A Cup o' Tea

Today I'll put a more positive spin on Japanese taste buds---one really good thing you can find here is a large variety of fruit teas, juices and flavored water.  I enjoy peach tea, lemon tea, acerola juice, lemon honey water and lemon ginger water, among others.  One of my first delicious discoveries was milk tea, which is exactly like what it sounds, a combination of milk and tea.  On the other hand, one time I got what I thought was peach tea, only to get it home and discover that it was peach-flavored milk---not so good.

All of these are really popular here, you always see a large variety in convenience stores, supermarkets and vending machines.  I can get my milk tea hot or cold---the vending machines and convenience stores here have sections of the cases that are kept hot rather than cold.  I think, based on what is for sale, that these types of drinks are more popular than sodas. For the record there does also seem to be a large market for coffee and espresso drinks.

check out the "Juicy Banana Latte" on the second shelf down, far right--it's not ALL good

a random selection from our fridge

Somethin' Smells Fishy

So, I've posted a lot about the supermarket here and for the most part I've tried to illustrate how they are more or less like American supermarkets, especially in design and general atmosphere. 

However, the one really appreciable difference in a supermarket here is the seafood department.  The smell of a Japanese supermarket seafood section is really unique.  And not in a good way.  Most of the time all I can stand to do is take a deep breath, hold it, run in and grab some frozen shrimp, and run back out again.  I really have to concentrate on not making a nasty face when I'm in there.

The unusual smells, of course, come from the unusual items on display....

"What're you lookin' at?"
(these are whole squid, if you can't tell)

wonder if there are any pearls in there

"Let us ouuuuutttttt!"

This is just a sampling of what you might see on any given day.  I have seen many, many sea creatures laid out on slabs, heads still on, unwrapped, like they just flopped up out of the ocean.  And we're in a pretty land-locked part of the country, it's not like this is dockside or anything.  These photos were taken at Aeon, which is a really modern supermarket so you can find plenty of de-headed, filleted, shrink-wrapped fish that is more like what you see in the US.   At the small local supermarkets it's pretty much all this kind of stuff---I can't even imagine how you go about wrestling these things home.  I realize that to many people this is a positive indicator that this is really, really fresh seafood but, alas, I am not one of those people.

 I even hesitated in putting the label "food" on this post.  A bit of a stretch, if you ask me.  :)

Oink Oink

This weekend we took a trip into Tokyo to run some errands and we visited the newly reopened Wendy's in Omotesando.  There used to be about a hundred Wendy's in Japan but a few years ago the Japanese company who operated them closed them all down. 

But now they are back, and the new company who operates them is planning to open them all back up!  Woo-hoo!  In general, missing American restaurants that we used to frequent is one of the top three worst things about being here, in my opinion.  There are times when thinking about a particular item on a particular restaurant's menu can really get me down.  And we didn't even eat out all the time in the US---I cooked a good bit.  Something to think about if you are ever contemplating moving to a foreign country.  But now we can add Frostys to the list of things we can obtain here and boy, let me tell you, were they good.

When we were researching exactly where the new Wendy's was, Chad ran across this short video from some fellow expats, who, by their excellent choice of words, must also hail from the southern region of the US:



Yes, the foie gras burger is for real, it's a gimmick Wendy's has introduced here.  I think it may also have truffles on it.  Needless to say, we stuck to the standards.  And, at the end our our meal, I got my picture taken with.....Japanese Wendy!  :D