Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Food In Japan
We didn't really worry that we'd go hungry in Japan but it's probably fair to say that we were a little concerned about how we'd actually order a meal, and whether we would recognise what it was when it arrived. As it turned out there are numerous reasons why finding food here is very easy.....Plastic Food!
Lots of restaurants (and not just the cheap ones) have extensive displays of plastic food in the windows. This doesn't appear to be done solely to help foreigners, but it's pretty helpful. It does get a bit tricky when there are no matching pictures on the menus indoors, but then you can always point at the plastic food or (as we tried once or twice) you take the menu out into the street and compare the Japanese writing in the window with the menu and try and figure out which one you want!
Vending Machines
Some other restaurants, usually fast food type places, have vending machines instead of plastic food. The machines don't actually dispense the food, just a ticket that you take to the counter and exchange for some real food. Out on the street and there are vending machines everywhere. Even in the fairly residential area where we stayed in Tokyo there were machines on almost every corner or in doorways. The machines mainly sold drinks (including beer) but cigarettes and ice cream were quite common, and on station platforms you could even get hot food (ie. frozen ready-meal hot dogs and the like).
Convenience Stores
Self Catering in Japan proved to be a little difficult, we only stayed in one place that actually had a kitchen and we only rarely stumbled across anything that could be described as a supermarket. However, it seems that buying your evening meal from the local shop is fairly common. It doesn't sound all that appealing I know, but there was a huge range and some of them were quite good, and since it feels like you're never more than 50 paces away from a '7-11' (or similar) store you will always be able to find hot, microwaved noodles (Mmmm...).
Familiar Food..... or is it?
There are many familiar food labels in the shops, sometimes these are the same products but occasionally they have a bit of a Japanese twist to them, most notably the bright green Kit Kat which we guess was meant to be green tea flavoured.
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