I think most of us in America start out with the notion that Japanese food consists mainly of sushi and teriyaki. Jason hates both seafood and teriyaki, so I had wondered what he managed to survive on for six months in Japan; he insisted that Japan has lots of other food.
I can now testify that Jason was telling the truth. In fact, I’m not sure I ever saw anything billing itself as “teriyaki” per se (which I suppose, in America, more or less means “random meat with teriyaki sauce on it”); sushi is very common but far from the only option, in fact far from the only seafood option, although I’m happy to report that the sushi I’ve had in America turns out to be perfectly authentic.
I don’t think there was any food at all in Japan which I actively disliked, although some left me confused. At first, Ryan and I were pretty picky, he because he’s allergic to seafood and I because I was a little squeamish. We found enough recognizable food to keep us fed; for the first half of the trip, Ryan survived almost entirely on tonkatsu, a fried pork cutlet, which he knew wasn’t fish by virtue of its being pork, and which he knew was good by virtue of a restaurant his guidebook recommended. Then we met up with Chris Browne, who taught us what junk food to eat.
In the meantime, unburdened by fish allergies or fish aversions and driven by hunger, I had become more adventurous. Snack bars everywhere offer boxed lunches, usually consisting of rice, seaweed, and something which you can only assume used to be part of an aquatic animal although it’s a little hard to believe. I didn’t pay much attention to them until I found myself stranded at Hachinohe Station without much prospect of a restaurant meal for another six hours; suddenly the mystery meals were sort of intriguing. My reaction went through several phases.
Phase 1: Ideal. This… can’t… be edible. It looks like it’s from another planet.
Phase 2: Trial. This still can’t be edible. But… it’s seafood… and I love seafood. And I’m cold and I’m hungry and this is all they have…
Phase 3: Faith. Well, the Japanese eat this stuff regularly and they have a life expectancy of eighty years. It can’t be poisonous…
Phase 4: Reality. Wow. This is delicious.
Phase 1 lasted for my first several days in Japan, phases 2 and 3 about half an hour each, and phase 4, during which I was willing to eat anything and enjoyed it all, for the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, Ryan was still allergic to fish. Archetypal conversation reconstructed from memory:
Ryan: Hey, what are you eating? Is it good?
John: Yeah, it’s delicious. Oishii.
Ryan: What is it?
John: I don’t know; I think it’s some kind of fish.
Ryan: That’s not useful.
John: Can you read the package? [Ryan has been studying the language.]
Ryan: Not a word.
Later, Ryan found a dictionary and looked up the kanji for chicken, and then he never went hungry in snack shops either.