Friday, September 30, 2011

Nom, nom, nom… Part One

The first installment of what I hope to be many food blogs. 

The day after arriving I was treated to a welcome lunch by my bestest Japanese friend, Nagi.  The mall behind my residence has a variety of establishments, and you better believe that we chose the restaurant with the smiling pancakes.  Yes, smiling pancakes…

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The array of delectable goodies to be had…And for those of you who may not know, these are all fake creations to entice potential customers to dine.  No real food was harmed in the making of this window display.

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Below is a shot of the bell that you ring when you would like your server to come over.  The server then uses a hand-held electronic pad to key in your order.  Very neat.  Did I mention the supermarkets have digital displays for prices.  Also very neat.  I’ll try and grab a photo at a later date.  Back to the bell…I do wish we had this type of service in Canada, for those of us who like to take our time.

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Now on to my first selection of snack food, currently kept in my tiny fridge.  Breakfast-friendly yogurts, apple juice, tiny slices of ham, and Kraft cheese slices!  The best part about the cheese slices is that they taste like the cheese on Subway subs, which for some reason I have a severe weakness for.  Tastes kind of like traditional American cheese.  YUM.  Definitely can’t be healthy.

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My new favourite snack: tsuna mayoneizu onigiri.  Tuna mayo rice balls.  Amazing.  I would like to thank Nagi for this recommendation.  They have saved my life for three consecutive days thus far.  I have yet to branch out to the various other flavours, but will eventually become more adventurous upon getting bored of tuna, I presume.  A bonus is that they are usually between 68 to100 yen.  Cheap and yummy, excellent combination!

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In only two grocery shopping trips, I have found that Japanese supermarkets have an incredible amount of prepared dishes.  From small salads in single servings to full dinners.  Most prices are very reasonable, although the salads are a bit more but nothing much different from what you would pay for deli salads in Canada.  The variety of prepared snacks is astounding.  Hopefully I will be able to sneak in some photos at some point.  But for now I decided to take home this dish, consisting of a chicken breast with tartar sauce, tiny spec of spaghetti noodles, carrots, corn and rice.  This was 399 yen.  I recently had a dinner almost identical at the food court in the mall for 299 yen.  This is dinner tonight, and will therefore find out later how it compares to the fresh food court version.

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Well, preparing this blog has made me quite hungry.  That and it’s dinner time.  As I head to heat my first supermarket chikin dinner, I say, toodles!

Hope everyone at home is doing well, and keep in touch!

xoxoxo

2 comments:

  1. Hey! This is Nagi! I am glad that you liked Tuna rice ball! Look forward to see you again soon!

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  2. A friend of mine owns a Viet-Thai restaurant in Ingersoll and he's used those electronic order-taking devices for years! I remember how excited I was the first time I saw it. Living in the future, man.

    Glad to see you're getting along well!

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