All Exclusive Travellers

japan » day 8 » supermarket in osaka

Weird experience even though it is well known what happens if you are going to a shop far enough from your culture. Right now I can remember only two international brands there (coca cola and kitkat) and lot of rice, noodle and soy-based foods, but I swear to all kind of gods and  would never think that Osaka will be the place to see a crab packed alive into plastic. Poor bastard…

japan » day 8 » osaka station food market

One of the biggest, weirdest, but very exclusive food market is located somewhere in the basement floor of Osaka railway station (what by the way has about 7 levels). So many things were weirdly expensive (tomato ~1000 yen / kg, grape ~600 yen / half kg), but some think were weirdly cheap (mushroom ~100 yen / package and of course some fishes). If you have some extra time in Osaka railway station go and check it!

japan » day 6 » okonomi-yaki

Some call it Japanese pizza, some not, but one of the best food in Japan is okonomi-yaki. It works even better if you are full of rice, shushi, sea-things and noodle.

japan » day 4 » local asakusa-ish restaurant

Walking around Asakusa makes European people hungry. There are lots of eateries and restaurants lookalike things few meters away from Senso-ji temple. It looks that wondering around makes also the locals hungry: these places were full of them. Japan is not famous for being packed with English-speaking humans, but this area was devastating: giving the fact that it is a huge tourist attraction it was surprisingly hard to find a place to eat. It just feels surrealistic that showing the universal sign of “me wants food” might not work everywhere, but here it didn’t. They wanted to give us beer even though we were pointing to the images of foods. Had the feeling that we were not welcomed here but probably this wasn’t the case.

The afternoon was saved by a small restaurant with a Spanish-looking girl with Japanese English (practically non-existent) was inviting us in. It was an old restaurant with short menu, most of the food cost 500 yen (about 5 EUR), the portions were small but they had unique taste. I wasn’t thinking before that I am paying with my own will 500 yen only for chicken skin.

Best thing last: we had sake for the first time and there was no problem with the exotic tastes.

tokyo » experience » korot

Good! Not sure what it is, but good. We bought two pieces, the other had some fish taste which is not a compliment since this is considered as desert.

Japan’s answer to american trash-fastfood culture: Mos Burger. Few burgers are placed on rice plates, using real meat instead of homogenized, soya-enriched minced meat patties and playing jazz instead of heavily autotuned anti-music. Do not miss it!

japan » day 1 » dare to say no! #2

You are hanging around in Tokyo Shinjoku district, you are a bit hungry but not too much, you might enter in a 100 ¥ shop hoping to find some interesting but good food. You might meet with the product presented above, you might think it is cherry (anyway, you are in the country of cherry blossoming) and it will be good. You will buy it and you will open it because you are hungry (but not too much). 

And you will be disappointed. It is not cherry.

And it is not good.

japan // experiment // the dried squid

I mentioned these animals before. Being an extremely open person in food matters I wasn’t hesitating buying a package of this (by the way, it was the first money-spending event in Japan).

It tastes as it looks: vinegar. Ok, it doesn’t look vinegar, but it doesn’t taste squid either.

After consuming the third piece I started to find out a way to enjoy it and the keyword is moderation: gently biting off one offshoot (let’s call it leg from now on!), chewing it carefully, and swallowing when the vinegar taste starts to disappear. Then the same with the leg #2 and #3. Then hide the package somewhere deep and try again later when you’ve forgot the experience.