8 Office Bentos

I started a job a few months ago. My first job in Japan. My first Japanese job. The cultural differences I encountered in daily life before were minuscule compared to the stark cultural differences (both good and bad) I've encountered working in a Japanese office. But I'm going save that for another post, because there are just too many. This post is dedicated to the amazing lunches my office cafeteria serves. My employer subsidizes both food and drink, so a standard lunch is only $5 USD. 

500 yen; grilled fish, clam rice, fried chicken, simmered veggies, croquette, and pickles. 

400 yen: air-fried chicken rice bowl with carrot salad, eggplant, broccoli, and grated daikon topping.

500 yen: Spicy fried chicken, multigrain rice, curry shrimp potato salad, simmered greens, and cabbage salad.

500 yen: peppery steamed fish, multigrain rice, meat cabbage rolls, macaroni salad, and spicy cucumber and beansprout salad. 

300 yen: arrabbiata pasta.

500 yen: pickled daikon, rice with nori, hardboiled egg marinated in soy sauce, grilled salmon, croquette, shrimp fry, port cutlet, and pickled ginger. 

500 yen: grilled fish, multigrain rice, miso tofu, ratatouille-ish veggies, and spinach egg salad.

500 yen: Pickled daikon, rice with umeboshi, potato salad, and Chinese-style (Japanese-style Chinese food) shrimp and veggie stir fry. 

It's amazing, isn't it? I used to work in downtown Chicago, where there was plenty of good food, but not much under $10 USD and most over $12. And my workplace had neither a cafeteria nor a subsidized lunch. The subsidized lunch is quite common in Japan, though. I think my office may offer a wider variety than most. We have 5-6 hot lunches and 5-6 bentos to choose from, in addition to daily sides such as salads, fruits, yogurt, etc. While the lunches are made on-site, the bentos are delivered from a third-party caterer/restaurant. The one downside is all the single-use plastic, the constant and terrible byproduct of eating out. 

A few months in, I still get excited at 11am when the daily bentos come out. As an American, will I ever get used to this? Probably not. 

It's Autumn (Again!): Autumn foods

Autumn arrived two weeks ago, but it wasn't until this week that it has begun to truly feel like autumn. The temperature suddenly plummeted with a bout of rain on Wednesday. It finally got cool enough to bring out the cold weather comforter, not to be confused with the frigid winter down comforter that we rarely use here (I brought, not one, but two from Chicago - what was I thinking?). 

In Chicago, Halloween decorations and pumpkin spice everything are the first signs of the season. It is not all that different in Tokyo, where the consumer market also marches ahead of nature. Everywhere you look there are advertisements for seasonal foods: chestnuts, sweet potato, mushroom, plump fish, pears, persimmons, and root vegetables galore. They are the bounties of October. My Japanese friend who lives in America says that winter is the best time to return to Japan because the food gets better as the weather gets colder. 

Takashimaya, an otherwise posh department store, carries produce of high quality at surprisingly reasonable prices. Given the generally posh (and older) customer base, each piece of produce is impeccably and frustratingly wrapped in plastic to be perfectly displayed. It is obvious when something is in season. It will be humongous. With the size of these things, there is no way you can display it "elegantly." Last year, I found a romanesco cauliflower so large that I wouldn't have been able to fit it into my bicycle basket. This week, you can get maitake mushroom the size of a small suitcase for the equivalent of $3 USD. Same for shimeji and oyster mushrooms. Also on offer are baseball-bat daikons and two-pound bouquets of greens. 

I then moved on to the cake section, where a pop-up stand was taking orders for Christmas cakes! Christmas in Japan is actually a very secular/commercial holiday for couples and friends while New Year is the holiday to spend with family. Christmas is all about cakes, and without Halloween and Thanksgiving standing in the way, preparations begin now. The cake order lady handed me a catalog of their cakes. I brought it home, where my kids pored over it for an hour analyzing which cakes they would buy and why. 

Notice that each cake is diagramed in the lower right corner of each box. 

