THAT ONE HUGE POST ABOUT FOOD

WARNING: IN THE FOLLOWING POST A HUGE AMOUNT OF PICTURES UNRELATED TO EACH OTHER WILL BE PRESENTED TO YOU.

In a random order I shall present to you snacks and foods I like/have an opinion about... Or really something to say in this SUPERLONG POST. Because well, who wouldn't love food (don't answer that)? Because man, I love food and it would kill me if I didn’t rant about it at least once and when I at least know something about it.. as in food in Japan. Food was/is also a very big part of my Christmas/New Year's/people visiting. To me, food makes the holiday. It's those special cuisines that make the party. Beer and barbeque during midsummer, casseroles and ham with mustard on Christmas etc... And ohyes, Christmas. Just to mention, this year I only got to eat the exquisite, fattening Finnish Christmas food at the Indepencende party at the Finnish Embassy in Hiro-o. They even had peas. PEAS, MAN, PEAS. And oh yeah, pork and liver casserole, cool story bro.

People rant a lot about Japanese food, don’t they? And after being here, it’s obvious why. Everything is either so delicious or just so fascinatingly weird/bad that you taste various things (except natto). Usually in Japanese cuisine there are a lot of vegetables, rice or noodles, a lot of seafood, meat... Also fruits everywhere. The Japanese taste in sweet things can be quite... interesting/overwhelming. You have the crepes and chocolate-filled ice cream portions and cakes but you also have mushy mochi and redpean paste and gelatine. Ohgod, the amount of gelatine in stuff ( especially in ice cream awesomeness but later about that). But well, my little food adventure post starts now. Things that I like mostly. And to get it out of your system, yes vending machines are awesome, yes they have them everywhere and yes, I will miss them more than anything else back in Finland. Thank you.

NOW PICTURES OF FOOD AND TXT (some taken by awsum VIIJA C: ):

Sushi
Yes, it’s good. It’s cheap if you go to a right kaitensushi (there’s a belt where the sushi goes around, very neat) place. They havee your basic tuma and salmon sushi and shrimp and then everything else you can basically just imagine. There's makisushi, nigiri etc. Places like Sushiro where one plate costs 105 yen is not bad at all. The worst sushi here is way better than the best ones I've had in Finland.

CIIIIRCLE OF A LIIIFEE AND ITMOVESUSALL

The most wonderful sushi ever; salmoncheesebasil... thingy.

All you need to have good sushi.

... That makes me a bit sad :C

Ohyuuuus, MEAT. Roast beef sushi also has wasabi and DAMN.... IS GOOOOD.

We named this thing "The badlycut sushi"

THE BEST SUSHI EVER... AND IT HAS AVOKADO.

Oh hello you Corn Flake filled dessert there rolling with the sushi... And only 230 yen?

Sweet potatoes. Dish that you love or hate.

Yes, it is ham. With cheese. On top of rice. I know. BUT IT WAS GOOD.

Really, the ones with only fish aren't even the best sushisin these kaitensushi places... Or well, they are GOOD but these combos are just something you cant resist tasting. I can guarantee that.

Okonomiyaki
The delicious, the most perfect hungover (if you didn't have to prepare it yourself) food that originates from Osaka/Kansai area and it’s also good here in Kanto/Chiba/in the middle of the countryside. So in reversed order... This is OKONOMIYAKIIIII... And how it kinda works.

Ready to eat... And yes, that's the grill

The pancake is the okonomiyakipancake itself, everything else is topping. The flakes are dried fish and the green...ish flakes are seaweed.

"It's always the same, always the thing..." *lalalalala*

When the pancake is cooked, you add okonomiyaki sauce (kinda like Worchester sauce)

Oh hello awkwardly positioned picture... Here you see that the pancake has to be FLIPPED.

4 different okonomiyakis with different filling

The cute little spatula is very useful when eating this thing.

So after the okonomiyaki sauce, you add mayo. And no, the mayo isn't the same as in Finland. It's... different.

Yes, the top right one has sausages in it.

This is what okonomiyaki looks BEFORE eating and preparing.

Okay, this is NOT Okonomiyaki but it originates from Kansai too.. Takoyaki aka tentacle pieces inside hot dough and incredible obnoxiously bad when cold. This dish requires some silly eating.

.... Everyone's beautiful on the inside.

There's a place I don't have any pictures from and that's yakiniku. TL;DR: you have a table with a grill in the middle and you cook your own DELICIOUS meat. It's bit pricy BUT OHMANSOGOOOOOOD. And oh, the small grill is with real flame, they use coal/gas. A lot of Japanese restaurants really depend on you preparing your own food and it's a shame that this kind of a restaurant culture is non-existent in Finland. Another good example was when me and Masae-san went to Mt.Fuji (more about that later) and had some... ate... went to a very Japanese restaurant.

Me going OMNOMNOMNOM

I've never grilled so much in my life outside of the Finnish grilling season.

The fish were fresh. I know this because the other one was still twitching. The cook came to apologize for that.

Some nabe/udon to soooothe your soul after grilling some.

