February 16, 2010
in Food
Besidetake outs American fast foods like McDonald’s, you can find traditional Japanese fast foods all over Japan. Noodle dishes are very popular, like ramen, udon and soba noodles. My favorites are ramen with miso broth with meat and vegetables added and yakisoba, which is a stir-fried soba noodle with vegetables and meat. I’ve never tried the chuka-soba, but it sounds really good. It is boiled soba noodles with meat, vegetables or seafood. Rice dishes like sushi, donburi and curry rice are also very popular.
For people who are nervous about trying Japanese food, I recommend a good donburi bowl with tempura (tendon) or beef and onions (gyudon) on top of rice. Other street foods like oden (stew), yakitori (skewered meat or vegetables) and okonomi-yaki (pancakes filled with pork, seafood, cabbage and more) are also popular. I haven’t had the opportunity to try them, but the oden especially sounds tempting.
Some of my favorite Japanese snacks include mochi, which is a pounded, glutinous rice cake. It can be ice creamprepared in many ways. I like the deep-fried, puffed mochi, or the mochi ice cream balls, which are small round servings of ice cream covered with a layer of mochi. My favorite flavors for the ice cream includes green tea and chocolate. I’m anxious to try onigiri, which is a snack made of shaped rice with a filling. Since I haven’t found them ready-made at my local Asian market, I’ll have to try making them myself.
My friends and I really like Pocky sticks in several flavors. These are skinny hard sticks that sort of resemble tiny bread sticks that have been dipped in chocolate, strawberry and other flavored frostings. My friends also enjoy the Hello Kitty marshmallow treats. Personally, I find them a bit too sweet, but they love them so much they fight over them. The honey sesame candies are also extremely tasty.
Like most traditional Japanese meals, the traditional Japanese lunch is made of some rice, miso soup, a vegetable and meat dish, another vegetable dish, some pickled vegetables and salad. Some Westerners complain that traditional Japanese meals are like eating dinner for every meal, but that doesn’t bother me. I eat leftovers for breakfast and lunch all the time, so eating the same types of foods at each meal is not a problem and I love Japanese food! These dishes could also be packed into a Bento box for lunch on the go. Families eating in a traditional style will have Mom cook a couple of new dishes every day. At every meal, the new foods are laid out along with leftovers from the previous day or two. Each dish is set out at every meal until it is gone. I may need to try that at home with my family… it would sure use up leftovers!