I wanted to feel like I really took advantage of this perfectly cloudy autumn day, so I went for a run. And with a run, I worked up an appetite. It was also cold and had started raining. The very best circumstances for a bowl of hot ramen. 

A soul warming way to end the day. 

A Very Slow-Moving Typhoon + Denny's in Japan

I didn't know that typhoons and hurricanes were essentially the same until recently. Growing up by the Gulf of Mexico, June through November was known as hurricane season. Anything below a category 3 was probably ok, and anything above it would warrant an evacuation. In most cases, there would be a lot of anxiety and buildup only for the storm to change direction at the last moment. The big exception, of course, was Hurricane Katrina, when we packed enough things for the standard two days away and ended up not returning for two months. 

During our first year in Japan, someone would shrug and casually say, "a typhoon is coming, so it's going to rain tomorrow." Nobody seemed particularly worried about emergency supplies, piling on the sandbags, or taping up the windows - telltales signs of an approaching hurricane where I grew up. It all seemed rather downplayed here, probably because the infrastructure is well-designed and better built. It's funny how the same natural phenomenon manifests completely differently in different places. 

This typhoon we are experiencing at the moment is a large one, though it has not Tokyo directly. It is also a very slow-moving one. It started raining on Sunday morning, with unpredictable waves of squalls throughout the day, and it is still raining as I write this on Tuesday afternoon. It also happens to be a long holiday weekend here, so indoor spaces were more crowded than usual with locals and tourists alike seeking entertainment while sheltering from the rain. 

We went to Tokyo Skytree, which contains a massive shopping complex with nearly as many places to eat as there are to shop. There is also an aquarium, an arcade, exhibits, and other entertainment venues. If you have a choice, stay clear of tourist hot spots on Japanese holidays, especially when the weather herds everyone indoors. The crowd was insane. Lines snaking out the door of the souvenir shop. One hour wait for lunch. We were lucky - I got in the line of a ramen restaurant around 11:15 (the lines begin forming at 11 and grow exponentially with every passing minute). Considered literally to be a fast food, ramen shops have quick turnover. We waited just over half an hour. 

The other semi-eventful thing we did this weekend was visit Denny's. I had been curious about it ever since I read Matthew Amster-Burton's book Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo. Denny's in Japan looks just like the Denny's in America. Or at least the sign does. Beyond the sign, Denny's is a completely different restaurant from its American counterpart. It is known as a family restaurant serving a wide variety of Japanese comfort foods at a reasonable price. The atmosphere inside kind of reminded me of a Shoney's from the 90s, except with better food. 

It's not a bad place for a well balanced family meal when nobody feels like cooking. There are plenty of vegetables, and everything is reasonably priced. Unlike American family restaurants, portions are smaller but probably perfect for the average adult. I ordered their seasonal hambagu (Japanese hamburger steak, a staple of modern comfort food in this country) with mushrooms. 

We also ordered a spinach sautéed with bacon and a chicken jambalaya, which looked very different from the jambalaya I know but tasted surprisingly similar. The kids menu, like everywhere else, is full of things like juice, jello, and french fries. I didn't order anything from there. It wasn't a gourmet meal, but it was satisfying, and we ate well. I should mention that Denny's Japan is known for their drink bar (i.e., soda bar) and dessert menu, which is full of ice creams and parfaits. In terms of a balanced meal, it's a sliding scale, and the diner has a lot of leeway to choose. 

As I am finishing up this post (many hours later), the typhoon is already receding. It's left a cool breeze in its wake. Could this be the beginning of autumn? I hope so. No matter how hot it gets in the summer here, you can reasonably count on each season arriving with characteristically Japanese punctuality.  

Uniquely Japanese Foods that My Kids Love

Kabocha

Kabocha, sometimes sold as "Japanese pumpkin" in American supermarkets, is a type of squash. Compared to the more conventional sugar pumpkin and other squashes such butternut and acorn, kabocha has a denser, creamier texture - probably why my kids love it. 

In Japan, the classic preparation is by simmering with soy sauce and sake. Kabocha is also a great substitute for potatoes in croquettes. I always use kabocha instead of sugar pumpkins for things like pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. Muji cafe serves mashed kobocha mixed with some chopped greens. This  tones down the bitterness of some greens, and my kids enjoy it a lot. 

