Japanese Food

To be honest, I haven't lost any weight since coming to Japan.  In fact, I may have gained a pound or two.  Over here, weight is measured in terms of kilograms, with 1 kilogram equal to a little more than 2 pounds.

Before I left, people kept asking me if I liked Japanese food; in particular, they wanted to know if I would be able to stand eating sushi all the time.  It's not really like that.  I'm finding that there is a lot of Japanese food that I do like, as well as some that I'm not crazy about, and some that I don't have the nerve yet to try.  But first about sushi--it's not just raw fish.  Actually, sushi refers to a particular type of rice mixed with vinegar and sugar.  Sushi rice was first created during the Edo period (1600-1867).  The vinegar/sugar mixture acted as a preservative.  And, of course, as my well-wishers were well aware (how's that for alliteration?), sushi rice is typically served with a slice of raw fish on top, or in a roll surrounded by dried seaweed (nori) with raw fish or vegetables in the middle.  I do like some of the less fishy tasting sushi (e.g., tuna, salmon, shrimp), but usually pass on sea urchin and other scary looking things.

But the point I want to make is that there's much more to Japanese food than sushi.  Of course noodles are very popular, and there's quite a variety.  Ramen is available in the U.S. as an instant soup (here too), but here there are many neighborhood places that specialize in ramen.  First, let me say that I like ramen.  But you can usually tell you're approaching a ramen shop by the smell.  It's truly awful.  I don't know how something that smells so bad ends up tasting so good.  Anyway, ramen consists of a pork-stock soup with thin chinese wheat noodles.  It's served in a fairly large bowl.  Like most Japanese soups, ramen is eaten with chopsticks (o-hashi) for the noodles and pork slices, and the bowl is lifted to drink the soup.  Slurping is customary in Japan.  I haven't mastered that yet.  The noodles always end of splashing soup all over my glasses.

Another favorite noodle dish is champon, which uses the same noodles as ramen, but adds in a variety of seafood, fish cakes, and stir-fried vegetables.  This is really good!  Other good noodle dishes include udon (thick buckwheat noodles in soup), yaki-soba (thin buckwheat noodles stir fried with vegetables, pork, and fish cakes), and yaki-udon (see if you can figure that one out).

Fried foods are quite common here, which is not helping my cholesterol any.  At the top of the list for me is tempura.  Tempura usually includes shrimp, fish, and vegetables dipped in a light batter and then briefly dropped in hot oil.  The tempura comes with a sauce for dipping and with a small mound of grated daikon (Japanese radish) for mixing in with the sauce.  (And speaking of smells, grated daikon smells like… well, it just wouldn't be polite.)

Other fried foods that I've become partial to include croquettes (called korokke), which have a variety of fillings including crab (this would really be great with a touch of Old Bay), cream, and curry; fried chicken (KFC is avail

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