Japanese Western Food

One of the things being in another country is you start looking for the familiar. I'd assume that this typically manifests itself as a craving for a particular food that is common in one's own country. In Japan this is simply filtered down into anything that was not scraped off the hull of a cruise ship.

The Japanese fancy themselves culinary savants. The is easily seen in shows like "Iron Chef." What you may not see is that Japanese have an obsession with food. Any normal conversation will at least touch on foods in some way. Japanese scientists have gone so far as to classify new tastes like Umami, Shibui, and Kokumi. Strange as this may be the Japanese seemingly have no sense of taste (perhaps this is why they obsess?). This is fairly obvious given that every meal will contain plain rice which is about as bland as you can get. The favored drinks are tea which tastes like hot water filtered through twigs and hay. Not just that but even the textures are gross. I've had to eat things here like shrimp and muscles in what appeared to be gelled fat, and one of the most awful things is "oden" a variety dish were everything is in amorphous blobs and is akin to chewing through a pack of condoms. It is in fact so bad that many deaths occur each year, primarily in elderly people caused by choking on these mucusy morsels. But in an effort to show their prowess they've taken it upon themselves to mimic western food, which unfortunately to the non-existent Japanese pallet something invariably gets lost in translation.

I don't have pictures for all of these so bear with me.

Spaghetti:

The Italian classic. This is wheat noodles in tomato sauce it should be easy right? Apparently not. For one let's just touch on the notion that Western food is considered somewhat chic. As a result something as simple as pasta goes for about $10 a plate. This may also be as little as 1/2 a cup of pasta, definitely not anything that will fill you up. At least the restaurants have some decent pastas even if they are woefully overpriced. The dorms seem to be another matter. At breakfast a choice is given for western food, this usually translates into the same thing with a piece of ham or just on one plate instead of 2 (I don't get it either). It can also mean getting spaghetti...for breakfast. I'm not sure where they got this information but needless to say it is quite the head-scratcher. However aside from temporal issues, it is actually possible to mess it up. For dinner occasioanlly you may find spaghetti as well (usually as a side) or at least what you think is spaghetti. It's actually noodles covered in ketchup. Yes noodles with ketchup, delicious. I know a couple of people who would do this but I also expect them to perish in their 30s among a pile of discarded pizza boxes clutching a bong.

For an even bigger slap to the face try noodles covered with mayonnaise. Maybe they should just stick to sea creatures.

Bread

Okay so the bread isn't always terrible. They have invented things like "Melon Pan" (It wants to sound french) that do taste quite good. Also are the sausage baguette type things you can find at most bakeries. Then there are the eyebrow raisers like bread covered in corn and mayonnaise. To this day I still have not the courage to try it.

Mexican

Mexican is very rare in Japan. I dare say that is is non-existent because my experience is something that may look the part but tastes very "unique." For example take this number:

It looks kinda like a burrito, however note that the sauce is pretty much a tomato sauce creating an authentic Mexican-Italian something-or-other. It is also served with an Italian dressing salad adorned with guacamole. Right....


This dish is the same thing. It looks like it's Mexican but the sauce tastes kinda sweet.

The McDonald's Mega Mac

Actually this is pretty damn American and not surprising as McDonald's tastes the same the world over. This was a special burger that was for a limited time - In the unlikely event that the Japanese get something right it is only for a limited-time. This is a common business practice here as a lot of foods are considered seasonal. So things like the awesome Sprite 3G disappear and will never be seen again. - but was so popular it became a regular item. It's just a really big, Big Mac. It's got 4 patties and it's pretty delicious as far a McDonald's goes. Definitely has that American arm tingling feel to it.