More Japan Trip: Food and culture

Japan is such an interesting place to a foreigner like me. No matter what you hear about Japan in the media, it doesn’t prepare you for what the reality is.  Here are some photos and observations I took note of during my trip.

Mat

Sushi was very fresh. They do not offer any rolls with avocado (so no, there are no California rolls).
I had already been advised that sushi is not the mainstay food in Japan. In fact, I only ate sushi 3 times while I was there.  The food we came across the most were:
• ramen
• donburi (beef rice bowls, think Yoshinoya)
• “curry” (which is like a brown gravy with a little bit of spice)
• tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet)
• yakitori (chicken skewers)
• tempura

We tried just about everything – my favourite new dish is called Omurice, which is rice wrapped in an omelette with gravy. So simple, but so delicious!

This was an interesting place – every table had a hot plate built in. The food is brought out to you already cooked so the hot plate is more for keeping the food warm, rather than cooking it. I had this noodle / egg pancake thing that was delicious!

Tempura on a bed of rice. SO had dumplings.
While the majority of restaurants we saw were local Japanese food, we also came across lots of Starbucks, KFCs and McDonalds. We did go to Starbucks and McDonalds – they taste the same as at home.

McDonald’s Japan does offer a burger with an egg on top. and a 48pc chicken McNugget bucket for ¥1800 (approx $21.80 CAD)
And we came across Red Lobster, Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Denny’s and even a Sizzlers.  We didn’t eat at those places so I can’t compare their menu to the Western counterparts.

At some fast food places, you place your order at a machine outside the restaurant and it spits out a ticket. You go inside and sit at the counter and your number gets called out when your food is ready.

Egg and chicken on rice. Japanese comfort food!
We did not find food to be very expensive, it’s very comparable to how much we’d pay to eat out. So for a casual meal, it would be around $15 per person.

The most epic meal we ate was at the ryokan. I tasted things I’ve never tasted before and I can’t describe to you what I actually ate. but they were delicious!
Many fast food places have a menu placemat at the counters, which show all of their menu items in pictorial form, along with the prices. All you need to do is point at the item you want to order!

Mos Burger is the Japanese McDonald’s
When travelling between cities by train, it’s common to pick up a bento box type meal at the train station to eat on the train. I saw a man boarding the train with a bowl of fresh hot ramen, without a lid – brave man!
Restaurants are often found at the top level of a shopping mall or a department store. The restaurants are laid out side by side and all you need to do is walk around on the floor and decide where you want to eat – very convenient.  There are also massive food halls where you can buy food to take away:

Alternatively, there are buildings just devoted to food:

I also loved all the fake food displays:

Yes this is fake food!
At every place you go to, whether Starbucks or sit down restaurants, they provide you with an individually wrapped disposable wet napkin to wipe your hands before you eat. I fully support this practice coming here!

At the food court, they give you this little device that buzzes when your food is ready. They make everything fresh so it took about 10 minutes for my food.

And yes, there really are vending machines everywhere: along the sidewalk, in the malls, in the train stations, in parks, etc.

The most prevalent product they sold were drinks: sodas, water, canned coffee, energy and sports drinks. I also saw vending machines selling ice cream, and cigarettes (separately )  I never did see any machines selling used women’s undies, sorry, I think that’s a myth.

Ice cream vending machine.
Cigarette vending machine.
Vending machines right on the train platform – super handy!
Snacks!

We tried out a variety of Japanese snacks. We noted that their flavours aren’t as strong as what we’re used to in Canada. Their savoury stuff weren’t as salty, and their sweets weren’t as sugary.  And it wasn’t a bad thing – it allowed the flavours to come through better, if that makes sense.  Here are some pictures I took of stuff we snacked on.

Some of the drinks I tried: peach tea, green lemonade, orange Coke, litchi soda. I also loved a pear soda I had.
Matcha green tea soft serve ice cream!
A traditional Kyoto snack is chilled cucumber soaked in brine. It was actually quite refreshing on a hot day.
Hard boiled egg wrapped in rice!
Rice flour paste on sticks with miso glaze – so yum!
I loved this lightly sweet pastry – I think it’s lotus seed paste inside.
I was a little hesitant to try this “cheese” frozen snack but it [turned out to be] like a creamy ice cream sandwich – the outside shell is like a cone / biscuit.
This was a favourite of both of ours –it’s a flattened ice cream cone like a Drumstick but it’s coated with a chocolate shell,  the chocolate coating was so rich.
Mennesker

The first thing that hit me about Tokyo was the density of the population. I’ve visited populated cities like NYC, Hong Kong, and new Delhi but nothing prepared me for the sheer volume of people just hanging out on the streets (especially in Shinjuku). We arrived in Tokyo on a Sunday evening and it was just wall to wall people on the streets. Don’t they have homes to go to? I just couldn’t comprehend it. even on a random Tuesday afternoon, the streets would be filled with people.

Of course it wasn’t like that everywhere – even in Shibuya it wasn’t as densely packed. I’d say if you’re not a fan of crowds, do not visit Japan. To put it into perspective, there are 13.5M people in Tokyo, new Delhi is 9.8M, new York City is 8.4M, Hong Kong is 7.2M and… Toronto is a measly 2.6M!

