What I ate in Japan – must eats (part 2)

Hello! It’s time for another round of What I ate in Japan! I got part 1 out a while ago so I wanted to finish up my thoughts on all the delicious eats Japan has to offer.

Tsukiji Market

If you are a seafood lover one of the top places you need to go to in Japan is the Tsukiji Market in Tsukiji, Chuo, Tokyo.

Freshest seafood ever!

Here, you can find the freshest and most delicious seafood around! This is where all the giant tuna in Japan gets sold to the restaurants. If you manage to go early enough, you can watch the tunas getting sold to chefs from all over Japan. I wish I could of been able to experience this but we didn’t get there early enough for it. 🙁

But that was okay because we were definitely early enough for lunch! I’ve never had nigiri that was this fresh before in my life! And I really liked that I got a whole entire scallop on top of one of them because when you order scallop nigiris here in Vancouver, what you would get is diced up scallop mixed with tobiko and mayo.

Try the tamago

I’m actually not a fan of tamago (sweet egg omelette) nigiri but the one I had here was amazing. Instead of having it bought pre-packaged like the ones I would find here, they made the omelette in house! They actually also had stands that sold rolls of freshly made tamago around the market.

Another thing that I tried that I’m not typically accustomed to were raw oysters! I find them too fishy and slimy for my taste but Tyi said that we HAD to try them because we were here to try new things and we had NEVER seen oysters this big in our lives. I mean it was the size of my palm and I only bought the medium sized one (400yen = ~$4cad) because I didn’t want to spend all my money on an oyster. It was topped with a dash of ponzu sauce when it was served to me. After mustering up some bit of courage I ate it and it was amazing. It wasn’t fishy and all I could taste was freshness. I don’t really know how to describe it but it’s definitely something you should try when you’re here.

Curry udon is a must

We didn’t stay there for long though because more food awaited our bellies. Next we headed out to Ginza to do some shopping and for a “higher-end” city, we sure managed to get a bunch of good deals on clothing. Anyways, after doing a great deal of shopping, we decided that it was time for lunch. So we headed off to this little cafe we found and had kare (curry)! This was one of the things I really wanted to try in Japan. Their curry.

It’s not really like Indian curry because the spices in it are milder. It’s also a lot thicker so it’s more like a roux consistency. I decided to get mine with udon because they made the udon in house and I can’t get enough of fresh udon. It also came with a little paper bib so that I could protect my clothes while I ate it. How smart of them! Tyi wasn’t as into curry as I was so she got a basic kitsune (plain) udon with a katsudon (pork cutlet + egg) on the side

Once our bellies were full, we were off shopping again. This time we went to a popular Metro department store (Isetan). They had lots of Japanese treats and snacks to buy there so it’s perfect for grabbing tasty souvenirs or traditional Japanese treats. We saw doriyakis (red bean pancakes I have a recipe for it here) in the shape of Doraemon’s signature bell and even baby red bean buns too because as you may know, Doraemon loves his doriyaki! They also had kanten (a type of seaweed) jelly, rice crackers with pictures on it and loads of pastries! We wanted to buy everything because it all looked so lovely and delicious!

Don’t forget to visit the underground markets

Wheel cakes

These are wheel cakes and they are stuffed with either red bean paste or custard. Oh and it was really cool to see them make fresh tamago omelettes right in front of me!

Throughout our entire trip…I swear we tried every type of noodle out there. Which was super awesome because as you all know, I love my noodles!

Soba noodles and ramen

Here is a bowl of plain soba noodles with a soy based broth with a little tuna tartar rice bowl on the side. Typically I stay away from rice dishes but I found that I was easily persuaded to try some because they had so many don varieties here!

Brother deer’s tonkotsu ramen with gyu (beef) donburi. They always give you a raw egg to top your udon if you order it soup-less with because that’s how they eat it here. I didn’t mind eating raw egg while I was here though because I knew that their eggs are of top notch quality.

As you can see…Tyi could not get enough of that kitsune udon and tempura chicken combo. She basically got it at almost every place we ate at!

I also tried tsukemen for the first time which is a version of ramen where you dip the noodles into the broth before eating it. It’s similar to zaru soba but served with wheat noodles and hot soup instead of buckwheat soba noodles and cold broth.

Ichiran ramen

Speaking of noodles, a must try noodle place is Ichiran ramen. They’re a franchise so you can find them in numerous cities and they even have a store in Hong Kong! This place is popular because you get to have the full ramen experience. You sit in little cubicles to eat your ramen and you place your order on a piece of paper and slip it through a slot to the chefs. If you still want more noodles after you’re done, you can request for more by placing your bowl in front of the slot and the chef will put more in for you

Teishouku

Besides the plethora of noodle dishes we had, we also had a bunch of teishouku (Japanese set meals). You can get them here in Vancouver too but they usually go upwards of $18 for a good one and these were only about 1250yen ($13cad) so I certainly took advantage of this.

Especially since the fish was so much fresher there too!

Curry bread

Remember how I told you I had kare udon earlier? Well, I also had kare pan! Otherwise known as curry bread! Yup. delicious warm filling curry stuffed into a deep fried bun that’s been breaded with crispy panko breadcrumbs. What’s not to love?

I didn’t end up trying this but I found it to be an amusing find. They had yakisoba pan! So instead of putting a sausage in their hot dog buns, they put stirfried noodles!

Okonoiyaki

Another on-the-go type food that we survived off of was onigiri (rice balls). They had so many varieties here. We always spent at least 15 minutes trying to decide which one to get because we wanted to try all of them. This time I went with one that was wrapped with spinach instead of seaweed and there was salmon and bonito in the middle.

I also had one with shiso leaf and pickled plum (umeboshi) and as odd as that sounds, it was surprisingly tasty!You can’t go to Japan without having some okonomiyaki so we went to this place where we got to make it ourselves! I’ve made it at home before, but being able to make it on a griddle like this was definitely 100x more fun. We also got to make a dessert pancake after that was stuffed with redbean paste!

Dessert buffet

The dessert didn’t end there though because we went to cafe crepe for even more deliciousness! Brother deer got a shaved ice berry parfait while Tyi and I got crepes instead. The crepes were ginormous! As in they were the length of our forearms! Now that’s what I call a good crepe! A definite must try (good thing they’re a franchise and has stores all over Japan)!

Last but not least, I have to share this fabulous place with you. It’s called sweet paradise and it was definitely a paradise! It was literally a buffet of sweets and they just kept bringing new ones out every 15 – 20 minutes. They actually had a timer than rang every time a new batch came out!

And if you’re a more savory person, they also had rice dishes, salads, sandwiches and noodles for you to enjoy but who needs savory when you got sweets? STRAWBERRY cake, FRUIT tart, and BANANA cream pie all have fruit in them so they’re arguably healthy right? 😛

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