Adventure Catch-Up: Food in Japan

Warning - it is possible that you do not want to read this while hungry, because then it might make me kind of a jerk.  Then again, maybe you'll hate all the food in it, in which case I'm still a jerk, but in a different way.

So now I have time to hit on all kinds of things that I didn't before when I was just trying desperately to keep up with highlights.  One of those things is a subject very near and dear to my heart, and that is food.  As stated before, I love food.  I especially love eating food that has been prepared for me.  For any trip, to any place, I want to be enjoying the local cuisine to the fullest, and Japan is certainly no exception.  There are all the standbys of course - ramen, udon, tempura, etc. - but there are also a wide variety of local dishes that tend not to make it stateside, not to mention other kinds of cuisine passed through a Japanese lens.  Then there are the delicious bakeries, where one of my favorite offerings is karepan (ka-re = curry in Japanese syllabary) which is a delicious bread roll filled with curry, then covered in a deep-fried panko coating.  It is one of those fairly perfect foods, and while it is best when it's piping hot and only just deep fried, it's also pretty good cold and somewhat squished and at the top of a mountain.  I ate a LOT of karepan.

One night, we had okonomiyaki, which is a specialty of southern Japan and as much a process as it is a meal.  You start off at a table like this:

That black rectangle in the middle is a hot griddle.  I know what about half of you are thinking, and that is that I should not be allowed near hot objects, but let me say right off that I didn't burn myself even once, so there. Those spatulas in the corner are, natch, what you use on the griddle.  Or you can play silly buggers with them, whatever.

Then they bring you a bowl of stuff.  The base stuff is pretty simple.  There are batter ingredients, cabbage, and egg.  But then you add stuff to make it so much more exciting than just a cabbage pancake.  The restaurant we went to had a ton of options, and I was feeling overwhelmed, so I lit on what I recognized most readily visually.  There was one with garlic, and my companions could all read that its name did indeed have garlic in it, though nobody could decipher the second kanji.  I decided to go for it anyway, and when the waitress came and left, we learned that I hadn't just ordered okonomiyaki with garlic, I had ordered one called "Garlic Bomb."  Well, good thing that I was not hoping for any hot dates.

You get your bowl of stuff, and mash it together, and fry it on the griddle:

When this part is complete (there is a timer to help you), you brush a savory sauce over it, and then put mayonnaise on it, as well as seaweed and fish flakes if you like.  Cale's is pictured here because his was lovely and mine fell apart somewhat.

Then, of course, you eat it, and it is delicious.  The deliciousness is of particular interest to me because I tried making okonomiyaki at home once when I had never had it before, and I didn't much care for it.  I guess the recipe counts big time!

I ate takoyaki in Osaka, where it is most famous, and it is not pictured because I was hungry and devoured it too quickly to leave any evidence behind.  Takoyaki, for the uninitiated, are fried balls of spiced dough with octopus inside, and they are little pieces of heaven.  I can see those looks, and stop.  They are delicious.

The Japanese have a great selection of little cafes, and they are Cale's favorite places to eat, and so we visited a lot of them.  Usually, there's a set menu available that's a great deal (prix fixe, I guess, is the term we prefer here, but it isn't Frenchified in Japan) and usually, they're pretty good.  Little amuse bouche trays seem to be a growing trend there as appetizers.  Some, like this one, were really pretty awesome:

From left: apple and cabbage slaw, steamed mashed kabocha,
eggplant with ragout, seasoned snap peas, and the surprising
star of the lot, a gelled tofu seasoned with salt and Thai basil.

Some, like this one Cale got, were pleasant enough but seemed to be missing a point somewhere:

From left:  Salad with a bit of... meat? Salmon? a single sauced
meatball, and a chunk of French bread.  It helps to know that
this came as part of a pasta set, but only just.

In fact, most of the presentation in Japan is pretty delightful.  They excel at various parfaits and sundaes and desserts, and while they are not by any stretch of the imagination cheap, I consider them well worth it.  Observe:

Parfait from a little cafe in Hiroshima

Green tea crepe sundae from "Fruits Cafe"

Berry sponge cake deliciousness from the cafe "Source" in Tottori

Apologies for the lighting in the pictures, my ability to photograph inside of Japanese cafes seems to be somewhat lighting-impaired.  But I think the awesomeness still shows through.  They do what our high-end restaurants do, but they do it in the midrange as well, and I think that's marvelous.  I know, I know that tasty food is tasty no matter how it's presented, but I love pretty things too.

On that note, let me leave you with wagashi - Japanese seasonal sweets, which are not always tasty, exactly, and many of the most beautiful types in fact tend towards the bland, but they are really darn pretty.  Mine was a wee bit squished due to travel, but I think it's nice anyway.