If I was completely honest this summary could be very, very brief. So concise it could be that it wouldn't take me more than two words: green tea. So succint that if I was to limit myself to detail and speficity, it could in fact be conveyed by a single word: MATCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
But more on matcha later, because first I should explain why not only I'm turning green, but into a green hobbit too (and no, no jokes about my height allowed, mind you). I assume we all know how hobbits were infamously known for observing no less than half a dozen meals a day, right? Well, I am quickly learning to do the same.
Maybe not all of you know, but Spain is different, and Spain has some fucked up meal times, at least when compared to the rest of the world, because if you ask me it's the rest of the world that's doing things wrong (we are never wrong). Elementary school children have lunch no earlier than 1pm, and for the rest of the world it happens anywhere between 2.30 and 3pm, lunch breaks usually being from 2 to 4 in the afternoon. Ah, the good life. But obviously having lunch so late means we have a snack around mid-morning, and a late dinner that doesn't happen before 8pm even for children. So obviously I'm having certain problems to adjust to Japanese meal times.
I have breakfast in the morning, around 8am before I leave for work... Or rather while I leave for work, because I'm becoming quite an expert at eating while I ride my bike. My breakfast are mainly dorayakis, because when in Rome eat as the Romans, and also because they're delicious and cheap (it's also what Doraemon eats, thus his name :D). Sometimes I have fruits to feel better about myself, though. Like an adult or something.
(Google image because I'm too lazy to take a picture of mine)
At school we are given lunch from Monday to Thursday, but we have to bring our own lunch. The food we get it's not terrible, though it's not great either... Mostly it means I don't have to cook and I get to eat a relatively balanced meal once in a while, because we both know there's no way I'm actually cooking any veggies for myself at home. Lunch is from 11.30 to 12, which honestly feels more like a second breakfast or the aforementioned mid-morning snack than an actual lunch, if not because someone keeps filling our trays with the amount of food you'd expect three starved bears to eat.
That's an example of the menu, mostly because I was amused at Japanese paella (fried rice with things, bleh). This month the menu lists actual paella though, I'm in fear.
Anyway, lunch is over at 12, and when I get out of work at 3pm, I'm starved again and end up eating something. Sometimes it's a snack, sometimes it's another whole lunch...
And yet by 7pm I'm hungry again. If I didn't make dinner plans it's alright because I can just have a snack (meriendaaaaaa) and then have dinner later. Problem is having plans, because people here actually think 7pm is a decent time to have the last meal in the day. I disagree, because if you have dinner at 7pm and then go to bed at 11 you're going to get hungry again, but who am I to argue with non-Spanish logic. Mostly I just have a second dinner later, usually cereal or something similar.
This is my cereal, by the way. They're made of kinako, which is roasted soy flour. It may sound slightly disgusting, but no. It's rather sweet, and here in Japan it's used to prepare traditional sweets, so my cereal are actually quite nice and they give some flavour to the milk, which is always fantastic.
So basically I survive on snacks, because I'm an adult who knows about health and balanced eating habits. By the way and since we're talking about snacks (Hah! Like I've talked about anything else at all yet), do you know what dorayakis are filled with? It's anko. Anko it's a sweet paste made of red beans, because they can't make sweets out of normal things like chocolate and sugar in Japan, no; they have to make sweets out of soy, beans and tea.
Dorayakis are only an example, but there're a lot of sweets filled with anko; in fact there's even anko icecream, which I find slightly disgusting because anko is way too sweet to be an icecream. My favourite anko snack by far is taiyaki, which is kind of a crusty cake shaped like a fish. I had always wanted to try them, and they did not disappoint. Dorayakis are spongy and soft like bread, but taiyaki are crusty. Next to the school there's a big shop and outside they have a tiny stand that sells really cheap warm taiyaki, so it's becoming quite an addiction... I try to tell myself I'm burning it off with the bike ride there and back.
However, I had said I'm becoming green and we can certainly not blame the anko for that. My favourite sweets are those made of green tea, which honestly are most of them. But don't be fooled, it's not any green tea that works. It's matcha, which basically is green tea made of tea leaves that have been grinded to a powder. It's sweeter than regular green tea, so it's commonly used for confectionery. Let me show you some examples (all of which I've personally tasted to prove how determined I am to provide quality, contrasted information):
Matcha latte!
DIfferent chocolates filled with matcha.
MATCHA KIT-KAT
Matcha biscuits
WHITE CHOCOLATE ICECREAM FILLED WITH MATCHA
MATCHA HÄAGEN DAZS
And many more things, because as I told you I live on matcha sweets and two litres green tea bottles. I'm such a gourmet.
But to continue with my eating habits, sometimes I do eat out too, because eating out is cool. Nagoya is a big city and we live quite close to a nice busy shopping/leisure area. There's quite a lot of cultural diversity too, so there're many restaurants offering food from all around the world... Or almost all around the world anyway. It's wonderful.
Chinese food, Hong Kong style (Chinese people say that Chinese food in Japan doesn't taste quite like que original, that it has a Japanese touch. If they knew what we do with their food in the rest of the world...)