Natto

Natto is the infamous slimy, stinky, fermented soybean dish that is a fixture in Japan but hated by nearly all non-Japanese people who come across it. Natto is not considered delicious per say, but it is definitely a refrigerator staple. It typically comes with a soy-sauce based seasoning packet and a packet of Japanese mustard. Natto is a nutritious source of protein (especially good for gut health I've heard) that involves no cooking, so it is easy to see why it is popular. You can top it with different things. Common toppings include scallions, sriracha, mayo, chili powder, mustard, and nori. 

The thing with Natto is that it smells worse than it tastes. It makes the dishwasher and garbage smell horrendous. Its slimy texture - a detraction for many but a virtue for some (mostly Japanese kids)  - is a familiar texture in Japanese cuisine and one that kids seem to be fond of here. Although I didn't grow up with natto, I've learned to like it, unlike my kids, who adore it. When dinner fails to completely satiate, we pull out the natto. And it is never eaten by only one person. Once the natto is out, both kids clamor for it. As E says, "it's a natto fest." 

Nikuman

Technically Chinese, nikuman has become a popular part of Japanese cuisine. Its basic form is a steamed yeast-leavened bun with a filling. In Japan, that filling is usually minced pork ("niku" literally means meat in Japanese) with a few variations. 

When I was a teenager, I spent summers in Shanghai with my grandfather. He lived in an old part of the city where street vendors sold freshly made baozi, the broader Chinese name for it. There are endless varieties of baozi in China but my grandfather's favorite vendor sold ones filled with Chinese mustard greens and shiitake seasoned with sesame oil. This too became my favorite. 

I haven't found anything similar in Tokyo, but nearly every supermarket and department store food hall here sells the pork-based nikuman. While it's not impossible to make at home, it requires some time and technique, so we buy it and keep it as an easy weekend lunch. 

Soba

Soba is a Japanese buckwheat noodle. Because it is made from buckwheat, it is though to be healthier than its relatives, ramen and udon. Whereas ramen and udon are more often served in fast casual settings, soba is a bit more refined, though it also exists as fast food. Soba can be served in a hot broth or it can be served cold alongside a cold dipping sauce, a popular summer option. 

My kids prefer soba over salty ramen and chewy udon. I usually do too, but I'm also considering how I will feel after the meal, and I doubt my kids think about that. It is common to serve soba with tempura. My kids like soba so much that they will abstain from eating more fried foods to save room for the buckwheat. I like it, but it is a mystery to me. 

Shishamo

Shishamo is a smelt fish (capelin) native to Hokkaido. It is a small fish about the length of long green bean and barely a finger's width wide. You grill, bake, or sauté the fish and eat it whole. The awareness of sustainable seafood is low in Japan, but the production of farmed shishamo has grown recently to lessen the burden on wildlife stock. It seems that Atlantic capelin may be more sustainable, perhaps due to lower popularity. 

My kids, who were introduced to it at an early age, also eat the entire fish. In Chicago, it was a treat because we could only buy it at the Japanese supermarket a half hour's drive away. In contrast, it is too accessible in Tokyo. Nearly every supermarket, even bodegas and convenience stores, carry shishamo. I still try to keep it a treat. 

Edamame

Until moving to Japan, I only knew frozen edamame. Then I tasted fresh edamame here, and as you might expect, it tastes a lot better. Edamame season runs through the summer. In June and July, you will see fresh edamame stalks in supermarkets. Perhaps surprisingly, edamame is a popular beer food here in Japan, and as such, it's sold at sports concessions and bars. 

As for my kids, they get a kick out of removing the beans from the pods. When edamame is on the table, it is difficult to get M to eat anything else. It is also super easy to prepare - just boil for a few minutes and sprinkle with salt. 

