Well, to be honest, there is so much to
write about this part of Japanese culture. But I will write only few of my
experiences, so no worries, it won’t take too much of your precious time.
Japanese people really love to eat and love
to try different cuisine. You can see here many French sweets shops and
bakeries, Italian and Chinese and other Asian restaurants. On the other hand,
compared to UK, I have seen very few Indian foods.
The presentation of food is always very
nice and colorful, as you can imagine. It is very important part of dining. And
of course the taste, they really know what goes well together, especially with
fish. I must say, they also love to experiment with tastes and textures of
food. Many times I could say only: “hmmm… interesting…..”.
One of the surprises for me was that they
like fat parts of meat and fish and they pay a lot of money for it. It is first
time for me to see fat parts of tuna or beef in shops. And the prices… wow…
Another interesting discovery for me is
that Japanese people like sweet taste. All of bread and baked products have
sweet flavor and are very soft. So it took me time to get used to it. Even now
I still shake my head sometimes when I eat it. Of course we could buy imported
bread, for example from Germany, which I like, but for 3 slices I would have to
pay about 4 British pounds. So … no thank you.
I tried to bake as well, but I couldn’t
figure out how to bake with this flour and east they have here. I still have to
experiment more. But who will eat the outcomes of my experiments…….. J I wonder…. Poor Mitsuyo… she is so kind to me….
So far I have tried few interesting places
for dining. One of the most popular places to go to eat is Izakaya, there are
hundreds of them. It is actually place more for drinking than eating, but the
food there is so good and varies from place to place. It has a very different
feeling from UK pubs, or Slovakian “krcma”. I must say I love it…..
Uma san, now I understand. J
Here is few pictures from one of them… in
Atsugi, my favorite so far… わん (wan).
from outside menu
from inside
sashimi (raw fish) meat dishes
Japanese sweets sake time
Of course, a must go in Japan, a sushi bar.
Yummy yummy……
Few photos from sushi bar in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
massive portion of wasabi crab miso soup
And another big one in Japan is Ramen shop
or Udon or Soba shop. These are different types of noodles. Very nice too. Cold
hiyashichouka in summer – pure heaven.
Sometimes you can see such a small tiny
little ramen shop in a corner of a street, where only three people can fit.
Amazing. They love it here. Also if somebody becomes famous with their ramen
taste, you can see people waiting even for 2 hours to get in, in long queues.
Ramen in small ramen shop in Asakusa, Tokyo
As I said, there is so much more to write
about this, I could continue for a long time. Maybe some other time.