Ohright, food... That includes snacks. Japanese people love them. They are everywhere in every type there is possible. The flavours are countless, the firms providing them never end and the price is usually just right: very cheap so you can buy them and get fat and then feel bad about it. Like all of then, but hey, so it goes. One day I bought Strawberry icecream daifuku and it was GOOD. I'm not kidding, the little plastic FORK that came with the ice cream just added the wonderfulness of the whole thing. The salty snack vary from your normal chips to chocolate-coated ones to wasabichili-edamame... With cheese. For some reason there's a lot of snacks in a little jar shaped like stick, usually having a salty flavour... of potato salad. But okay, some little things I've eaten/drank.

Starbucks is everywhere, even in the smallest convinience stores

Yus, it's the legendary toucan/parrot candy. In different flavours!

I TOLD YOU SO.

Aah, Pockys. So good. It's your basic equipment if you wanna be a true Finnish otaku. Kawaii ja silleen.

Kinda "meh" but cheap.

Cake inside a little chocolate button. OHYEAH.

This is taken from a store that sells snacks. Only snacks. Yes, everything has sugar in this picture. Even the baskets.

Talkijg about sweet things, I dunno if I was the only as a kid but I always thought that Japanese food culture had a void in the spot where there were supposed to be all the candy and bread and cakes and everything full of carbohydrates. Haha, yes...Sweet stuff... What about all the breads and cakes and other dessert-like things that they have in Japan? Japan. is. full. of. sweet. stuff.

I mean it.

If there's a food that exists, there's both salty and sweet version of it, no matter what it is.

NO. MATTER. WHAT.

"But oh, girls like sweet stuff."

Yes, I like to eat something that rots my teeth out and makes me feel like the Michelin man afterwards. Yes.

That is what I need.

No but really, I have nothing against it, I like trying new stuff... But I cant forgive two facts:

• Coffee is either sweet (like my sweet bby Max Coffee) and makes you all sugerhigh or it's blacker than your soul and makes you look like mopey little emo for the rest of the day... Until you have Max Coffee C:
• BREAD IS LIKE SPONGECAKE. TASTES NOTHING, LOOKS LIKE A SPONGE AND IT BREAKS WHEN YOU TRY TO BUTTER THE DAMN THING.

Ohyus, bread/cakes(/ice cream will be here too)...

You really wanna taste everything even though you know you're gonna be hugely disappointed.

Also notice the spongiest bread there on the top of the shelf there.

Your basic breakfast items all JAPANESE. And coffee too.

Curry bread (yus, Japanese curry inside a deepfried bread) with an boiled egg. OHYEAH.

Another form of bread; only the middle part (because the edges are stone compared to them) of the bread loaf with... things inside. Usually lettuce, ham and mayo.

All you can eat restaurant where 80% of the food are cakes and desserts? ...SIGN ME UP.

All this cake and only 90 minutes...

This was good. It's ice cream with fruits. Of course it's good.

Chocolate and ice cream you say? With cream puffs you say?

Chocolate, fruits AND ice creams... AND CORN FLAKES. OHYEAAAAAH.

Well all this food seems fattening and not healthy for your wallet either. Maybe I'll go to the supermarket and buy some really awesome fruits and...

Look at all this fruit!

.... wait, that's the price for that one apple.

HOMEMADE CURRY, AWAAAAAAYYYYYY.

Okay, so the food can be expensive if you go to the wrong place with the wrong budget etc etc, life happens. But really, doing groceries can be a challenge here, especially for a person who comes from a country where two big chains basically control the price of the food in the stores... Yay? But still the basic rules apply: healthy food is more expensive than the unhealthy one, imported food items have skyhigh prices compared to the products from the "local" area (in this case Asia and Oseania)

Okay, izakaya food.... Wait, Izakaya? In short, restaurant/bar where you drink. Usually a very cheap one. Or not. Depends really. But it's fun. Food in izakayas is usually something you can share with others... or it's easy to share. Again, depends. But sharing is caring so don't hog all that chicken to yourself!

No matter what I think about KFC, it's still deepfried chicken and it's still good.

Eggrolls and radish. So gooood.

Did someone say yakisoba?

The coolest drink in the world.

Oh, edamame. You always amaze me.

That's meat, some deepfried meat and edamame. Perfect.

You have no idea who good this fish is.

Noodles are really the best food after a night out.

Hadn't had enough edamames? C:

Yup, that's a lot of random food.

Even though Japanese cuisine has proven to be better than I thought, there are a lot of things that I miss here. Well, that’s a long list anyways but food-wise the list isn’t that long. In Japan, milk products are very expensive. I am very used to eating milk products back in Finland but here the price is just ridiculous or some things aren’t just available just easily. Especially sour cream that would save a lot of meals. And make a lot more interesting. Also potatoes. Yeah, it’s so horrible clichéd but I miss potatoes. Yeah, here the selection is way better but being a cheapskate that I am, I am not paying something around 50 yen for one potato. ONE POTATO, C’MON.

It’s weird that you start to miss foods that I don’t eat a lot back home. Because damn, I am eating so much rice and noodles here that I won’t be eating a lot right when I get back to Finland... (I still need to buy a rice cooker to make my life normal again.) But dishes/foods like porridge, different kind of salads, casseroles, beans, sour cream etc etc. This list can only grow and grow more I think about it. But hey, that's just awesome. Why? Because food is always relevant and it's yet again another priviledge I get to enjoy from everyday. This was a huge post so if you got here, congrats, you're probably very confused now.

Until next time C: