Food we ate in Japan

Food Post

Here are a bunch of drinks that we tried while in Japan. Where we were in Kyoto and the surrounding area there were drink vending machines every block and in every train station. C.C Lemon was carbonated and tasted like thirty lemons, Pocari Sweat and the white one at the bottom where like electrolyte replenishing drinks, and the last one was apple, banana, pineapple. I don't think there was a drink that we tried that was gross except for perhaps a tea one here and there. They serve tea with every meal so you have to request water if you want that instead. Usually you end up with both. 

 This is a cream filled roll. It was good, but messy!

 Here is an udon noodle soup bowl. Chris tried more udon noodle things than I did. I stayed away from the soup mostly because it was so hot (83 degrees Fahrenheit and above) and hot soup didn't sound as good.

 

 This is tonkatsu- fried breaded port cutlet-with shredded cabbage, rice, two other small somethings and soup broth with greens inside.

 

 We went to McDonald's twice the entire trip and we had to try out the teriyaki burger, because you can't get that in the States. It was good. I thought it tasted a similar to a Salisbury stake but with teriyaki sauce. Chris wondered if the meat was even really made from beef or something else.

 This is a Japanese candy item that tastes squishy flour. It does not really have a taste to it even though these ones are supposed to be strawberry. There is also a similar item in Japan made from this same stuff but shaped into triangles that tastes the same; squishy flavorless flour. 

 I was excited to go to Japan to try out the variety of Kit Kat flavors that they have there. Unfortunately for me the Kit Kat store is only in Tokyo and we were not going to travel to Tokyo. Convenient stores only sell one or two flavors at a time. While we were there raspberry was the only "new" flavor for us to try. It was tasty! 

 Had to try out a watermelon ice cream because real watermelon there is super expensive. We were looking to find square watermelons but never did. We did find cantaloupe sized watermelon though selling for a rough comparison of 30-50 dollars each. We did not buy one.The seeds on this are chocolate pieces.

 This is made from chocolate and strawberry and tastes just as you would expect it to. 

Also behind it is a lemon/lime carbonated drink.

 Here are two different beef and rice bowls. One has cheese sauce and crunchy noodles on top. We don't know what the white stuff is. It was thick like a pudding but tasted more like a bland cottage cheese.

 This meal is beef on the lower left with egg topping rice in the middle and the side of shredded cabbage like coleslaw. It was good.

 We had an overnight in a monastery and this was dinner. Two different trays for the each of us and a side of white rice that sat on the floor beside the pot of tea. I had orange juice.

 I can not really tell you what everything is. The white is tofu. Below that is their version of pickles. The middle was a vegetable green bean salad. On top was breaded fried mixed vegetables. The larger upside down bowl is for rice, the smaller for the tea, and the glass for the orange juice.

There are two white packets on the edge. One is a disposable washcloth like a wet paper towel, the other is chopsticks. For some reason the Japanese don't use soap, just water and these towel things. I was grateful for my hand sanitzer that I brought. 

 This is still dinner. The top is a soup of noodles. I believe it was buckwheat noodles. Two orange slices, a noodle thing that was too smelly for me to eat and those other blobs. I ate the green bean and the yellow thing, but couldn't eat the third whatever wrapped in sea weed because it fell apart. 

I do know that it was not anything like sushi. The monks are vegetarian. 

 This was breakfast along with a side of rice and tea. At the top was a packet of dried seaweed. I managed to eat through one leaf. Below was a vegetable like cake/roll thing that was placed in liquid so it was moist. There is a small jar of white noodles and on the plate is a pickled apricot that I could not eat. I did take a bite, but it was gross! I described it as "potent" to Chris and watched him try it. It is called ume boshi.

 We tried pizza one time. The crust was good, the cheese was good, mine had sausage and zucchini, Chris just had cheese, but the sauce was something to be desired. Chris compared it to plain tomato paste. Not that I have been to Italy, but it was not Italian. You can also see orange juice and water in the picture.

Time for a fun story!

We had our second overnight stay at Miyajima Island. (This was two days after the monastery. Our normal hotel was Sakura Terrace in Kyoto. We double booked it for our other overnights so we would not have move our suitcases all over.) Anyway this story is about us turning into criminals. We stole the food in the below picture!

 If I were to turn into a criminal food stealer I would not want to ever steal this food again! Here is the back story. When we checked into the hotel the guy there pointed out the times for dinner and breakfast and check out etc. It was on a card and also posted in our room on a similar card. Our bedroom was located up two flights of stairs, the lower level being a restaurant and while Chris was not sure if we had bought a dinner included with our nights stay we decided we would head back to the place for dinner to order something. We came in and asked if we could eat and the guy led us to a table. There were two tables already completely set out with this stuff above. He and the girl (his wife maybe? She was in and out of the kitchen preparing) both directed us to sit down at the table so we did. We sat there for a moment looking at the food trying to decide if we wanted to eat it. I was wondering why we did not get to pick items from a menu. Then the woman came back out with our drink and pointed to a white piece of paper beside me on the table. She said, "Menu. All Japanese." It was written in all Japanese so I could not read it. Then she read off what it said and pointed to each item on the menu. She got about a fifth of the way through it and smiled and walked back off. 

