Amysan

I’ve gotten a lot of requests for photos.  This post will be devoted to photos of the food I ate while in Japan. Part of my hesitation of going to Japan was that it didn’t really seem like it would be a missions trip.  I had trouble asking for financial sponsors because Japan is place that people would go for vacation. It’s a developed country and not what one typically thinks of when they hear “missions work”.  One typically thinks of Africa or China even – a place that people don’t normally pick for vacation – underdeveloped – a place that doesn’t have electricity, a place that doesn’t have flushing toilets, mud huts and no developed roads, etc.  But Japan? the land of animation and technology and excellent raw food??   I prepared myself before going to Japan by setting the expectations low.  I knew that I would be in Tokyo and NOT be able to see every tourist sight or visit shopping districts to pick up souvenirs of all sorts (Totoro, pokemon, kimonos, mochi, more Totoro!!)   But when I landed in Japan, Mei-Ling handed me a devotional book and the one of the earlier entries was that a short term missions trip should be fun.  We dont’ need to set the stage by purposefully making ourselves miserable. We should learn the culture, try things we don’t normally try, and experience everything we can while there.  So even though I didn’t request to stop at every store we passed by, if an opportunity came to enjoy tastey food or to go shopping at the mall, I took advantage of it. I didn’t ask for more time and i didn’t go out of my way to hit the mall.  But I didn’t purposefully say, no thanks because I’m on a missions trip!  That said, I enjoyed a lot of good Japanese food.  It was so tastey and fresh.  It is one of the things I truly miss about Japan. Everything is so GOOD to eat.  And so healthy.

Fresh soba noodles.  This was one of my favourites. The restaurant was on the way back to the station from nokendai community center. We ate here for lunch after VBS one day.  The menu was in Japanese with only two pictures – one for soba with tempura and the other for soba with donburi.  I picked the tempura one.  The tempura bowl in the menu had rice under it but we asked that they remove the rice.  The waitress nodded that she understood our limited Japanese.  When our dishes arrived, we were shocked that instead of giving us the rice, they had given us an extra tray of soba noodles to compensate for the absence of rice.  It was cold and refreshing on such a hot day.

Chirashi.  I didn’t eat this – it was a team mates meal but it looked completely raw and most definitely fresh (one would hope..). Unfortunately there were only so many meals we could eat while there.

Yokosuka (the city I stayed in) is located near the waterfront.  There was a fish restaurant located a few blocks from our condo.  We were told to come here for dinner and enjoy their selection of fish.  The Chirashi dish above was served at this restaurant.  I wanted a cooked fish that was not deep fried.  I looked at the pictures on the menu and when the waiter came to me, I pointed to a dish that looked like a steamed fish.  He looked at my choice and motioned with his hand that it was the head of the fish.  I immediately said… oh no!! no head no head!!  so i looked back at the menu and selected the next fish option which was deep fried.  he said, motioning again with his hands – body.  I said yes that is perfect.  He went to talk to the chef in the kitchen and came back to me making a cross with his arms.  No more. Sold out.  I must have looked completely dejected because he went back to the kitchen and had another conversation with the chef.  After a few moments, he came back with a plate with a raw whole fish on it.  He said, soy sauce, steam. ok?  I said, Oh that’s good!!  I was hoping that he was going to steam the fish with soy sauce.   I was so amazed by the service in Japan.  If it had been a restaurant in America, the waiter probably would have been pretty upset with me. I felt embarassed by all this commotion i had caused. Everyone at the table was waiting for me to finish ordering!!!   It was well worth it though. The fish meat fell right off the bones.  YUM!

Can you guess where we ate here?  DENNY’S!!! That’s right.  There was a Denny’s near our condo and the team insisted we go.  So i ordered the hamburg meal.  It’s a sizzling hot plate with a thick (maybe one inch thick) hamburger patty on top of a layer of bean sprouts.  It was served with fries on the side and a plate of rice.  While it is nothing really spectacular, I do remember that the patty was perfectly cooked.  It was not burnt on the outside and it was sooo juicy on the inside. It was nicely seasoned and went well with the rice.  It was actually pretty good for Denny’s – probably much better than anything I could order in an American Denny’s.  The Denny’s in Japan has the typical american breakfast but you can order Japanese style pasta dishes, rice dishes and noodle dishes as well.  It is not oily at all but rather healthy(-looking).

Our last meal with the Tamuras was at a Korean BBQ restaurant.  We order kimchi, kolbe beef, short ribs, chicken, pork, veggies, salad.  It was ALL delicious.  I especially liked the kimchi. I know it’s suppoesd to be spicy but this one was just a hint of spice and a bit sweet.  It was really good over rice.  The beef came with romaine lettuce that you were supposed to wrap the beef in. No one was eating it though so I tried it with my beef. I acutally ended up liking the lettuce more than the beef!!  i ended up eating both our plates of lettuce.  It was actually soft – not typically crunchy.  I couldn’t describe it except it was the best lettuce I have ever eaten!  Ridiculous, i know!

Hamburg patty number 2.  This was eaten in Tokyo in Yurikamome at a food court.  It was ok. not as good as the Denny’s dish.

I enjoyed some takoyaki at the Asakusa market.  i walked by it the first time but then i could hear hmma’s voice in my head. If i go to japan and don’t eat the takoyaki, it will be a huge shame.  So i went back and got 6 pieces and shared them with my team.  It was really hot – fresh off the grill – and to eat it in the hot humid weather was almost unbearable. I kinda wish I had opted for the shaved ice in the next stall. But I had already tried that so I didn’t want to try it again.  The takoyaki was very tastey though. It had a large chunk of octopus inside and the toppings included a sprinkle of chives and very thinly sliced bacon – then a layer of sauce. YUM!  I can say I tried it

When we finally made it to Kashiwa, Richard took us to a ramen restaurant near his house.  Here, I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of my meal before digging in.  So this picture already has one bite eaten from it.  Richard had thought that this restaurant had pork based soup but he learned from the chef that the soup was changed recently to fish based.  He has just a huge look of disappointment on his face.  To me, it tasted excellent!! But Keri, his wife, rated it a 5-6 out of 10.  When he called his daughter at home and told her where he was and then told her that the soup was changed to fish base, she said it was good then that she stayed at home!!  I cannot believe it would cause such a reaction!!  But I guess you don’t know a good thing until you’ve had it.  I still thoroughly enjoyed my ramen.  Our meal also came with freshly made gyozas – we finished 8 plates of them – each plate had 4 pieces. We were THAT hungry.  It has so much flavour packed inside the wrapper and it wasn’t too greasy.  I don’t know how they do it!

SOOOOoooo has my post made you hungry yet???  There are more food photos and acutally with each before shot, I took an after shot.   Needless to say, the food in Japan is awesome.  I looked forward to each meal not only because i was usually starving by the time we ate but also because I knew that no matter where we went to eat, it was going to be delicious.