excurse: consumerism I - competitive eating

Now that we have a global food crisis i am sure these kinds of tv-programs will regain popularity in japan.
basically, the (mostly professional) contestants try to stuff as much food into themselves as possible. it is indeed a painful sight as japanese create noises consuming certain dishes even under normal circumstances. take into account that those who chew loose and you have a pretty good idea of how it goes.
i would guess the pain of watching is not half as bad as the emptying sessions the contestants have go through after they have taken the trophies.
the moment of the program you look forward most is when we are allowed to gaze at the the amount of food that was just swallowed, usually there will be a commercial break just before it.

UDON

Do you remember the day when you found out that all italian noodles in reality are just variations in shape.
Welcome to japan, the land of noodles, where noodles do not only come in a diversity of shapes but tastes as well and each of them unique.
i found this udon shop by accident in ikebukuro, which ought to have the fattest noodles i have seen to date. with the temperature rising there is nothing better than a cold noodle dish.

minke whale.

Question: what do these two pictures have in common?
i guess you can figure that out by yourself...
a restaurant that features such food is in fact a very rare sight in Tokyo, so when i found one by accident i gave it a try. i must say even if it wasn't so unpopular for obvious reasons, i would doubt anyone could build up a crave for whale meat, because of the obtrusive oily aftertaste.

coco kare

The other day, i saw a report on the television where they tried to find out the food Japanese liked most. so they went to an airport and asked people who just returned from overseas what their first choice would be. and the choices where ramen and kare.
now, i wrote about ramen earlier. i always considered this one of the best casual meals of the japanese kitchen, but kare? that came as a surpise.
kare is the way japanese pronounce and write curry, and until now i always ignored the shops offering it, firstly because the way they advertise it reminds me of the generic school cafeteria food of my early childhood, nothing i remotely fancy. secondly i do not like curry in general and if i came round to eating it, the nan was the thing for me. and above all nan is not served with japanese curry.
but, given the fuzz i overcame my aversion against what looks like typical "brown" sauce, and tried it. this is a chain store and to me it feels like a shop can be found within a radius of 200 meters around you, wherever you are in central tokyo. the dishes are very generic, indeed. but also very customizable. every plate looks exactly the same as what you see in the menu and on your neighbors table. you have a number of standard toppings and degrees of spice. one thing i noticed is that you eat it with a spoon, which is very strange after being in japan for a couple of months. why do we stuff these huge metal object in our mouths in europe? very strange.


the one i had was a more fancy kare with shellfish and squid rings.
for 750 yen (5 euro). it was kind of good, but nothing special, really.
apparently japanese nostalgically associate their childhood with this dish, because mothers can prepare it easily and it is eaten often during the week. that explains the phenomenon above all, if you ask me.

what is japan?

There is a saying in germany, that children's words are sources of great wisdom. i think it is true.
and when i visited a child care center recently, i was very curious what i would learn about japan from a child's perspective.
needless to say i was completely astonished about what i found out. it is daikon ... of course!

Rewind: Sushi shock

Many associate japanese food with sushi. and it is true there is a lot of it around. but not all japanese food is sushi. and not all sushi is raw fish. this for example is raw meat - horse meat.
i wish i could remember the taste, memories of taste are so fragile.

Rewind: Christmas Dinner

Well, you know i have been to hokkaido on chistmas. hokkaido as the northern main island of japan is renowned for the horrible creatures that lurk in the deep cold seas.
good thing is, as frightening as they may seem, they are quite tasty. let me introduce: christmas dinner. boiled and ready to eat.

standard burger

I am starting to get obsessed with hamburgers...
oh well.
this restaurant is attached to a fashion brand store called "standard" something.
the shop is situated near to the new south extension of shinjuku station on the takashimaya side and features bloody expensive burger sets, that you have to order self service style (which i think is the "attraction" making it special, and more expensive for that matter...) but taking all this aside the taste is outstanding. i haven't eaten such good burgers in japan, yet. the meat was actually grilled and the burgers have random toppings like avocado, which always wins me over immediately. this set was about 1300yen (roughly 10euros).
delicious.

chewing pudding

by popular demand...
another sweet review. this time "putcho putcho custard pudding". the japanese don't eat a lot of haribo. which is terrible taking the fact that i adore gummy bears. but once in a while something surfaces, like "putcho putcho", newly introduced a few months ago. this sweet makes me smile some. it is a soft gum filled with gummy pieces. the original taste range went from grape to orange, which won me over already. recently they went a step ahead introducing new flavors, like "apple pie" or the one in the picture "custard cream pudding". i guess the most irritating part is the fact, that it really tastes like the japanese style pudding... me who thought eating some milky pudding would help my magnesium deficits rather than adding some pounds of fat. the difference is the surface of the soft gum which obviously is like rubber, and doesn't dissolve as easy as the original. they even put some half caramelized sugar inside the sweet (instead of the usual putcho putcho gummy pieces) because here in japan you have caramel on top of the pudding).
good stuff.