Tofu

Japan is tofu-nation, and Kyoto is tofu-town. Kyoto has many incredible restaurants, and some of those serve multi-course kaiseki meals specializing in tofu. In daily life here in Tokyo, tofu is not as exalted but just as versatile and ubiquitous. You can grill it, fry it, flatten it into a pouch and fill it with rice (inari sushi), or simply eat it cold with soy sauce and a squeeze of citrus. Both my kids prefer tofu over most meats, and I suspect it's because of the tender texture. Basically they prefer to chew as little as possible, and meat requires many more chews than tofu. 

When my kids were weaning, I blended tofu into ground chicken to make chicken patties. The tofu makes the patties more tender, fluffier, and easier to eat. Nowadays I keep packet of soft tofu in the refrigerator for an easy summer side dish - just cut, season with soy sauce or ponzu, and perhaps a sprinkle of bonito flakes, sesame seeds, and/or scallions. 

Conveyor Belt Sushi

    Last weekend, we had conveyor belt sushi, known as kaiten sushi. While the quality of kaiten sushi is generally lower than that of a traditional sushi bar, it is fun for kids and serves a broader array of non-sushi items, like noodles, fried chicken, and rice bowls among other things. 

    We went to a place called Kura Sushi in Harajuku (they have many locations, including ones outside Japan). The Harajuku location is known for its fun atmosphere and extensive dessert menu. The Harajuku area is known for its over the top dessert crepes, which you can order at Kura. They also have Blue Seal ice cream, an Okinawan brand that boasts distinctive flavors, like Okinawan Salt Cookies, Royal Milk Tea, and Brown Sugar Cane (Okinawa is famous for its brown sugar canes). I ordered the Okinawan Sweet Potato with its distinctive purple color. It's one of my favorite flavors, and the texture is nice and fluffly, almost like gelato. 

    Other dishes we enjoyed were onion rings (freshly fried) and grilled fish, but to be honest, the quality of the food is not the focal point here. Although you could undoubtedly find better sushi in Tokyo, this was nevertheless a good experience. Kura is one of those places where you have to embrace the entire environment. 

    We went with E's cousins, who range from age 5 to 13 and are here in Tokyo for the summer. 

    We ordered via iPad, which is typical of kaiten sushi these days. Since Covid-19 began, many restaurants place plastic models of food on their conveyor belts instead of the real thing. You order by iPad. Kura does a hybrid. There are two conveyor belts: a top one and a bottom one. The bottom one carries a variety of dishes. You can look and take whatever you like. Or you could order via iPad. The order then arrives on the top belt, zooming to your table at super speed. 

    After we ate, the empty plates went into a slot at the end of each table. The slot automatically counted and calculated our bill based on these plates. We let M do this, and she loved doing it. We received "points," for each plate that went in, and after a certain number of points, we got to play a game on the iPad. The game is really a lottery where you can win a small capsule toy. We won one toy after thirty something dishes, so don't get your hopes up. 

The booth seating gives you relative privacy - another reason this place was good for families. 

    

    Kura Sushi was a hit with my kids and their cousins. As with so many things, the adults are happy when the kids are happy (to a degree). It wasn't a bad way to spend a hot summer night. Gochisousamadeshita!

Izakaya

    An izakaya is a Japanese bar, and one of my favorite places to eat. Not that I like all izakayas, for they are as varied as bars and pubs are anywhere else. Some izakayas cater to younger people, some to office workers, and others to a more diverse clientele. Some have really great food while others have food that you would only want to put inside your body after an adequate number of drinks. I obviously like the ones that serve great food. 

    In Japan, it's typical for restaurants to specialize. Just as you would go to a ramen shop for only ramen, you would do the same for soba (buckwheat noodles) or yakitori (grilled chicken). The same for grilled eel, sushi, pork cutlets, udon, tempura, etc. These restaurants will all do one thing but do them well. You won't see many Japanese places with eclectic menus. The izakaya is unique in this aspect and usually serves many different types of dishes in small portions. Their varied menu gives them more creative latitude too, so it's fun to discover Japanese flavors presented in novel and modern ways. This is one of the main reasons I like izakayas. 

