Japanese Food.
Since I spent the entire morning in bed catching up on a week's worth of sleep, I still haven't gotten around to sorting out my photos properly, so tonight, I'm just gonna focus on one aspect of our trip: the food. First of all, I would like to formally declare myself an official convert to Japanese cuisine. I loved pretty much every meal we ate, and thanks to Amy - who's from Taiwan and has been to Japan a few times already - we were able to try lots of different dishes in places where otherwise we wouldn't have even been able to read the menu. Even the airplane food was good, simple though it was - basically rice and shrimp with a few veggies and soy sauce (with which I'm also recently enamoured).
Plus, free Ferraro Roche! Bonus!
Our first proper meal in Japan was at a tiny little place in Fukuoka. It only had three tables, so I do wonder how they ever managed to wangle their way into the guide book, but it was so good. We all had ramen - light yellow noodles served in my case in a hot pork broth with spring onion. One thing I like about Japanese as opposed to Korean food (which is known for very strong, spicy, pungent flavours), is that you generally get to add soy sauce or chili seasoning to your own liking, so you can actually taste the underlying flavours, rather than just tasting *SPICE*.
Thursday night in Osaka became Sushi Night. We ended up doing a little sushi crawl around the city, hunting out all the recommendations in the guides we had and trying a 'few' different types of sushi in each. And it was a revelation. I've bought sushi from the supermarket before, but this stuff was just on a whole other plane of existence. So fresh, so delicately flavoured with the soy sauce and wasabi (kinda like a Japanese horse-radish, though actually unrelated I think), I could've eaten nothing else all week. My favourite was tuna, but the salmon, egg, shrimp, mackerel and all the others I tried were all my favourites too.
Like Korea, Japan's not huge on the desserts, but we did have a fair few helpings of ice cream through the week. The Japanese love anything green tea flavoured: you can get sweets, chocolate, biscuits, soft drinks, etc. They also have green tea ice cream, which I've never tried before though they sell it here in Korea too. Anyhow, it's yummy. Very refreshing.
This was another of my favourites , eaten in Kyoto. I need to speak to Amy to find out what it's called. The main dish is a mixture of udon noodles, pork, tofu, onion and egg. I think there's other stuff in there two. Also, one of the side dishes (in the top-left) is a kind of fried soft tofu, a Kyoto specialty, and was wonderfully crisp on the outside, yet still soft inside. I want to go back just thinking about it.
I love seeing food cooked in front of you too. Most of the sushi was made on the spot in front of us - and it's so quick! Sushi must be the ultimate fast food: just a handful of sushi rice and a slice of fresh fish and you're done. But in the other restaurants we visited, we still never seemed to be waiting more than five or ten minutes at the outside.
On our finally night (in Hiroshima) we went to a building which housed a collection of mini-restaurants all devoted to Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). Actually, I think it was called something slightly different, as Hiroshima has a local version. It's basically a thin pancake layered with cabbage, bacon, optional items (shrimp, ginger, pork, cheese, etc.), fried noodles, topped with a fried egg and a generous dollop of okonomiyaki sauce and spices. Very delicious, and very filling, though we manged to consume three of them between us (at three different restaurants again!)
I think the only disappointing meal I had is when one of the hostels served us a 'Western' Style breakfast. The Japanese style were much better, but while I could happily sit here and describe every single meal I had over the six days, I really must unpack...
