Anyways, how about some food?! I'm trying to find pictures of the food itself, but I have a wonderful habit of taking pictures of my husband eating food so you might get some of those. I could make an entire album called "Jeff Eats".
One of my favorite Japanese foods is sushi! I tried sushi once before we moved here. Now we go at least once a month. We have a great cheap sushi place in town where we can fill our stomachs for less than $20. My favorites are salmon and tuna with green onions, pictured above.
Ramen! Every college kid has lived off those cheap packages for a semester or two, so I didn't see the big deal when we first moved here. Oh my, was I wrong. The real stuff is amazing and I could eat it every day and be happy. Every variation I've tried is delicious, soy, salt, or miso. Speaking of, I'm thinking ramen for dinner tomorrow!
The Japanese often take foods popular in other countries and put their own spin on it. There's a restaurant in town where you can order spaghetti with just about every topping (not pictured because Italian is one food I can cook better than the Japanese...). Turns out, hamburgers can be improved too. This one has a special sauce, almost like marinara. Loaded with sauce and onions, it's amazing. Jeff was obsessed with Mos Burger down south when he was on deployment and it took us no time to find one up here. The fries are amazingly fresh and crispy too.
Yakisoba is probably a familiar food to those of you who didn't live on bread and potatoes for twenty plus years. I, on the other hand, had no prior knowledge of this quick noodle stir fry. I love it, and Jeff has learned to cook it at home so we can have it without going out in the snow and trying to find parking near this impossibly small restaurant.
Gyoza is one of Jeff's favorites and I've seen it at just about every restaurant. Pictured in the back is this delicious little thing called a cheeseroll. It's cheese wrapped in wonton wrappers and fried, but it tastes different than a mozzarella cheese stick. It's on my to-do list to learn to replicate this amazing appetizer because I regularly get cravings for these as well.
Funny story. Before we moved to Japan, I didn't like rice.Then we went to this fast food restaurant full of rice bowls. A bowl of rice topped with some simple beef or pork. That's it?
Yes, that's all you need. Turns out all those years of instant white rice was a terrible example of how great rice can taste. I've since learned to cook rice in a rice cooker and could eat it every day. There's nothing like a steaming bowl of hot, sticky rice.
There's a theme to the food here. Rice, quickly cooked meat or raw meat, and vegetables. Healthy and simple. This is pepper lunch. A cast iron skillet full of beef, rice, corn, and loads of black pepper. A combination I never would have tried but seriously love.
One of the things I love and hate about Japan is the do it yourself mentality to food. A lot of restaurants come with a grill pan in the table and raw meat on the table. While it can be fun to grill your own food, sometimes it's nice to just sit and have a cooked meal without the work. Jeff always jokes that he pays to eat, not cook. Most places I've seen offer salads and appetizers and platters or bowls of raw strips of meat. Chicken, beef, lamb, pork, fish, etc. It's delicious, but you may need to know how to grill to get the meat you want.
So there's a quick little run down of some of the eats you'll find here in northern Japan. Although I'm far from the bread and butter girl I was, I still fall on the picky side of the eating scale so you won't find any octopus suction cups or fish eggs on my plate. But living here has given me an appreciation for seafood and the simple equation of rice+vegetable+small strips of meat. And a bowl full of steaming white rice is an instant comfort food on a cold, snowy day.
