Food Consumption

I realize I have not been posting here very often these days. This is due to a combination of laziness, exhaustion, and lack of free time. However, to those undoubtedly few souls who still check this, we will now return to your regularly scheduled Walrus, undoubtedly with a few large updates in the span of, well, whenever I decide to upload them.

Eating in Japan can be quite the experience. The food is an adventure in itself. I never considered my diet to be overly varied. Give me some beef and I’m happy. Give me some fish and I am the opposite of happy: unhappy. I realized though that this would have to change quickly upon my arrival in this country, and to some extent it has. These days, put food in front of me, and so long as it’s not raw chicken, raw horse, or fugu and I guarantee I will eat it.

There are a plethora of things that I still have some slight difficulty with. For example, anything that still has eyes is difficult for me to eat. I mean, as it is traveling down my throat, I can just feel those eyes staring at the inner workings of my body. Octopus and squid, while tasting quite good, still just freak me out quite a bit… especially when the squid is dried, flat, and fully in squid shape, and I must cook it myself on a small grill.

Then there are the big three aforementioned non-consumable foods. All three are delicacies, but not matter what, I cannot get out of my brain the idea that raw chicken is bad for you. Raw Chicken! Who eats this? And why are they not dying? The horse issue, well, I dunno, it just feels like I’d be eating a part of John Wayne’s soul. I think if backed into a corner, I might be able to eat cooked horse, but raw? Hell no.

Finally, fugu. For those of you unaware of what fugu is, I will tell you. It’s a type of blowfish that contains one of the deadliest poisons found in nature. If it is prepared incorrectly, you die. If I’m not mistaken, much of the fish contains these venoms. In order to serve it and not die, you must delicately remove certain parts. A person must get a license to cook it, but somehow that’s not comforting… especially when it’s served raw. I’ll try most things once, but I’m not too big on eating certain death.

Going out to restaurants, though, is one of my favorite activities here in Japan, mainly because cooking Japanese food has become one of my most hated activities here in Japan (I can’t read the labels on food, so I can’t figure out what to buy… and the cartoon character pictures on the packaging rarely help). I typically don’t have too much of a problem going out to eat. Most menus at restaurants here have pictures next to each item, so you can see what you’ll be getting and helps us illiterate folk. Even when a menu doesn’t have a picture, I just usually point at some random food item and say, “please give me this.” The problem, of course, comes when I accidentally point to the drink section and find my meal consisting entirely of a beer, but that has its own rewards.

Finding a place to eat is a little more difficult, at least in Joyo. The restaurants here, for the most part, are hidden, and you must actively search them out as if on a treasure hunt. A disturbing number of them look exactly like a random home, both from the outside and inside. Many times I’d walk into a restaurant only to suddenly become ridiculously paranoid because I thought I walked into someone’s living room. I think maybe that did happen, but for fear of angering the sudden large, hairy westerner that stumbled into their home, the people there serve me anyway.

Sometimes, though, I feel the need to have some good American food. While I feel that need, that’s one thing I can never get. Oh, it’s true, I can go to McDonald’s, but honestly, who really wants to eat McDonald’s food? It tastes the exact same as the McDonald’s in America, but still, going to a McDonald’s here doesn’t quite seem like I’m eating American food. I think the main reason lies in the atmosphere of a Japanese McDonald’s.

All the workers are always, ALWAYS, dressed well in perfect uniforms. There’s always a smile on their face and indeed they seem way too eager go serve you subaverage food. If you plan on eating there, much like a real restaurant, they actually bring you your meal. Then, the two times I’ve been there, when I got up to throw away my garbage, I was immediately surrounded by two employees forcibly stopping me and insisting that this was their job. I cannot, could not, imagine the day when such a situation would happen in a McDonald’s back home.

Then, there’s the single, most beautiful thing about Japan ever: you can smoke there. I love this country.

Some American restaurants that you’ll find here aren’t quite what you expect. A Big Boy just opened in Joyo. That’s right, a Big Boy. Of all the random chains to open in a small town like this, well, I’m confused. Still, it’s definitely a Big Boy. The building looks just the same as the ones back home, complete with the statue out front. After five months of being here, my cravings for a burger, or a waffle, or, well, just anything that doesn’t remind me of Japanese food and is not McDonald’s kicked in, and the moment it opened I swear I was the first customer there.






Then I saw the menu.



It is a Big Boy. I’ve made inquiries about this. It is owned by the… um… Big Boy Corporation or whatever. Unfortunately, when coming to Japan, Big Boy decided to remove anything that even remotely appeared to be “Big Boy-like” food and instead turn it into… something else entirely. To say that I was disappointed would be a bit of an understatement. I think I died a little inside that day.

Goddamn, now I just really want a cheeseburger… at least a real one…