Tongba is the traditional and indigenous drink of the Limbu people of eastern Nepal. To Limbus, Tongba is analogous to what vodka is to Russians, wine to French, Guinness to Irish and saké to Japanese.

-Wikipedia

Photo Courtesy davidheidebrecht

What to do when in Kathmandu when it rains? Drink tongba, of course! Tongba is the traditional alcoholic drink made from millet. It’s cooked and fermented, then dried and stored for about 6 months.

Tongba is drank out of large wooden containers (also called tongba) with tall straws crimped at one end to filter the hot water thats poured on top. As you drink, more water is added to top it off and keep the taste from becoming too strong.

They are great for cold and rainy days, since the drink really warms you both, both physically and in spirit.

According to legends, chhaang is also popular with the Yeti, who often raid isolated mountain villages to drink it.

Photo Courtesy in.beleza

Pizza in Japan is treated much like most other foreign concepts: it’s kind of the same but brow-beaten to fit Japanese cultural kookiness. It certainly looks like pizza, but closer examination shows the Japanese are the Jackson Pollacks of pizza making.

Don’t get me wrong, you can find normal Western toppings. Its also one of the only ways to get cheese that you don’t have to take out a loan to pay for. On Kyushu, we have a chain called California Pizza and my favorite is the Spicy Pepper Pizza, which like like a pepperoni and sausage with a tangier sauce. Many Italian establishments serve standard Italian versions like margherita.

The seafood lovers type is not uncommon in the West (but I’m not so sure about the chunks of salmon and squid rings). Then things get a little strange. Enter the most loved topping in Japan: mayonnaise!! Seriously, it can be put on anything and only in copious quantities- including pizza. My local convenience store often sells single slices with a whole hot dog/sausage on top, covered in mayo, of course. Mayo is one of my least liked foods.

Take a look at this pretty standard looking menu:

Pizza Hut Japan’s exclusive Double Roll pie perhaps takes the prize. This monster is 646 calories per slice and boasts little bacon wrapped sausages baked into the crust and mini hamburger patties on top among a plethora of other toppings. It comes with maple syrup for extra flavor and will only set you back $35US. Given a chance, I would try this. But no mayo.

Double Roll

Cousin to the Above

Here is a list of some toppings that have been known to show up.

• Squid
• Squid Ink Sauce
• Salmon
• Corn
• Dried Flakes Of Fish
• Eel
• Kimchi
• Raisins
• Corn (blasphemy if you ask me)
• Mayonnaise
• Spaghetti
• Cabbage Curry
• Seaweed
• Egg Yolk
• Whole Chicken Breasts
• Tater Tots
• Tuna
• Eggplant
• 1/6 Chunks of Tomato
• Curry Powder

Ummm, Squid Ink Pizza

What is often called a “Japanese pizza” is the delicious okonomiyaki. Its pan-fried batter cake with various ingredients. I’ve got some great video of the process of making one, which is usually done right in front of you. Perhaps I’ll cover that soon….

For all the strangeness and corn and mayo out there, there are some unique and tasty pies available in Japan. You can (usually) get a standard one and for the adventurous there are plenty of options. Just hold the mayo.

Easily my favorite place to eat is my local kaiten zushi, or conveyor belt sushi. Its quite a novel yet simple concept. You sit at counters and tables and the food rolls by on little plates at 8 centimeters per second; grab it if you want to eat. Not only can you manage with little human interaction, but it is cheap with the vast majority of the two-pieces-of-sushi-per-plate prices at ¥105 (around $1).

A coupe minutes from my apartment is Sushi Meijin, a famous chain of kaiten zushi restaurants. I usually get there once a week, but when I first came to Japan it was a lot more!

It works like this: Get there on off peak times otherwise it can really be packed. When you are seated, there is free hot green tea so fill a glass. Dishes for dipping soy sauce are up above, and bowls of wasabi packets roll by if you want a little extra kick.

The selection that rolls by is somewhat limited, so I usually order by pressing a button on the table and then telling a waitress. Its certain to be fresh that way if you come in at odd times too.

It is amazing the piles of plates that are stacked. I am consistently out eaten by pretty young kids and very old people alike. I usually have 6 – 8 plates, maybe 10 if I’m really hungry. Very small totals for the average customer.

On Sunday nights at about 8pm, Sushi Meijin has store wide contest for prizes using Japan’s version of rock, paper, scissors: junken. I’ll explain that some other time, but the contest with people standing on their stools and benches yelling is entertaining. Took me by surprise the first time.

My friend Steve and his sister came to visit last year and I decided to place my now broken compact camera on a plate and send it around. The music (Cowboy Bebop theme song, Tank! by The Seatbelts) is the most obvious of ones I picked out, I know, but it fit so perfect with little editing so I went with it.

At the end, the manager snatches it and brings it back. It only went about 1/5 of the way round. He wasn’t too happy.

The concept of kaiten zushi was invented by Yoshiaki Shiraishi (1914-2001) in 1958 and an estimated 3,000 such restaurants currently exist in Japan. Interestingly, Yoshiaki also created a style where sushi is served by robots, but that has yet to become popular. Yet.

Polaroid picture by flickr user goocy. In post pictures are by myself and flickr user dianaschnuth.

