The Most Difficult Chopstick Food

What is the reaction of a Japanese person at the sight of pickled plum? His tongue gets stimulated by the thought of this sour delicacy called umeboshi, and starts releasing gallons of spit. This is an effect to which outlanders with no former experience of pickled plum are immune.

My reaction to seeing a bowl of miso soup with cubes of raw tofu is nothing other than panic: I'm sitting in this fancy restaurant with all these erudite intellectuals, and the waiter brings us a mighty block of tofu on a bamboo tray... and all I've got is a pair of enamel chopsticks!

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Butakimudon (Pork Kimchi Domburi)

I'm proud to present my first recipe ever: ぶたきむ丼!

I have a confession to make... Before coming to Japan I wasn't able to cook anything except rice. But after starting to live in a gaijin house, I couldn't keep eating only bento (Japanese boxed lunch), so I had to finally ignite the gas cooker and devise something to nourish myself with.

I experimented a lot with rice and various ingredients, but what I really wanted to do was come up with something quick and easy to make.

A friend of mine told me that buta-kimchi is easy to prepare, so I thought I'd give it a shot. To be honest, I didn't have any idea what it was like so I improvised—I was also too lazy to look it up on the Internet. I coated the frying pan with sesame oil, fried some shreds of pork in it, and emptied a pack of kimchi into it. Finally, I laid the concoction as topping on rice.

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How to Read Japanese Menu Prices

Japan is a country where you'll get stuck sometimes for not being able to make sense of the local orthography. While the more important signs in the bigger cities are presented bilingually, you might have trouble understanding the restaurant menus even in central Tokyo.

Even if you're just a traveler wanting to go for a slurp in the local noodle shop, you might want to learn the Chinese numerals, because (1) they're still widely used in Japan, and (2) most restaurants don't have English menus. Where's Google Translate when we REALLY need it!?



While it is usually safe to order without knowing the contents of a dish, it will become a much greater problem if you fail to heed the price on the dish! So at least learn the numbers!

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Spidermen Noodles

Ever wonder where Spiderman's webs end up...?

In Japan, they get gobbled up by diehard fans of the superhero, because Universal Studios Japan (USJ) collects Spiderman's trusty nets and cooks すぱいだぁ麺 (supaidaamen) out of them.

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Weekly McDonald's Discount Coupons

Don't you ever get sick of eating domburi, sushi, yakiniku, miso soup, takoyaki, and above all... RICE! Every... effing... week. Obviously not. How stupid of me to ask. But I think it's only natural to crave something as repulsive as big, grea... juicy Double Quarter Pounders with fries after countless weeks of noodle-slurping and fine-tuning chopstick skills as an ascetic hermit in the misty mountains of Hyogo.

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