Adventures in Dining in Japan Part One

I didn’t expect America’s version of Japanese food (i.e. chicken teriyaki) to be the same as food in Japan but I thought I would find some similar things. I eat several items at Sushi Boat that are Japanese (wakame sunomono, agedashi tofu, gyoza, etc) and I haven’t found them here at all. I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to be a huge variety in the type of food that seems to be available. Common dishes – soba noodles, tonkatsu, fish cakes, grilled fish, tempera (but you only get 2 or 3 pieces), and curry rice. I see much more pork than chicken or beef. And veggies seem to be either shredded cabbage with sesame dressing as a salad or veggies boiled in soups. I’m craving raw veggies and big green salads.


Japanese breakfast consists of rice, miso soup, broiled fish, rolled Japanese omelets, nori, pickled veggies, fresh fruit, and tea. Dennis likes them.

Dennis and I tried eating out by ourselves in Hiroo (near the New Sanno Hotel in Tokyo). Chie helped us find a restaurant -- a cutlet place. So we ordered pork cutlets, rice, shredded cabbage, and meat karroke (by accident -- we though it was potato). It was a nice dining experience by ourselves in this small restaurant with other local Japanese people. And luckily no one smoked. We are so spoiled in CA with non-smoking buildings everywhere.

Dinner at a Kyoto restaurant -- I ordered as I usually do, by looking at plastic samples of the dinners in a window in front of the restaurant and pointing to it with the waiter. Not the most eloquent but it gets my point across. I’ve learned how much I can communicate with pointing, miming, and gestures on this trip! Anyway, I got a multi-course dish – there was some sushi that I could easily distinguish. But there were 2 triangles that Dennis and I liked but didn’t know what it was made of. And this jello like substance that was an opaque color was pretty odd in texture when we ate it. Some of the items I passed on eating because I just couldn’t tell what they were.

One time I had a bean salad that liked a lot like Klingon food! And I had a sandwich – white bread with the crusts cut off, thin slices of meat (something between ham and bologna), cucumber, tomato, and then a layer of potato salad!


A favorite snack of mine that I can pick up at a mini-mart in a train station is a red bean and rice cake (sekihan). It’s fresh and healthy. (Picture at left is the reliable convience store where I often buy my snacks.)

And I’m getting my fill of mochi with sweet red bean paste in the middle. Sounds yucky, but it’s actually quite tasty and doesn’t have wheat or milk in it so it works well for me and my diet. Avoiding wheat is a little tricky with all the batter on stuff like tempera on tonkatsu. And I have to have Chie ask for no egg on donburi items. The Japanese green tea ice cream is very tempting but I figure I have more milk than I should with my coffee (Starbucks java chip is what I try to find) in the mornings.

Last night we had tappenyaki style dinner where we cooked the meat and veggies on a grill at our table. Sort of like Benihana’s at home. It was tasty but the portions here are much smaller. That’s probably partially why the Japanese are all so thin.



(update 11/21):


Note: I ate at this establishment once, in Kyoto.