    The downside of izakayas is that they can be really smoky inside. They are not places you would want to go with little kids. Anyways, they are places where you would want to sit, talk, and eat slowly - things that are difficult to do with toddlers. Because of this, and because izakayas are part of the nightlife establishment, we haven't been to even one since moving to Japan. So it was really very exciting when we handed the kids over to the grandparents on Saturday and headed to our neighborhood izakaya, Kogane. 

    Kogane is a small izakaya that uses variety meats in its menu, which includes many other things such as seafood, vegetables, and noodles. They have a good selection of sake, which pairs nicely with the food. Kogane is also a non-smoking establishment, which is great even if you don't have kids. There are several options for seating: floor, bar, or table. We chose the bar. 

    The food is some of the most delicious and interesting I've ever had. Even the ordinary items like onigiri and truffle fries are really well made. One particularly memorable dish was thinly sliced tripe and vegetables, chilled, mixed with pesto, topped with walnuts and served as a salad. No photo of that one, unfortunately, but here are other things we ate: 

Onigiri with ume (pickled plum).

Bonito sashimi in the front and braised beef tendon and daikon soup in the back. 

Truffle fries.

Japanese horse mackerel, fried and served with Japanese tartar sauce.

Grilled duck with negi. 

    As for drink, I had an organic lemon sour and a shared flask of sake. We chose a sake based on their recommendation. I know nothing about sake and rarely drink it, so there is not much basis for comparison. The only thing I can say about it is that it was light and sweet and paired beautifully with the food. 

    Given that I had an organic lemon sour, you can likely guess that this particular izakaya belongs to a newer breed of izakayas. Kogane's food and atmosphere reflects modern sentiments for fine-casual dining while retaining the essence of izakaya culture. Like Tokyo itself, it is a flattering mix of the new and old. 

    Izakaya food is rarely pretentious. It's first and foremost about flavor and enjoyment (and in some cases, simply putting something in your stomach to absorb the alcohol). In the case of this izakaya, I love that it could transform a humble ingredient like tripe into a great dish that most people would enjoy. Here's to a nice night out and many more to come. 

My Favorite Japanese Condiments

I have always enjoyed cooking, especially in the winter. It warmed up the apartment on cold Chicago (or even colder Minnesota) days. With my dog at my feet, ingredients on the table, and a lineup of podcasts ready to play, it was one of my greatest pleasures. Even after kids, when the pressure increased to churn out balanced meals one after another, I still liked it - maybe not all the time, but most of the time, yes. 

This changed when we moved to Japan. It was mostly because of the different ingredients available. Technically, you can find anything in a city like Tokyo. However, some things became hard to find and others more expensive. A box of Morton's Kosher salt, for example, cost $8 USD here compared to $3 in the U.S. And I have to go to a specialty store some distance away from my apartment. Beans (garbanzo, kidney, canellini, black), lentils, grains, and cheese were all major components of our diet that became similarly inaccessible. And since groceries generally cost more in Japan, I was spending more and buying less. After the novelty wore off, the food shopping started feeling like a chore. Is this expensive? Is it organic? Is it a grapefruit? It was all a bit disorienting. 

These days, I feel like I am starting to get back into the groove of cooking again. I have accepted that the grocery bill will be double to what it was before and that there will be very few organic options. I have also learned how to better cook with more accessible Japanese ingredients. So here are five condiments/sauces that have made cooking in Japan easier and more delicious. 

1. Mentsuyu

Mentsuyu is a pre-combined mixture of soy sauce, sake, mirin, dashi broth, and bonito. It is a little sweet, a little tangy, salty, and very umami. It is most commonly used as dipping sauce for soba, somen, and other types of noodles. Mentsuyu is my most used condiment because the flavors are already so well-balanced and therefore versatile. You can use it in a stir fry, as a broth, or for a marinade. I love using Mentsuyu with pan fried Japanese vegetables like eggplant, Shishito pepper, Manganji pepper, and lotus root. I simply soak the pan fried vegetable in a shallow bowl of mentsuyu and chill it in the refrigerator. Sometimes I add a dash of rice wine vinegar. 

