For 2 weeks I had to settle for instant noodles and mushroom soup and the ocassional nasi, telur, kicap. Then 2 weeks ago I went to Tanashi, west of Tokyo for my homestay and had a fabulous time, eating and having fun.
This is while we were making dinner. I must admit, there were a couple of stuff I have never seen more so eaten before, like the devil's tongue. And my J-mom loves it. I just think the greyish thing looked weird and tasted.. different.
This is the best breakfast I have ever had in Japan. Check out the tamagoyaki, fried eggs/omelet. I so love fried eggs, I could live on them for weeks. If you can see my bowl of rice, its call kuri gohan, rice with boiled chestnuts (that tasted like boiled 'biji nangka' to me). It was on this particular breakfast that I was introduced to umeboshi, (pinkish reddish thing inside the bowl on the farthest left) dried plum that tasted so powerfully sour, I couldn't even swallow a small one.
The first time I went inside a supermarket and browsed through the wet section, I saw big reddish chopped octopus' tentacles and swore it scared the hell out of me. See that cute fish-ball looking appetizing delicacy in this picture, thank God that you don't have to see what's inside a takoyaki when you're eating it in one go.
And here we have teppanyaki, seafood cooked on iron plate as the name suggests. My J-family have developed a way to eat them straight and hot, and little me had to wait impatiently for it to cool down after burning my tongue the first time.
The last night of my stay for the weekend, my J-family brought me to a nice restaurant to have tempura. Now, I have eaten a number of things that I never thought existed during my first two weeks in Japan. But something I've always known was there but never thought I'd eat was actually a favorite appetizer there; fish guts, uncooked and heavily seasoned( I bet). I didn't know what got into me but thank God it was painless. It was actually not thaaat bad, but I think that was enough to last a lifetime. But, what came next cheered me up really good. I love tempura; ebi, ika, kani, you name it I've probably eaten the sea. The food kept on coming, after saying onaka ippai(my stomach is full) for the 5th time, I was definitely done for the night.
I don't think my mom and anybody else should worry about my diet in Japan. Minus the pink four legged thing with no neck, cows, chickens, ducks and other land creatures, I am good. Itadakimasu!
