Finding
food in Japan that was palatable to Tony proved to be a bit of a problem.
Although he is not a big eater he is not normally picky about trying new
food. Nevertheless we found that things often tasted strange to him.
He would not drink Japanese milk, for example, which I have since read is
pasteurized at a higher temperature than milk in the U.S. and evidently has a
different taste that an child might find strange.
We ate in fairly
good Italian restaurants on at least three occasions; we would generally get an
English-language menu which after a while I realized was more difficult
for us to understand than an Italian menu would have been.
We
also relied quite a bit on "Lawson's" or whatever other convenience
store we might come across. There we would buy snack food, in particular
"chocolate pocky's" which I didn't even realize is specifically a
Japanese snack food until I wrote this and found they have a web page HERE.
Tony
also liked getting Ramen of "Cup of Noodles" to prepare in our hotel
room. Hotels often had vending machines that sold Noodle Cups.
In Hagi
we twice ate at a "Gusto's", which is kind of like the Howard
Johnson's of Japan. We ate there twice because we just couldn't find
anything better our second night
there. "Gusto" serves an eclectic menu - everything from Sushi
to Peking Ravioli to Spaghetti to Cheeseburgers. Some Canadians I met
later in Miyajima pointed out that it is interesting because it shows you what
families in Japan want to eat when they go out on a Saturday night. The
second night we went there they passed out bingo cards to every table and we all
played bingo while we ate. I am sorry to say we lost as I would love to
have found out what would have happened if the two Gaijin had called out BINGO!
in the restaurant. The photo here shows Tony standing outside the Gusto in
Hagi with our bicycles.
One
of the least westernized restaurants we ate in was in Hiroshima. At Tony's
insistence we walked into a downstairs noodle place one night, where I felt like
asking "are Gaijin allowed here?" It turned out to be an
excellent choice as this placed served the traditional local dish of Hiroshima,
a plate of greasy, fried noodles garnished liberally with mayonnaise.
It was actually quite good. The waitress there seemed particularly
flustered by trying to communicate with a foreigner. I remember her for
some reason panicked at her attempts to explain what "soba" (noodles)
are. They all seemed truly amused when I told them it was "oishii"
(delicious).
What We Ate