2. Shichimi Togarashi

Shichimi Togarashi translates into "seven spice pepper." It is made of sansho pepper (an aromatic, mild, peppercorny pepper native to Japan), red pepper, ginger, seaweed, and sesame seeds. This is a ubiquitous condiment used on ramen, udon, soba, and rice. It is a great topping for a boring dish. We eat a lot of cauliflower, usually just sautéed with salt and sugar. Sometimes, I sprinkle shichimi togarashi on the finished product to liven it up. Despite its red color, it is mild enough that my four year old won't mind a little bit. 

3. Youki Chicken Stock Granules

Youki is the brand name for these chicken stock granules. They are akin to chicken bouillon. Their dried granule form makes them convenient to use, and I use them most frequently in sauces, soups, and stews. It adds an underlying umami flavor and enhances the existing flavors. 

4. Ponzu 

Ponzu is soy sauce infused with citrus flavors, primarily yuzu. The citrus gives the sauce a distinctively acidic taste. Ponzu is great with tofu and seafood. An easy side dish is good quality tofu, chilled and plated with thinly sliced scallions, bonito flakes, and ponzu. Ponzu is also great as an ingredient for marinades and dressings. 

5. Furikake

Furikake is a generic term for a dried seasoning mixture that is sprinkled on rice. There are different flavors of furikake, from wasabi to salmon to egg. The most popular variety is probably noritama, which is nori (seaweed) and tamago (egg) flavored. Kids love this stuff. My kids are not picky eaters, but when there is any hesitation, furikake is like magic dust. Just a little sprinkle makes everything go down. It is also used in making onigiri, rice balls. Although I think furikake is usually used with rice, I use it on vegetables to add a little more color and flavor. 

Kid-themed variety packs. The different colors represent different flavors. For instance, the green is vegetable furikake. 

All five of these condiments are available in the U.S. but did not make it into my kitchen as staples until we moved to Japan. If you are curious about trying any of these, Japanese Cooking 101 and Just One Cookbook. 

Conbini Snacks: the Lawson Edition

A conbini in Japan is basically a convenience store, though that comparison does not do it justice. It is more convenient than an American convenience store. It's more like a mini Target. Prices are not double what they are at a regular store just because you might pay more in a pinch, as is so often the case at convenience stores. 

Lawson, Family Mart, and 7-Eleven are the most common conbinis. They are ubiquitous - you will rarely be more than a few steps away from one. They sell bentos, cooked foods from steamed buns to fried chicken, pastries, skin care, toiletries, and so much more. Dave Chang reportedly lived (quite well) off conbini food for a year (or maybe it was years?) while living in Japan. 

This post is about some of the snack foods I got from Lawson. I'm saving other things for a separate post. Here is a bag of rice crackers, some Moomin-themed mini donuts, and a soft baguette thing topped with what I thought was cheese. 

 

The bread was covered in mayo, specifically Kewpie mayo, and pieces of ham. It was ok, but I would rather it be cheese than mayo. Bread was processed to fluffy perfection as expected. 

The Moomin donuts were not good. They tasted very shelf-stable. Packaging was cute, so at least my kids loved it. 

Assorted veggie chips and peanuts covered in a cracker shell. The veggie chips were good! It sounds silly to say packaged chips tasted fresh, but they really did. It carrots, kabocha (pumpkin), and some type of yam. They were crunchy but still soft enough for my one year old to eat easily, and each veggie flavor was distinct. 

The peanut crackers came in four different flavors: crab, shrimp, squid, and bonito (tuna). These are pretty common at Asian-American supermarkets in the States. These were also good, though no different from what you can usually get in the U.S. 

I bought this out of curiosity. It's jamón-ish. It didn't look bad, though I still had low expectations. This cost only $1.50 USD. It tasted not as bad as expected, but I wouldn't buy it again. Very salty and not a lot of flavor. 

With the weather already getting warmer, I have my sights set on trying the ice cream soon. There is also a Lawson Natural, which is a larger, slightly fancier Lawson with some organic items. They have a good bakery section too, which is all the incentive I need to go there once this quarantine is over.