Food!

I have taken nearly 1,700 pictures on my phone since we moved to Tokyo.  Since there is such a large assortment that I wanted to share I thought I would try to categorize them and share all the food related pictures first. We haven't been too adventurous when it comes to food (imagine that), but hopefully we can slowly branch out. A lot of these pictures have also been posted to my Instagram account, so sorry for any repeats! 

I got a fancy rice cooker from the rental company that supplied our furniture. I've been too intimidated to use it since receiving it a few weeks ago but successfully cooked some barley for a salad yesterday. Had to look up the English instructions online, and even then it was a little confusing.

Annie and I have been eating a TON of cucumbers! Joe hates them (baby) and Lizzy is going through a "no vegetable" phase at the moment. Japanese cucumbers are really long and skinny, kind of like an English cucumber. They are really delicious and have that fresh from the garden taste. In the picture above you can see that these cucumbers were grown in Fukushima - I don't know that much about the current radiation situation aside from reading a few articles but just to be overly safe I didn't buy these ones. But, the grocery stores I mainly shop don't have English words on any of the food so I've probably eaten my fair share of Fukushima produce without even knowing. I was going to make a radiation joke about my third arm but figured that would be in bad taste. 

All grocery stores and convenience stores (konbini) have huge selections of prepared foods, called bento. A lot of them look a little scary to me (octopus! something pickled! is that an eyeball?!) but I'm trying to find a few things that we like.  Picked up these meatballs at LINCOS, the upscale grocery store near our apartment in Roppongi Hills. They had a kind of sesame glaze and sesame seeds on top. I tried to ask the checkout girl what was in them, and she said "Pig" while flapping her arms like a chicken.  Pretty tasty and the girls even tried them! I love that when you check out at the grocery store they ask you if you need chopsticks and napkins. 

Sometimes I pick up a bento salad as well - they have some big elaborate ones, but I just like the simple veggie ones for 100 yen ($1 US). I never knew how effective chopsticks can be for eating a salad!

There definitely are a lot of things lost in translation when it comes to food. The back of this potato chip bag still makes me laugh every time I read it.

Senbai are Japanese rice crackers.  They come in various shapes and flavors but we try to stick to the plain, salted ones, with the exception of the multiple times I accidentally bought shrimp flavored. They still tasted great, just had a fishy smell :).  Annie loves these things!

I've heard a lot about all the crazy things you can get in Japanese vending machines, but have yet to see anything TOO crazy.  I thought this "CalorieMate Balanced Food Block" was pretty funny, though. There are honestly multiple vending machines on every block. Around here they mostly have soft drinks, teas, coffees, flavored waters and alcoholic beverages. Shockingly, they are pretty reasonably priced.

The cereal selection in Japan is seriously lacking compared to what we have in the US. Luckily we shipped a billion boxes of our favorites over. Honestly, you can't get a box of Cheerios here.

The good old standby McDonald's cone. Only 100 yen and a very short walk from our house. Lizzy asks multiple times per day to go McDonalds. Such a proud parenting moment (not.) On this particular day I got the girls cones and they were eating them in their stroller on the sidwalk in front of McDonalds. It quickly turned into a HUGE mess with ice cream dripping all over the girls and all over the stroller. A worker witnessed it from inside and came running out with wipes and a wet rag to help me clean up. Also, they bow after taking your order. :) Take notes, America!

This may look like a mess but it's an amazing Falafel Pita from a place called Pita the Great. Love it so much I'm saving it for a future post. Delicious.

                             

Took Lizzy out for Ramen one night at Ippudo on the recommendation our neighbor, Lina. There are a plethora of different types of Ramen in Japan and Ippudo serves tonkatsu Ramen which means pork broth. Joe and I went back again later that week, so I will save the details for a separate post!

We are lucky to live in such an amazing location and have all the shops and restaurants of Roppongi Hills at our doorstep.  We frequently take walks over there after dinner and last night stopped at the Joel Robuchon bakery. So fun to enjoy some tasty French baked goods right in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Roppongi Hills.

Onigiri: FAIL!! Thought I was being adventurous by buying myself an onigiri from the Family Mart a few weeks ago. Onigiri is simply a rice ball wrapped in seaweed with a filling in the center. Common fillings are umeboshi (pickled plums), salted salmon, tuna and mayonnaise, roe, and beans... or so I thought. I scanned the pictures on the packages and found the bean one, figuring that was a safe bet. I sat down to eat it and it started out ok - I like rice, and can tolerate seaweed in small doses. Then I got the beans. Oh, the beans. I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but they were terrible. I can't even describe the flavor but the texture was like straight up mucus.  In fact, long strings of mucousy (is that a word?) liquid clung to the filling as I took a bite. Well, it turns out that they aren't regular beans but "Natto," or fermented soy beans. I love regular, green, soybeans, but these babies were brown and slimy and smelly. It's going to take me a while to get up the courage to try another onigiri!

Recognize that?? Yes, a good old fashioned Costco Hot Dog and soda. Best deal in Japan!  We've made 2 trips to Coscto so far.  We are lucky enough to have a car, otherwise it is a loooong train ride from the city.  It's a great place to buy produce like berries that are prohibitively expensive in regular grocery stores here. They carry almost everything a US Costco would, so we stock up on things like frozen waffles, strawberries, pretzel rolls, cheese, etc.

A Maid Cafe... I don't even know. From wikipedia:  "Maid Cafes are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants found predominantly in Japan. In these cafés, waitresses dressed in maid costumes act as servants, and treat customers as masters (and mistresses) in a private home, rather than as café patrons."  So strange. We saw some of the waitresses out on the street one day trying to lure in customers. Remind me to write another post on the weirdness of cosplay.

Some fresh squid hanging in a restaurant window in Azabu Juban.

A walk up Yakitori window in Azabu Juban. Generally yakitori is skewered chicken meat cooked over charcoal but it can also include various skewered giblets. Yum! You can read about the different kinds of yakitori here.  Seems to be a very popular street food in Tokyo, but there are also fancy sit down yakitori restaurants.

Finally, I have to confess that we eat lunch almost every day at the Tokyo American Club. It's so convenient since I am usually there working out in the mornings. It's nice to not have to worry about coming home and cooking and cleaning up a lunch!  They have a good salad bar with lots of healthy options for the girls, and by the time I would buy all the ingredients to make salads at home I'm sure I would exceed the cost of our lunches here. I am also a big fan of their thin crust wood fire pizzas.