The Challenges of Cooking and Eating in Japan

By Molly Lauer (Benno works too much, so I'm lapping him here again in our posts :)

Reasons why our diet has been so different this summer while in Japan:

1. A typical Japanese diet (miso soup and rice for breakfast, instant meals grabbed from 7-11 during a lunch break from work, and rice, seafood, and root vegetables for dinner) looks very different than my American diet. 
2. Many of my staple foods are very expensive ($4/6 slices of lunch meat, $2/apple, $1.50/loaf of bread – only 6 slices though!, $2/quart of milk or juice) and we’re trying to practice living on a limited budget so I substitute with cheaper foods (carrots, yogurt, rice, and water).  I have gone so far as to trade my famous glass of milk with dinner for water!  Now that is sacrifice! :)
3. Benno is internship is at a Japanese snack food company, Bourbon Confectionaries (no, unfortunately, this does NOT mean all their candies are filled with alcohol).  Hence we have an unending supply of free snacks in our pantry at any given time:  sardine-infused trail mix, green tea flavored cookies, vinegar flavored juices, chips, and candies—much to the dismay of our intensions to begin to eat more healthily.
4. I cannot read the labels on things in the store and so have yet to find Dijon mustard, pork, or almonds (ended up putting lots of sliced garlic instead on our salads by mistake one day, thinking I’d bought sliced almonds – oops!).
5. When I do buy something that I’ve properly identified, or just bought anyway because it looks interesting, I cannot read the directions for cooking on the back.  I’ve learned the symbol for “minute” though and so usually just dump it in our skillet for that long and hope it works ok! :)
6. Cheese is nowhere to be found.  Ok, not totally true; I did eventually find it at the specialty food store and paid $10 for about 6oz because I was desperately craving a grilled cheese sandwich!  They simple don’t eat it nearly as much as we do.
7. The oven we have in our apartment (a feature of the microwave) is broken.  This means no baking or broiling of any kind:  no casseroles, baked meats, cookies or brownies (REALLY missing these as I can’t find anything like them!), etc.
8. We only have 1 stove top so cooking dinner is often an amusing juggling act.  One night it looked something like this:  sauté chicken in pan and set aside; steam broccoli and set aside; cook pasta while simultaneously microwaving sauce; reheat chicken and broccoli in the microwave and then FINALLY mix it all for chicken and broccoli fettuccini alfredo! Phew!  And still the broccoli was only luke warm! 
9. Our fridge is the size of a typical dorm fridge so we can only keep 1 container of juice, 1 type of fruit, and 1 leftover in it at any given time.

So I’m trying to adjust to the ways of this culture and our circumstances and therefore trying to eat more Japanese.  This means I’ve let rice be the basis of many of our meals, tried many new foods, and learned to cook as many local foods as possible.  So far, I have learned to cook:

1. Kimpira Goba and Carrots – Julienned (I had to look it up too!) and sautéed burdock roots and carrots, soaked in soy sauce and sake.
2. Curry with vegetables – True, it’s Indian cuisine, but the Japanese (and Benno!) LOVE it!
3. Simmered Kabocha (pumpkin) – their’s is different than ours though, smaller with a green peel and very tender and sweet.  It reminds me of sweet potatoes and I love it (and Benno tolerates it). 
4. Soba noodles – they’re like a thin, tender, very soft pasta noodle almost.  I just tried a soba salad with a soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and sesame seed marinated with diced peppers, mangos, and peanuts – delicious!  Next time you invite me to a summer pot-luck, you’re sure to see this! :)
5. Stirfry – a staple dinner of ours.  A base of rice with sautéed vegetables of any kind – onions, peppers, carrots, eggplant, squash, burdock root, bean sprouts, corn, you name it, if we have it, it gets dumped in!
6. Makeshift coffee - milk tea (a sweet, traditional drink here) infused with a packet of instant coffee.  

Many of my attempts at American meals have also been flops.  Tacos are not nearly as good without taco seasoning, taco sauce, or cheese.  And I have not yet figured out how to make pancakes, as silly as that sounds.  The result was very rubber, bland disaster.  Sorry Benno and Aaron!

So it’s true I’m not yet NEARLY as good a cook of my wonderful new family (Chloe’, Cathleen, and Jonathan are all VERY good cooks) or my sister, Becky, but it’s been fun to experiment and practice some.  I’ll tell you though, it’ll be nice to go to a grocery store, be able to find what I need, afford it, read the directions on the package, and cook it without first determining sequencing priorities!  My dear, green breakfast smoothies, cheese, and brownies, watch out!, because I'm coming back to devour you soon! :)

 Our most-frequented stir-fry dinners

 Salmon on Asparagus with a Sweet Corn and Tomato Relish - yum!