R Burger

Ahhh, what bliss,
i just found another uniquely japanese hamburger restaurant. it currently has two branches in roppongi and aoyama (cool citys for foreigners..). they serve hamburgers that have yeast dumplings (Hefekloesse for german friends) instead of the usual bread roll. mine was a wasabi thuna burger (meshed thunfish). tasty, not tooo tasty though ;)
the chain is very determined to make an impression, as you can see everything in the shop has the "r" of "r burger" in it, even the chairs.
now, yeast dumplings as you may wonder, or "man" as japanese call it are a common sight in tokyo. you can by an assortment of them at every convenience store. the standard one would be filled with the typical sweet bean paste (dont ask..), more fancy ones are called pizza-man and are filled with salty stuff, that remotely tastes like pizza. no big dealfor around 1 euro.

loose your reservations

Japanese eat a lot of things that i have never eaten before, which is nice, because if i like one thing, than that's eating new stuff.
recently i had a nice chat whit a promotional saleryman inside the supermarket. he passed things to me to let me try it, like dried little fish and dried squid, etc. than at some point i lost ability to guess what i was tasting, because things started to look really odd. afterwards my friend told me it was basially snail variations. at that time i thought, how lucky that i didn't care about eating this kind of food. it tasted good btw. but i know people who wouldn't have been so calm after learning that they just have eaten snail.
now, i didn't have my camera ready back than. so instead i will post some pictures i took of the free appetizer at a izakaya (japanese style bar) which was given as a free treat. very tasty, indeed ;)

coffee, please

In the morning on your way to work, there is nothing that catches the mood your in better than a good old can of hot "deepresso", isn't there.
seriously, as mentioned before the output of new products in japan is amazing. every month dozens of new names are introduced which than turn out to be old concepts. as with can coffee from vending machines, basically they all have milk and sugar in them and taste equally bad to a west-europian.
this is a new one, and somehow i think it won't last much more than a month or so. i mean what have the designers been thinking?? (and "georgia" is one of the leading soft drink companys!)
for those wo are clueless, coffee is associated to have deep lavour sometimes...

toast, anyone?

More food. time for some serious oddities.
this is something i see all over tokyo, mostly in italian restaurants.
basically it is half a loaf of toastbread with some icecream or syrup topping. this restaurant shop proudly displays a monstertoast at the entrance as it's main attraction?
don't ask me why, i didn't even remotely feel tempted to taste it. all available for for about 700 yen (~5 euros).

food galore

Ok. some fillers, alright. more food. favourite food.
some references to earlier posts.

first up, the mosburger set with melon soda. gosh.

second one shows ramen. noodlesoup, if you want. there are endless variations of it in tokyo. originally imported from china. so you can't call it your favourit japanese food, really. i forgot where this shop was, but the bowl surely has something.

finally an example of "real" japanese noodle,
you eat it cold. very tasty, once you have gotten over the fact that it's eaten cold.

food, once again.

Mos burger may be more expensive than mc donalds, and the value sets are miserably unvaluable, but their sauce on burgers is delicious like no other and makes mos my favourit hamburger chainstore of japanese origin.
now, japan is an ageing society. older people must be focussed by marketing if profits are to continually grow. secure the old for your products now, and be the winner tomorrow!
and mos burger wants the old!
that is why they introduced a lineup of soup and rice dishes targeting the over 50 crowd which is somewhat not at ease with the regular hamburger.

the picture shows a one of the new ricedishes. not too interesting so far?
now, take a look at the dish again. It's one of japans hillarious plastik displays - not the real deal! a piece of art i would say.

food

Interesting in terms of food is a comparison between what my favourite japanese dish is now and was four years earlier (when i lived in japan for one year as a student). back than it ought to have been ramen, a kind of noodle soup. i am sure ill come up with a picture one of these days. back than i spend most of my time in takadanobaba where a diversity of shops provided my noodle demands.

nowadays, i tend to struggle, recently i have replied to a question, i'd be favouring a good old cutlet. yeah, he is german, you might say. but no, having been through universal japanese assimilation processes the typical tonkatsu dish looks like above. merged with traditional tempura, the meal is ready to be eaten with chopsticks only. at this shop at lunch time you have free rice and soup refill for all in all 900 yen (6,50 euro). very delicious. don't forget that in japan free water or warm tea is served and refilled obligatory, as well.