uh, usually the kind of thing you might need to work up to? As opposed to eating when you're starved and just want Regular Food? The pictures are super pretty, but the food was…less optimal..
Also food should never involve anything with the consistency of snot. Ever. See also: the Jellied White Fish in Broth. No, I will not entertain arguments.
This was the third course from the same Really Elaborate Dinner. The menu says this was Grilled Abalone with Potato and Ise-ebi Lobster with Americaine sauce. Prying them out of the shells with chopsticks was not beginner-level, to our dismay. Also the Americaine sauce tasted like tomato soup. Cold, unseasoned tomato soup. Boo, says this American.
This was from another night of Really Elaborate Dinner. The menu listed it as Chirashi-sushi, which is apparently almost the same as Kaisendon, except the former used vinegared sushi rice and the latter uses plain rice. Both involve sashimi over rice.
Why involve Kaisendon, when it's not what I ate? Because, two weeks after this dinner, I watched an episode of Isekai Izakaya, which is a show that spends half the show with your standard japanese-restaurant-in-another-world trope of 'people from another world eat Japanese Dish Of The Week, it's super effective!' and then the other half showing you how to cook the dish in real life, or real life places around Asakusa where to get the food in question. …kinda wish I'd watched this show before going to Japan, but whatever. Regardless, episode 4 is devoted to Kaisendon, and the RL host spends several moments waxing lyrical. "A dish like this makes me feel glad to be Japanese," he says.
For those of us who aren't Japanese, though? Depends on your feelings on raw fish, fish eggs, soy sauce, and wasabi.
(I felt very American, and not necessarily in a pleasant way, after these dinners.)
Here, let's switch to something more pleasant: Katsudon! As seen on Yuri!!! On Ice, among other anime. Involves fried pork over rice, and then egg poured over top. Got this at a little hole-in-the-wall diner sort of place down the street from the Myo-shinji Buddhist temple complex, and it was absolutely delicious in the way of all hole-in-the-wall diners. Did not inspire me to go sexy dance with an ice skater, however.
Hambagu steak, which is somewhere between hamburgers and meatloaf apparently. (And a fried shrimp, because why not.) Should come with a red wine reduction sauce, and in practice came with a small ramekin of A1, which is Not The Same. Anime reference: the favorite food of Kyoyo Hibari and Tsunayoshi Sawada from KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN!
I liked it, which wasn't surprising - I like hamburgers and meatloaf, too. Not impressed with the sauce, but you can't really expect a red wine reduction from a family restaurant up on the top floor of a department store. And coming with a small salad and rice made it a lot less heavy than the American standard mashed potatoes and green beans.
Okonomiyaki (which is a Japanese savory pancake, made with flour, eggs, cabbage, and probably chicken) and yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick). Both of which regularly pop up in anime, so I'm not going to cite specifics. I think so does the tamagoyaki, which is the bright yellow rectangle: that's a rolled egg omelet, which unlike the vast majority of eggs as served in Japan is cooked all the way through.
This meal is, unfortunately, a prime example of texture issues. The yakitori was weirdly soft, like the inside of chicken nuggets rather than actual chunks of chicken. And the okonomiyaki was slightly gooey. I'm glad I tried it, but I wouldn't seek it out.
Curry! Which was Japanese curry, not Indian curry - this particular version was a little on the spicy side, but still a noticeable difference. The soup was a delicate mushroom soup, which surprised me by how much I enjoyed it. The bright green drink is melon soda, which was honeydew melon flavor turned up to Mountain Dew intensity levels. I am bitterly disappointed that you can't find any melon soda in the US for love nor money.
Finally, cake! This is not the archetypal Christmas Cake, but solely because of timing (May as versus December). It's still the type of strawberries-and-cream cake that I've seen in, for example, the Christmas sequence of Initial D's Stage 3: light, creamy, delicious and undemanding.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-20 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-25 09:23 pm (UTC)