Japanese food (omuraisu, which is rice fried with tofu, meat and ketchup and covered with an omelette), ebifurai (deep fried shrimp) and chips. They usually give you some boiled veggies too so you can feel like less of a pig.
Hawaian food (whatever the name, I totally forgot, but it was yummy... Actually my friend's dinner too, not mine)
And surprisingly Spanish food too, and close to home! The bar's name is Ricotta, so I thought it was Italian until I saw the menu... Which made me laugh a lot.
Those are supposed to be potatoes and octopus Galician style, which is usually some of my favourite treats to have when I'm actually in Galicia. There was octopus. There were potatoes. There was even paprika, and it was quite tasty. But it wasn't octopus and potatoes Galician style. Not even close.
The paella was rather nice, and tasted like real paella too.
Do you want to know something cool about Japanese restaurants? The moment you sit down they bring you a glass with cold water, and sometimes even a whole jar, and also a warm wet towel to wash your hands with. I'll miss that when I go back to Spain.
It would be then wonderful to eat out every day, but I don't make that much money no matter how you look at it, and so from time to time I must cook... Or heat precooked food. That's nice too, because they're obsessed about freshness in Japan so you can always count on your precooked stuff to have been done the day before. They're way cheaper at night too, because they want to get rid of them. You know the "best consumed before..." thing? Here they even provide an hour for that. Like "you have to eat this before tomorrow at 4am". If you eat it at 5am it's already gone bad. Maybe it's like orange juice and it loses vitamins if you don't eat it fast, or something...
The best about precooked food is that's a lottery. Because sure, things have labels, but the labels are written in kanji, and I don't understand most of them. When you're faced with this...
The best you can do is just let luck decide, or go for those which label you actually understand. Consequently I'm becoming quite a fan of tuna mayo onigiri, because it's about all I know how to read.
Another thing worth mentioning is bread, because bread in Japan is a food in itself. If you're wondering why this is strange to me, it's because in Spain bread is something that goes with the food. You may use it to help yourself load food on your fork/spoon or to wipe the sauce off the plate, but it's not a meal. Bread in Japan is filled with crazy things that go from noodles to croquettes to meat. It's fascinating. Wonderful. Potentially deathly.
Then there are the days when I decide to cook and even go shop for groeceries... Which turns into another lottery because I don't know half of what's on the shelves nor do I have any idea what to cook with it, so I end up walking around the aisles for hours, looking lost and hungry.
Of course there are known things like fruits and vegetables... But then you stop to look at them and notice the price, and find yourself suddenly considering inventing refrigerated cardboard boxes so your parents can mail you apples and maybe grapes. Please take into account that to the prices showed you have to add an 8% tax.
Over 7 USD for a bunch of grapes.
Over a dollar each orange... Or at least I think they're oranges, because they are FREAKING HUGE.
Over 4 USD EACH APPLE. In Spain you can get a whole kilo for that price... And okay, maybe Spanish ones aren't the size of a pumpkin, but anyway.
Have you ever heard that food in Japan is small? LIES. Their vegetables are titanic. I swear Ninjin (my pet rabbit btw) is smaller than those carrots, and every other vegetable is produced in similar proportions, which the notable exception of the tiny tiny potatoes. I find this rather annoying.
Faced with this situation, the only possible answer is to let yourself be dragged to the snacks aisle, which calls you wtih sweet matcha voices and uncomplicated pseudo food.
Then again when you discover these are also considered snacks in Japan you start to rethink your ideas on life and existence:
By the way, do you know something that annoys me the hell out about Japan? Everything comes wrapped in about a thousand plastic bags each. EVERYTHING. They well plastic bottles wrapped in plastic bags, for some stupid reason. For example, you may see this packet of biscuits and consider that once you open it the biscuits will be there, wrapping-less, waiting for you. WRONG.
And like this, mostly everything: pocky or kit-kat... Speaking of which, there's a pocky called 大人のミルク. Translated it's "adult milk"... Maybe I'm wrong in the head, but uhm. Doesn't that sound kind of... perverted?
From time to time you can also find some international food at supermarkets, you jump on it like a wolf. Okay, so each olive oil bottle is over 6 USD and it's 3 USD for a can of sardines, but anyway. Necessities can't be ignored.
And with that you cook: sometimes it's Spanish, like potato omelette.
Sometimes it's more Japanese (I cooked none of these I'm lying my friend made all of them)
First picture it's nabe. You put a pot on top of a stove on the table, and pour some soup and noodles and tofu and soy and whatever you want, and meat in very thin slices so it cookes really fast. Then everyone gets some on their bowls. It's very typical of winter (and delicious).
Second picture is oyakodon, which we had for dinner a few nights ago because neighbor/friend Camille cooked! It's rice with chicken, onion and egg in soy sauce, mirin and dashi. It's delicious and super easy to cook, but the best about it is its name... 親子丼 is how it's written: 丼 means bowl, 親 meants parents and 子 means child... Basically it means Parent and Child Bowl... Guess why? Because it has both chicken... And egg. Hehehehehe.
And that's all for now, because this got way too long and I got way too hungry!
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