What I ate in Japan (part 1)

I wasn’t going to post this because I went to Japan so long ago but I figured why not post it. I like food. I’m sure you all like food so why not share food? Plus I always find “what I ate” posts interesting and figured that this would be a nice mini series to do.

Tyi and I stayed at a hotel that offered us breakfast every morning and I savored it every morning. Japanese milk bread is amazing when I manage to get it here in Vancouver but having it in actual Japan is a whole nother story. Oh what I’d do to have a slice of that toast right now…

Ice cream sandwich

After having such a large breakfast, it was definitely time for…dessert. It was always time for dessert when it came to Tyi and despite not having much of a sweet tooth myself, I always ended up being lured into getting some with her.

This little fella resembled an ice cream sandwich where they sandwiched a generous scoop of mango ice cream between two shells that was made out of rice flour. The shells were crispy and held up surprisingly well

Pudding

Just when I thought dessert was over…we walked next door and found a bakery and being the dessert police she was, Tyi walked right on in and ordered a custard pudding without a second thought. She got it in earl grey and said that it was the smoothest pudding she has ever had in her life. Which makes sense because, the Japanese are known for their high quality milk products. She thought it was pretty cool that it came with crackers to eat with the pudding too.

After our desserts, we did some touristy things and walked around the city of Asakusa and headed towards the temple there. We walked by lots of little shops that sold traditional Japanese dango and wagashi treats.

We weren’t very hungry yet but were lured into getting a skewer of dango because it became too difficult to ignore the smell of them being freshly made at every corner.

Dango

I mean just look at them! How could we say no to soft glutinous rice balls covered with sweet and salty sauce? Plus I’ve never had real dango and I just had to give them a go! I ended up getting an original one and Tyi got one that was covered with soy bean powder. She liked mine better though because the dryness of the soybean powder made hers hard to eat.

Teishouku

Another thing that we just had to have in Japan was the traditional teishouku dishes. Teishouku is basically “set meals” that include side dishes, soup, rice and a protein.

When in Japan, I had to get sashimi of course! This was the best tuna sashimi I ever had and I don’t even like tuna! It was just so fresh!

Tyi is more of a cooked fish type of girl so she went for the grilled mackerel. She said that the cook on it was really nice and she could taste the char from the grill on the fish. There was a brush of a soy based sauce on top too.

More teishoukus…

Oh this was pretty cool, you see how there’s a teapot beside the wooden container?

The wooden container held rice and you’re supposed to pour the broth that’s in the teapot on your rice before you eat it. I’ve had a similar dish in Vancouver before but the rice came in the soup already.

Yes, as you’d expect, I got the sashimi set here too…

Ramen machines

Another thing we had a lot of were noodles of all varieties!

Of course, our first noodle shop had to be for ramen. The cool thing is that you get to order it from a vending machine…but being the illiterate tourists we were…we ended up pressing random buttons and hoped for the best.

It turns out we got a plain ramen and a bowl of dumplings. Tyi and I would do anything for those dumplings again. They were so good. The wrapping was a little chewy as if glutinous rice flour was added to it and the filling was so juicy. The noodles were amazing too but why wouldn’t they be, fresh handmade noodles are the best!

Fresh udon

We also got freshly made udon noodles. When I had this, I didn’t think that I would ever be able to eating the frozen stuff because it just wouldn’t be nearly as good as the ones that were freshly made in front of me!

I had zaru udon because I love zaru soba. It’s basically cold noodles that you dip in a soy based sauce. Tyi got hot udon with a side of chicken kaarage. The crazy thing about these bowls of udon is that they were only $3.50CAD a bowl! Talk about a deal!

Soba noodles

One of my favorite Japanese dishes are soba noodles but I’ve never tried other variations of it besides zaru soba so it was cool to see other ways of eating buckwheat noodles.

Like this one where you dip the soba noodles in a beef based broth.

Or this one where you eat it similarly to Korean bibimbap and mix the cold soba noodles with a bunch of veggies and a raw egg. Yes. A raw egg. I ate a raw egg.

The eggs in Japan are super high quality so I didn’t think anything bad would happen (and nothing did). I wasn’t too keen on this dish but I don’t regret it because I love trying new things!

Tempura

Tyi isn’t as big of a noodle person as I am so she usually got rice dishes. Here she got a shrimp tempura rice bowl.

Omlette rice

Speaking of rice, even though I’m not a fan of rice, I had to get omurice (a thin piece of omlette wrapped around a mound of tomato fried rice) at least once in Japan. It was on my must eat list. I also wanted to try authentic curry and lucky for me, this restaurant had kare omurice so I managed to accomplish two things done at once!

Brother deer isn’t a fan of egg or tomato so he opted to get hayashi rice which is another Japanese specialty and is basically rice topped with stewed beef.

Don’t miss out on Part 2 of this series!