Food

Mom keeps asking me about what I am eating, so I decided to post pictures of my lunch over the last two days. Yup, just got a cell phone and this is what I am using it for. Lucky lucky you.

I go to the store everyday and look at the case of pre-made food. Like in America when they have pre-made subs or chicken near the deli at the store. Well, in Japan they have pre-made Japanese food. Or "bento boxes" as a pre-made lunch is called.

This is what I had for lunch today.






So this is what I see at the store. Some brown noodles with cabbage and red stuff (ginger) on top. What does it taste like? Who the hell knows? Even if I had the name of it I wouldn't know what it tasted like. So, I buy it and try it.

This stuff. Tasted like soy sauce and cabbage. Not bad. Everything here is pretty much "not bad." Nothing is really spicy. Nothing is really offensive tasting (besides chewy octopus tentacles). I haven't really had anything that I have either completely loved or completely hated yet. I guess that is a good thing.

This is what I had for lunch yesterday.




What could this be? Chicken? Pork? Fish? Tofu? Octopus? All of the above? Who knows! Turns out it was chicken. Whew! That is what I was hoping. Another problem with eating from the store, everything is cold and the containers they come in are not microwavable. So maybe Japanese food is better warm. I wouldn't know. I can count on one hand the number of hot Japanese meals I have eaten.



Best for last! This is potato salad and is the best potato salad I have ever had. It is so good! The orange in there is carrot. And the green is pickles. Those pickles add so much to the salad it is ridiculous. So good! I can't buy it often because it is $2.00 for that little bit you see in the photo, but I treat myself once a week or so.


Here's the Takoyaki (octopus balls)



The container they came in. There are four or five balls in there. Can't remember how many. But they are sold in a package of eight. This is "fast food" in Japan. Eaten by "hand" or rather, poke into the ball with those long toothpicks, rather than eaten with chopsticks. Though, I guess if you had chopsticks you could poke into the ball with the chopstick. The white crap is mayonaise. Eww. I tried to wipe as much of that off as I could. They drench stuff in mayo over here. Gross. The green stuff is dried seaweed, in case the octopus doesn't taste fishy enough for ya I guess.


A single lonely octopus ball. Aww, isn't it so cute and yummy looking? I would say it is about the size of a golf ball. Apparently in Osaka Takoyaki is the size of your fist. Wow.

And then I got bold and decided to cut into it and see what I was actually eating under all that fried goodness, mayonaise, seaweed, and soy sauce.




Ahh, not too bad. No wonder these weren't as chewy as the tentacle. The octopus is already cut up into tiny little bits and there is hardly any octopus compared to the amount of fried dough.

So good.