Lost In Translation Tidbit : Eating

After having my first real Japanese "Boxed Set" lunch today I figured a little Tidbit update might be in order.

Eating is suprisingly difficult in Japan. Everyone is on the go, and only few places are sit down restuarants, and those that are are usually so busy you can't find a spot. Many places don't have English menus, and sometime they don't have pictures or window displays to be able to point out what you want.

While it can be exciting, the adventure of just picking randomly wears thin and, even when you can see what you are buying, you have only the slightest idea of what it is. "This kinda looks like noodles with mushrooms" you think. You get it and its freezing cold, the mushrooms are some other random ingredient that is indescribable and you've just wasted 8 bucks. Like I said, this is fun for the first couple of times, but when you haven't eaten anything all day its kinda harrowing.

That said most of my meals have been great so far. And Cheap. The best snacks are these little palm sized triangles of rice that you can get from any corner store. They are wrapped in this funny way that keeps the seaweed paper dry and in the middle is some mystery ingredient (if you could read japanese you'd probably know). Each that I have tried have tasted great, and are great to snack on waiting for a train, or in the middle of a walk. They cost about a dollar thirty.

Today I had a salmon sandwhich with a coffee for breakfast but as with most of their breads it was sweet and a bit of a struggle to get down. For lunch, after walking probably 6 kms I took a deep breath stepped into this tiny place and ordered a 30 dollar sushi boxed set. I could tell what probably three things on the plate were, but for the rest it all just looked beautiful. Everything was tasty, apart from two pieces of what I assume is Japanese fruit that was sweet but mealy. On the side it came with green tea which was waaay better than the shit we get in Australia, miso, rice and this weird cup of omelette that had prawn, this bit of fruit, grapes and mushrooms.

Overall I am glad to have got a real Japanese meal, but like I said, its hard to eat mystery foods all the time, so I think tomorrow night I might have something recognisable again.