Feeding Frenzy

Food. My first priority shortly after arriving in Japan was finding places to buy ingredients to recreate the dishes I love from home. Soon, I came to rely on Kaldi and Seijo Ishii  for allspice , Yamaya for Jamaican rum (even though it's just Myers's Rum) and my local Summit Supermarket for everything else in between. 　


Three years into my life here, I've gotten somewhat used to food shopping in Japan, but there are still some things that baffle me when I walk into the store, like:


Bread


The first time I ventured out into a Japanese supermarket in search of bread, I was extremely surprised to find this:

Bread in packets of six and eight slices. I still find myself longing for hard dough bread like what I could buy at National Bakery. However, I'm left to choose between the six-slice pack or the eight-slice pack (or even a three-slice pack at some supermarkets) each of the three times per two weeks I buy bread. I've gotten somewhat used to the available choices, but I still keep wondering whenever I see the three-slice packs, what IS one supposed to do with an odd number of slices?


Bacon


It seems to me that in Japanese supermarkets, with the exception of international supermarkets like National Azabu  and meat wholesalers like Niku No Hanamasa, bacon equals sliced ham. Don't get me wrong - I love ham but I like it in my sandwiches. I'm not a fan of frying it up. Why can't I find anything that fries like real bacon near where I live. A woman on Yahoo! Answers responds to (basically) the same question posted by another ex-pat three years ago:

Do you know how Japanese people cook bacon? I don't think you do. But before I answer how we cook bacon, I want to say that I really don't know how British people cook bacon because I've never visited and lived there. But I do know how Americans cook bacon because I've lived in the states for more than 10 years, and I do cook real bacon here in the states.

Well, many Japanese people who know how Americans cook bacon would say they cook bacon until it's really burnt. So we call the kind of bacon " burnt bacon." 

But for Americans, how we cook bacon is too rare. Well, my husbands's brother ( American) goes to Japan for business and he told me that the way Japanese people cook bacon is too rare. So he didn't want to eat bacon because he thought that he would get sick by eating " raw" bacon. Well, in America, cooking bacon like how the Japanese do is not safe to eat because Americans use " real" bacon. In order to eat real bacon, people need to cook it really well.

But in Japan, we don't really like to cook bacon that way. So we have our bacon that is safe to eat. Our bacon is smoked and heated through because we want to eat rare or medium-rare bacon. So the kind of bacon has been sold in Japan.

Well, actually selling " real" bacon (the bacon that is dangerous to eat as raw ) was prohibited by law. That's why, you couldn't see " real" bacon at any grocery stores in Japan. Well, we are very careful when it comes to food that when we want to eat something that is not safe to eat as raw, we need to do something. So stuff like eggs, bacon are pasteurized usually.

But these days, Japan has introduced unheated bacon which is very very close to " real" bacon. Since we are getting to know more western style food, we've changed the law a bit that some stores started selling unheated bacon. Even though many Japanese people still don't like to cook bacon like how Americans do, some people who like international food want to try to cook...well, " burnt bacon." But still we like to eat raw stuff so the bacon is not probably the exactly same as the bacon sold in the states if raw bacon is made through bacon companies in Japan:

 Chicken


I mentioned before on this blog how big a deal chicken is in Japan during the Christmas season. People pre-order buckets of fried chicken from KFC weeks in advance and whole chickens can be found in supermarkets everywhere. The week after Christmas, though, there are no whole chickens to be found except at a few international supermarkets and meat wholesalers such as the above-mentioned.

Also, there is the fact the boneless chicken as all most Japanese supermarkets seem to be interested in selling, with the exception of chicken wings. You can get wings, livers, hearts, breasts, boneless thighs and even chicken meatballs but no drumsticks! Where are the drumsticks?

Kit Kat


There are many flavours of this popular candy bar here that I'm sure people outside of Japan would have never dreamt of, for example, yuzukosho.  Yuzu is a citrus fruit that is found in East Asia. Yuzukosho is type of seasoning made from yuzu, peppers and salt. The first time I was offered  a Yuzukosho Kit Kat bar, I was a bit skeptical, but I ended up liking it a lot. Other flavours that can be found in Japan include candied sweet potato, apple vinegar (with white chocolate), sweet corn and green tea. You can get a look at more flavours on Nestle Japan's website here.

There are many other things that make me shake my head or raise an eyebrow whenever I go grocery shopping or receive gifts (such as the Yuzukosho Kit Kat bar I got from a student) but I will leave more for another post. Meanwhile, if you're an ex-pat in Japan and you've had any puzzling gastronomical experiences (apart from trying unusual traditional Japanese cuisine, obviously) please leave me a comment. Happy cooking and don't burn the ham, er, bacon.

Intro

Let me begin by explaining the title of this blog. "K-Y" (ケーワイ) is a Japanese slang which is the abbreviation of "kuuki ga yomenai" (空気が読めない), which literally means the "air is not readable." In Japanese, K-Y is used to describe someone who can't read between the lines or can't understand a situation. Basically, what we refer to as "clueless" in English.

I've been in Japan for two years and even though I've gathered up enough knowledge of my surroundings and the culture by way of good old experience, I still feel clueless here sometimes (and this is not only due to my ineptitude with the language), hence the title of the blog.

More and more though, I find myself baffled (most times amused) by the reactions of people back home and friends of mine in the U.S. to some of my experiences here. Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I have been away from home for too long to understand why people would sometimes opt to remain closed to having certain experiences that I take for granted.

The other day I tried fugu (blowfish) for the first time. I don't usually photograph my meals in restaurants,  as many people in Tokyo are in the habit of doing, but since eating fugu is kind of a big deal (the possibility of almost immediate death on account of the poisonous liver) I decided to document the event.  We went to a really nice, reputable restaurant in Ginza, so I was pretty sure I was in no danger of suffering from fugu poisoning. That aside though, it was a first for me, so as soon as the first dish came out, out came my camera.

What you're looking at below is fugu sashimi (thinly sliced, raw fish). It's a pretty bland fish, but with some spicy daikon (Japanese radish) and ponzu (soy sauce with citrus juice), it's  pretty good.

Another fascinating thing about the place was that they had this special sake called "hirezake." "Hire" means fin and zake, of course, is sake. They put some fugu fin in a cup followed by warm sake. Then, they light the drink with a match to stave off the raw smell. It was interesting.  Weird enough for one of my girlfriends in Canada to react to this picture with: "OMG...whatever happened to Jamaican food?!"

What really got to my friends in Jamaica and the U.S. was the following video, which sparked responses such as:

"OMG!!!!! Nassstyyyy"

"I pride myself on being pretty open minded especially when it comes to trying new things in the food department... but that is disgusting."

"Reminds me of Star Trek Klingon food."

"I would have to find the nearest Mcdonalds, KFC or Burger dude..........."

Here's the video. Watch closely; it's only 15 seconds long:

Now, as I watch it again, I'm thinking that I probably would have been tripped out by seeing this had I never come to Japan. Maybe I've become somewhat "asianized" as one of my friends put it. But when it comes to life here, even two years later, I'm still definitely closer to the margins than to the center. More on that later.