Most of the younger generation understand English, and speak it fine. A lot of the older generation can understand English, but do not speak it. I tried speaking some Japanese but the only thing I really got fluent in was saying “thank you!” (“arigatou gozaimas!”)  Many signs and announcements (especially in the subways) were in both Japanese and English.

This is likely a huge over-generalization, but my observation about Japanese culture is that they value efficiency and politeness above all else.  Common occurrences:

• The bill for your food arrives when your food is served to you. It’s not viewed as rude, it’s viewed as efficient – as soon as you’re finished eating, you can pay your bill without having to wave down the waitress.

• Smoking is confined to special smoking rooms or designated areas (restaurants still allow smoking, so there are smoking sections) – people don’t walk and smoke on the street. Jeg elsker det!

• Bowing. Yes, what you see on TV is true. The Japanese bow a LOT.  I found myself starting to bow back in response.

• There’s no tipping for restaurants or hotels.  They’re paid a fair wage and customers don’t have to figure out how much to tip.

• There are arrows on the floors to help guide flow of pedestrian traffic – rule of thumb is stay on the left hand side. On escalators, stand on left and allow people to walk on the right side (this was confusing for me since it’s opposite of here!)

• many people sport surgical face masks to either protect themselves or prevent the spread of illness in public spaces if they’re not feeling well. It doesn’t matter if you’re young, old, a nerd, a fashionista – people wear the masks without any qualms.

• It was quite warm during our visit on some days (28 C plus humidity) but we noticed that they don’t blast the AC like most other places we’ve visited (I love the blast of AC in Hong Kong subways and malls!) I suspect this is an effort to save energy / money.

“Sugoi”
This roughly translates to “awesome” or “cool”. and was uttered everywhere we went to…
Aquarium: sugoi!
Zoo: sugoi! (along with kawwaii! “cute”)
Tokyo Skytree: Sugoi!
Temples: Sugoi!
Everything is SUGOI!

Transport

It’s all about the train in Japan. The Tokyo subway is famous for how complex and wide reaching it is – you really can get everywhere on the subway. We also took the regional rails which took us to the various cities outside of Tokyo.  And yes, trains are punctual.

Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t anyone standing at the platform pushing people and packing them into the subway trains – it does get crowded and personal space is nonexistent, but all of the pushing is done by the passengers themselves. There are agents who stand along the subway platforms to keep everything flowing but the automatic gates / barriers do all of the work.

Yup, this chick is applying makeup on the subway! My SO is glaring at me for sneaking her picture.
Also, it’s not completely silent or orderly in the train stations. In fact, it was quite chaotic in the stations, there’s no neat flow of walking traffic – everyone walks wherever they want but everyone is polite and will move out of your way. people talk quite loudly on the trains but there are announcements that remind people to keep their mobile phones on silent and to refrain from talking on their phones inside the trains.

I enjoyed taking pictures of various signs on the subway.

“Danger walk smartphone” ie. don’t walk and read your phone at the same time.

Bicycles are also a common mode of transportation. but they’re rather annoying because they’re allowed to be on the sidewalks. They’re supposed to stick to their own bike lanes but they don’t. So imagine walking down a crowded sidewalk and a bike is heading straight toward you. They also don’t wear helmets and some of the cyclists don’t look too steady on the bikes!

Diverse

There are police stations dotted throughout Tokyo – they look like tiny one room offices usually at a street corner, with the word “Koban”

The sun rose at 4:30am! We learned this the hard waY den første natten da vi forlot gardinene åpne da vi sov. Det var så lyst på 4:30 vi trodde det var rundt 8 am. Nei! Solen satt på rundt 7 pm.

Toaletter med innebygde bidet er standarden. De kalles washlets. Toaletter har vanligvis en bumvaskmodus og en vaskevaske-modus. og oppvarmede seter! Noen spiller også en spylende lyd for å maskere poopy lyder. Noen tilbyr et deodoriserende alternativ. Både så, og jeg endelig prøvde å bruke et bidet, og vi lurer på hvorfor trenden ikke har fanget i andre land!

Offentlige vaskerom er rikelig og veldig rent. Og du trenger ikke å betale for å bruke dem. Og mange av kvinners vaskerom inneholdt et eget pulverrom for å sjekke sminke!

Jeg var overrasket over å høre det meste vestlig musikk spilt på offentlige steder. Jeg hørte mye Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, selv uklar … ganske mye bare hva populær musikk er på radioen i disse dager i vest, de spilte det der.

TV-programmer har ikke kommersielle pauser. På slutten av showet viser de en infomercial som er ca 10 minutter lang. Typiske infomercial-produkter inkluderer vekttap piller, vekttap gadgets, kosttilskudd for å få deg til å se mer ungdommelig og kjøkkenapparater. Jeg så en annonse for Proactiv!

Så, det er mine tilfeldige, generelle observasjoner om Japan (med min svært begrensede eksponering, åpenbart! Et 2 ukers besøk gjør meg ikke en ekspert!) Hvis du har spørsmål, vennligst vær så snill å spørre i kommentarene!

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13. juni 2016in “Generelt”