Wednesday, March 22, 2006

   Eating in Japan
Where to start… ok, I’ll start with my arrival in Tokyo. My hotel was just around the corner from Tokyo eki. While I was in the hotel, I didn’t have any way to cook for myself so I was forced to eat out for every meal. Eating in the hotel was probably not going to work on my budget. They had two different steak meals. The first was made with American beef and was around $85 and the one with Japanese beef was about $120 for a 200g steak (I think that translates to 7 oz, not large by American standards). I think my daily budget was $50 per day to cover everything but housing so a $120 meal was probably not going to happen. Luckily, right across from the train station there was an am/pm market. Yes, the same one you see at the gas stations in America. They had Doritos, diet coke, some pre-made sandwiches and manga. That seemed like a safe bet for day 1. Over the course of the next week, I did get more adventurous. My favorite dish in that area was curry udon served at a small shop at the edge of the train station. My least favorite – probably the TV dinner I got out of a vending machine in Tokyo eki. I had to try it though – hot yakisoba out of a vending machine. It came out in a little cardboard TV dinner tray looking thing with chopsticks included. Not terribly tasty, but better than a candy bar if you need a quick meal. One note, before you try one of these: they don’t have garbage cans in the Tokyo subway stations & littering is frowned upon. You should plan on carrying the container for a while.

//Moving day//. After the first week, I was moved into a mansion (more like a condo). There, the company that I was working for had someone go shopping with me & buy what I needed to survive -a microwave and burner primarily. If you look at the pictures below, you will see the area I had to “cook” and my fridge. The burner was a single burner that ran on a can of propane. It worked.


//Shopping//: Here’s a rude awakening. Stuff is expensive in Tokyo. Japan is an island composed primarily of mountains. It is not exactly a great area for agriculture or ranching. Fish, yes, beef, no. Almost everything is imported with strict regulations. Below is a melon (cantaloupe for Americans). That is 2980 yen. The exchange rate at the time was about 103 yen to the dollar, so $30 for a melon. You want an apple? $4. The oranges seemed to be a good deal, you could get 3 for $6. Daikon (Japanese radish), about $1 a pound. Beef at the corner market came out to about $45 a pound. I was definitely going to have to eat Japanese style if I were going to eat more than one meal a day.


//Surviving – aka Fast Food//: YOSHINOYA!!!!! Woo hoo!!! Yes, I found a place to eat affordably. Gyudon 360 yen (beef & onions over rice). It is kind of the McDonalds of Japan. They have a very limited menu – gyudon, salmon, pickled vegetables, raw egg to put over your gyudon and beer or green tea to drink. That’s pretty much the whole menu, but $4 bucks for a filling meal – I couldn’t beat it. I have seen a Yoshinoya in SF and NYC. as well, but was disappointed because they expanded their menu considerably for the American market. Below is a picture of a Yoshinoya next to a McDonalds (and I did not eat at a McDonalds even once while I was in Tokyo – Subway, yes, but not McDs). Eating American fast food was still more expensive than here. I think I paid about $8 for a Subway sandwich that would have cost about $3-$4 in the states. Ramen shops are also safe bets for filling meals at reasonable prices & are much better than anything I have found stateside.


//Plastic food//: Most restaurants have displays of the food they serve with the price in the window. I found even though I could not pronounce Japanese well enough for ANYONE to understand me, I could copy the kanji from the card in the window & show it to the waiter. That seemed to work pretty well.

//Nice restaurants//: I was taken out a couple of times when a visiting executive came over from the US. The nicest meal was a sushi dinner. This was a “chef’s choice” style of meal. Each sushi item was served in a specific order with special sauces for certain items. One of the items I remember most clearly was the shrimp (because it was raw). I had never eaten raw shrimp before, so that was interesting. Another item was very small fish in a dish. They were a little smaller than earthworms & were served whole – eyes and all. The other item was… maybe cuttlefish – I didn’t ask, but then again I don’t think I will order it again. My farewell dinner was also at a nice place. The main dish - squid eggs in a honey sauce. Need I say more?

//Food I didn’t eat//: Horse. Not because I wouldn’t, I just didn’t eat anywhere that served it. I found one place, but it was $25 for a horse meat appetizer. I wasn’t that curious.

//Recommended Reading//: “What’s What in Japanese Restaurants” by Robb Satterwhite. It covers basics of pronunciation, phrases for ordering as well as etiquette. The food is described first in Japanese (kanji or kana), then the pronunciation of the Japanese name followed by an English description. The book is organized by restaurant specialties. There are sections for sushi, okonomiyaki, soba and udon, etc. This book is geared for eating in restaurants in Japan, not towards American restaurants serving Japanese food.

I never did completely kick the am/pm habit while I was there. Inari and daifuku were my favorite snacks @ the am/pm.

I am thinking my next post will be about the subways. I hope a few of you made it through the whole food post and found it interesting.

Until next time -bunraku

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