Ummmm….. Dr. Pepper. Especially that old timey Cherry-Vanilla Dr. Pepper (which I can actually buy in Japan at a curiosity shop). It’s so good that its often imitated: the surest form of flattery or failure?. Some of these imitations achieve both at the same time.

A few of my favorite names include:

• Dr. Riffic: Trying too hard
• Doctor: Cutting the bullsh*t
• Dr. Smooth: My nickname in college
• Dr. Foots: Does not sound delicious
• Dr. Dazzle: Great pro-wresting name
• Dr. Shaws: Too similar to Dr. Scholls wart remover
• Dr. Becker: Pecker?
• Mr. Sipp Soda: Best served in sippy cup

The full 127 non-complete set of cans are as follow:

If you like this post you may be interested in the Kit-Kat Flavors of Japan. For more information and the source of the above photos, see Would You Like to be a Pepper Too?. The above flickr photos are courtesy of users esther17.

If you like this don’t miss Thai Ronald McDonald and the
Colonel in a kimono.

This time ’round we have the Colonel in full samurai regalia. I’m not sure what else to say here, but there he is. Dressed up. As a samurai.

I didn’t take the above photos.

Note: Click the pictures to check out the new image viewing trick I installed!

Since I have been in Japan, I have been lucky enough to work at just one school everyday and every Tuesday and Thursday the art teacher makes an appearance. Her name is Yuko-sensei and she rocks. In addition to being the art teacher, she speaks conversational English and happens to be the best cook on Kyushu.

Every week on her days here, she hauls in some sort of concoction from her kitchen, usually in the form of a large crock pot of delicious soup. She has introduced me to a plethora of Japanese foods I wouldn’t otherwise have eaten.

And Japan is known for some strange foods. Squid, octopus, pufferfish, horse… even dolphin and whale! Yep, its in the news as Japan’s yearly scientific expedition is off to snag a quota of 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales. Australia has already had some headline grabbing confrontations.

The point of this post is not to debate the ethics of whaling and I won’t go into how the whales killed for scientific purposes end up in fish markets, but I will say a few things though. If you eat meat, I don’t see much difference in the killing of a cow versus a whale for food if they are not endangered (which some hunted whales are). But that is certainly a general statement as there are many aspects such as killing methods to be considered.

I’m sure by know you have figured out that this week’s specialty is the infamous whale (kujira in Japanese). It was cooked two ways and I tried both.

The first was the skin of the whale that in part times was used to make lantern oil. It was thinly sliced and semi-transparent, just what I pictured blubbery whale meat to look like. It was prepared in a mix of cooked potatoes and carrots and the most “fishy” thing I have ever tasted. That’s the only way to describe it: fishy. It tastes like thawed Gorton’s Fish Sticks that have been stored in your Dad’s tackle box smell. I would guess this is a more common flavor in Asian seafood than Western, where the goal is for fish not to smell like fish.

The second dish was described as the actual “meat” of the whale and was fried in a batter with ginger embellishments. Delicious. The texture was soft and chewy and the color, surprisingly, a dark tinted reddish brown. It reminded me not unlike a very tender and better tasting chicken liver. The battering added a lot to the size and taste of each bite-size chunk.

Yuko’s favorite way to eat whale is as sashimi (刺身), which is the Japanese style of slicing very fresh, raw seafood into pieces for consumption (like sushi without the rice). Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to sample that because supposedly its a bit bloody and she thought it might be too much for me, though I would have tried.

Yuko’s father was at one time a whaler, sailing everywhere from the Antarctic region to the waters off the U.K. As the industry turned more unpopular and quotas decreased, he changed careers to that of a crab fisherman! She still has a few whale teeth, which are considered good luck in Japan and money is sometimes put inside.

So there it is. I ate some whale. I hope Greenpeace doesn’t hack my site.

For a more detailed background see History of the Traditional Diet: Japanese and the Whale.

Move over Turducken, theres a new king of multi-animal conglomerate foods.

British TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstallmerate has stuffed a turkey with 48 different birds.

He [once] stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock – producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish.

But now his effort, inspired by recipes dating from Tudor times, has been dwarfed by a behemoth containing no fewer than 48 birds of 12 different species.

More pics at the full article.

[full article]

My friend close by over in Kitsuki, Kelly, decided that she would bring a little bit of America to Japan and cook a huge Thanksgiving dinner. All by herself. There was turkey (of course), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, deviled eggs, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and apple crisp! It was a day after the real date on Thursday, but Friday was a holdiday in Japan (Labor Thanksgiving Day) so no work.

She cooked for three foreign teachers and four Japanese ones as well who had never had a Thanksgiving meal. They throughly enjoyed it, but found the cranberry sauce quite suspect trying comically small bites. I wish they could have seen it come out of the can.

It was my first real Thanksgiving in a few years with last year being in Japan and the year before opting not to drive home and instead work in a soup kitchen.

Everything was really good, but the turkey was my favorite. Kelly even had to special order it online along with other items like yellow cheese that you can’t get in Japan.

More pictures below!

Following the same vein as KFC’s Colonel in a kimono and Samurai Sanders, here is Thailand’s Ronald McDonald. His hands are clasped in the common greeting. He can be found on Khao San Road, the ultimate backpacker area in Bangkok.

Coming back from Nepal to Japan, I had a few extra days because of flight schedules. So, instead of going back to Japan right away, I spent a few days relaxing in Bangkok and happened to see this guy.