I figured that at this place you did not get to pick items from a full menu list so Chris and I looked at each other again and started to eat. It was not my favorite meal to be sure. On the right was something smoked so maybe salmon. The rectangles are crab cakes, the green and purple glob sushi, the white on a leaf was tofu, and the on the far left was an oyster. That was the hardest one for me to eat because once you take the leaf off the top you can see it's curled up brown somethings (not legs). When I did get brave enough to eat it, more to be polite than anything else, it wasn't that bad. It did not taste fishy. It was soft maybe soft like biting into a roll. As we finished eating it, another couple came down the stairs and sat down at the table behind us. Then the woman asked to see their room key and then to see ours and when she saw ours she let out a gasp of horror and rushed off to talk with the other guy. He came back a few minutes later telling us he was so sorry but the food we had eaten was a reservation and we had to leave. 

He would not let us pay for the part we had eaten of what was five course special reservation dinner. He gave us a map of places that "should be open" and turned us out. So we went out. It was only 6pm but there was nothing open. The island looked like a deserted ghost town and we could only spot a couple other tourist people wandering the whole island. But we couldn't go back! We had to make it look like we ate something else. We bought ice cream from a vending machine after realizing that this island did not have a 7-eleven that sold packaged meals and sandwiches. There was only ice cream. We ate that and walked around for an hour.

 

 We spent a lot of time taking pictures of this famous torii gate that is out in the water. They told us that we could eat breakfast there, but we were a little slow in starting eat breakfast as well. Once again they did not ask to see our room key, but we had on the previous night been asked if we wanted a Japanese or Western breakfast and we had picked Western. I did notice how they placed us in a corner so they could not see us and our server was some other girl we had never met before. It was so bad!

This was the Japanese version of a "Western" breakfast. No pancakes.

 In the while large lipped bowl in the back was a warm custard. I thought it tasted like eggs, Chris thought it tasted like cream of chicken soup. There was a glass bowl with corn flakes on the bottom, plain yogurt on top with powdered sugar on that. A small salad. Orange juice. A container of jelly and one of butter. Two chicken nuggets, a fourth slice of corn on the cob, actual ketchup! This was the first ketchup we had seen in Japan. I was missing it at McDonald's when I had to eat dry fries without it. In the middle is a meat attached to an actual bone that tasted like sausage. Behind the white square which is a cheese slice is a round roll and before that a croissant.  To the right is this pot and blue dish.

 The pot contained an egg and a slice of bacon that got cooked over a candle they lit. 

 I normally eat scrambled eggs so I was a little unsure if I could eat this one. I had to make sure it was cooked through before I ate it. The meal rests atop wax paper perhaps and was supposed to be slid off onto the blue plate to eat. 

 It was a pretty filling breakfast!

We were glad to not be eating the soupy stuff that the other table had gotten though.

 Here is the ice cream I won from 7-eleven. We still don't know why we got to pick cards out of a hole in a box, but we did and I won this. Chris only won a discount for such wonderful items like metal detectors etc. It is vanilla ice cream wrapped in crispy waffle.

 Airplane food. Japanese Airlines has way better food quality than American Airlines.

 This is JAL dinner. There is fruit, salad, noodle salad, vegetable something, broccoli with chicken and rice and a hard chewy roll. The desert with this was ice cream we did not eat because it was coffee flavored. Out of curiosity I took a very small lick and did not care for the flavor at all!

 This one was breakfast at JAL. Yogurt, fruit, tofu squares in three different colors, and bland rice with green onions and rice. It was alright. 

In comparison AA did not have actual dishes they had to wash, plastic containers they could throw away. The food may have sounded better, but didn't really taste better. There was curry rice with shimp on top (and later curry chicken that was too spicy for me), with a side of noodle salad and a lunch meat slice. 

 

 This is what Chris ate for breakfast every day. He bought yogurt and this melon bread from 7-eleven. For your reference 7-eleven in Kyoto, and Family Mart, are the largest convenience stores. There is one on every single block and that's not a lie. That's why we tried to find one on Miyajima. We bought all of our breakfast from there and some dinners and lunches too and 7-eleven (and the post office) are the only places with atm machines that work internationally, so we used 7-eleven all the time at least once a day. 

This is an example of a dinner you can buy at 7-eleven. There is also a peach drink and a fruit drink we tested out. The workers in the store will microwave these pre-made dinners for you and they taste just like eating out at restaurants they are that good. I think here we have a spaghetti and a curry rice bowl. These rice bowls I could actually eat since the curry was not really spicy. 

Also note that in this picture we are at our Kyoto hotel. Since we were there every day of course we forgot to take pictures of our room. You can see the bed. Behind that wall is the bathroom with a bidet toilet. I did not like the fact that toilet seat warmed up, or that as soon as you sat down water would trickle into the toilet. I had trouble peeing when my toilet was already doing that. I did use the bottom washer button once just to say I did. It squirts out warm water and gets you wet. Imagine! I was excited on the day I realized you could turn the heater on the seat off. Chris said he didn't mind the warm seat, but I sure did. 

The Japanese have two toilets. Bidets like the ones on the hotel and squatter potties. You will see a picture of one later on. It is basically a urinal shape turned flat into the ground so you pee in a hole and try to not get your shoes wet or lose the stuff in your pockets. How fun!