Dinner time!

Scorpions anyone? Shelley and I were walking down "snack street" in Beijing, which is a collection of booths that sell various food oddities. You can't miss the selection of grilled meats ranging from beef and lamb to, yes, scorpions. Look, I like my food with a bit of a bite to it, but THIS isn't what I had in mind...you know what I'm saying? These scorpion are skewered right before your eyes, the skewerer often being stung by the skeweree. Hungry yet? And to further entice customers, the scorpions are left on the skewer to squirm for a while. Hey, I'm all for fresh food, but this might go a bit too far for me. Don't fear, if you're not into the grilled scorpions, then how about a seahorse? Or perhaps a starfish? Or maybe you'd like some beatles or grasshoppers?

Needless to say, this was one of the more extreme things we came across in our culinary explorations. We generally found that if we put some thought into a choice for a restaurant, the entire family generally had some really great food for under $10. We were extremely gung ho about the Chinese food we were eating, but as is the case, after a while you start to get tired of eating only Chinese. But then the guilt factor sets in if you even think about wanting to eat, say, Italian food...because who comes to China to eat Italian? We got over that pretty quickly when we relied on McDonalds and granola bars to get us through some meals...a parents' best friend!

Click on the picture to see a small gallery of the stuff we saw on the snack street. Or the video below to see the squirming scorpions.

The fruit in Tokyo...

When I was in the fifth grade, I went on a class trip back to Washington D.C. to tour some of our nation's historic landmarks. At about the same time my sister Liza went on a European study abroad. One night, some months later after we had all returned, our family was sitting around the dinner table and Liza was regaling us with stories of how great various things in Europe were - the food, the people, the sites, etc. I remember feeling jealous that here everyone was listening to her stories, but no one cared about my trip. The problem was that while Liza was talking about things that were really quite interesting, the only thing that I could come up with was how great the bread was in Washington D.C. I mean, it was true. I had actually thought the bread we ate was quite good and memorable enough to mention to loved ones! Nevermind the fact that we only ate at cafeteria style restaurants our whole week. Nevertheless I was mocked, and still am, for my feeble attempt at drawing attention my way. But such is life when you're the youngest.

So it's with much trepidation, coupled with a desire to take a mulligan on that conversation, that I bring up how great the fruit is in Tokyo. I know that Tokyo isn't what comes to mind as a place to get high quality fruit. But I'm telling you, I've never had so much good fruit in all my life as I've had in the last 9 months in Tokyo. It's that good.

I think part of the reason why the fruit is so good is that there is true seasonality to what you can buy in the stores. So every three months you're treated to new fruit. If it's not in season, typically you cannot buy it. Second, it's been said that the Japanese will pay up for fruit since very little is grown locally and that end consumers will pay higher prices for good fruit. And boy do they ever! As you can see from the picture, at a high end grocery store you can buy two melons as gifts for 26,250 yen, or $250.

The pinnacle of our fruit eating experience has to be a fruit called nashi. It's technically a pear, but is shaped like an apple and has texture somewhere between an apple and pear - not too hard and not too mushy. It's got the smooth flavor of a pear with the tang of an apple. When it's at its peak ripeness, it tastes so good you actually want to shed tears of joy and happiness in gratitude to that Supreme Being who thought to create such a delicious fruit. All this from a fruit that we bought for 100 yen, or $1. Can you imagine how great the nashi would taste if we were to buy the ones pictured below for $10 and $20 a pear? I mean, the fruit would probably cure cancer and the juice would renew life like a fountain of youth. And don't get me started on the grapes. There isn't enough hyperbole to describe my feelings about grapes in Japan.



So, if you've stayed with me this far, you're probably wondering what I think of the bread in Tokyo...and does it live up to the standards set by those run down D.C.-area cafeterias? And would you believe that in a rice country such as Japan the bread is fantastic too? It is...but that's for another post.

The Easy Bake Sushi Maker...or something like that.

So in America we have Easy Bake Ovens. In Japan? They have sushi makers for kids.

We found this at the local Toys R Us and to our delight that's not all they have! There's a donut maker, bread maker, shaved ice maker and rice ball maker.

Amish Cooking in Japan

This post is brought to you by our new sponsor, Cafe Amish - for all your Amish food needs.

A great thing about living in Japan is that believe it or not, you can get pretty much any kind of ethnic food you want. Of course we love the Japanese food that we can get here, but we've been surprised with the level of quality of the hamburgers, the Italian food and we've even had very good Mexican food. As I've written about before, the Japanese are just foodies.

Well, for those of you who fear that if you were to move to Japan you'd have no outlet for your Amish cooking cravings, rest assured that we've found such a place for you in the tiny, rural resort town of Kamakura...about 90 minutes by train south of Tokyo. Taking a quick look at the menu, one realizes that perhaps the proprietors of this Cafe might be of a smaller, less zealous branch of the Amish. Maybe a more liberal, reformed version? I'll let you be the judge. Here's the menu:

Let's see we have such Amish staples as toast, lattes, 2 kinds of beer, and white cream & bean paste cakes.

Now I'm no marketing genius, though marketing is my job and I did study it in school, but I've never considered before using the Amish as some hip ploy to lure customers. I guess if you're going to differentiate yourself, you might as well REALLY differentiate yourself, right?

DIY Japanese Food

I think it can be accurately said that the Japanese are foodies. More than the average American, I think the average Japanese enjoys the experience of eating food more. I was reminded of this recently when I went out to eat Korean BBQ with co-workers who would literally ooo and aww at each tantilizing bite of food that they would eat.

I don't want to paint a broad brush here - I don't think that Americans' attitude towards food boils down to opening your mouth and shoveling it in as fast as you can...though I'm sure there is some of that...especially with me! I just think to the average Japanese, eating, especially eating out, is about more than just the one sense of taste.

It's because of that need for a multi-sensory experience, I believe, that in Japan there are many foods where, if you go into a restaurant, you have to cook your own food. I can think of at least three distinct types of wildly popular foods in Japan where you walk into the restaurant and pay for them to bring you your food so that you can then begin to cook it. They are Korean BBQ, Shabu-Shabu and what we had earlier this week, Okonomiyaki. Shelley loves Shabu Shabu, likes Korean BBQ, so I introduced her and Anthon to Okonomiyaki this week.

Okonomiyaki is essentially a Japanese-style pancake - batter filled with things like meat, seafood, vegetables, noodles and spices. You mix it all together and let it cook on a griddle in front of you. It looks weird, but it tastes good. The circular griddle with the spherical shaped holes are for something called taco-yaki - breaded balls filled with octopus. The griddle also has room for yaki-soba, fried noodles, like chow mein.

Even in a dive like this one, the experience of eating something new and cooking it yourself adds to the multi-sensory experience that I think Japanese foodies crave. I really think we enjoyed our food more because we cooked it than had the okonomiyaki pancake had just showed up for us to eat. So, maybe the Japanese are on to something there. I'm waiting for some bright business school grad to take this business model to the next level and have people pay to not only cook their food, but to also clear the table and wash the dishes.