I have written previously about my first grocery shopping experience in Japan whereby I thought I was buying chocolate milt and accidentally bought cold brown tea - and poured it on my Rice Krispies.
It was horrible with that first mouthful, but since beggars couldn't be choosers - eat or starve - I ate it and found that it wasn't so bad to have my snap, crackle, sip.
I lived in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan, which was a little city with about 50,000 people in it during 1990-1993, when I was there, and now, some 20 years after I left, there were - according to Wikipedia - some 78,000 people as of 2009 in an area of 354 square kilometers.
I note that the Wikipedia site says there are two notable people from there - and I admit that I was surprised to learn that it wasn't Matthew Hall or Andrew Joseph, it's two most famous visiting gaijin (foreigners) from the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme, and instead that it was some female manga (comic book artist named Ōshima Yumiko (surname first) and Fukuda Masakazu (surname first), a professional wrestler who died at the age of 27 from head injuries suffered in the square ring.
Anyhow, deep in the city - which has a relatively small central core, there were a few places one could purchase groceries.
The largest was Iseya, which was like a Walmart super-store that was both department and grocery store combined into one.
At the department store section, I frequently had film for my camera developed there, amusing the girls behind the counter with the strangeness of my photography, knowing that I could also hit on them with impunity. I would also purchase model kits to build, puzzles to ponder over, and while they had plenty of clothes to purchase, never had any in my larger-than-Japanese size.
I often bought flowers from the flower shop there, and would drop my clothes off at the dry-cleaner there.
But the grocery area - that was superb. While it had a plethora of Japanese foods, it certainly had a lot of western-style foods for those craving a bit of 'home' cooking.
Cereal? Take your pick! Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran, Frosted Flakes come to mind some 20 years later.
A dozen eggs, bacon, cans of baked beans in molasses or tomato sauce - sure.
Milk, orange juice, apple juice, Coke, Pepsi, Ginger Ale - I only ever saw Canada Dry - Twinning's teas - I had a tine of every flavor they made - and used it up one a few occasions.
Sugar, salt, flour, honey, all the herbs you could ever want, including saffron, dried parsley, cummin, curry, whatever - I also had a bottle of everything... handy when I would make a pot of chili once a week.
Vegetables: celery, tomato, potato, onions, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers - whatever you needed, it was there.
Fruits were available, to be sure, but I only ever bought a dozen Japanese apples or a pear from there. You might think a dozen apples at a time is no big deal, but a real Japanese apple or pear is the size of a large grapefruit. One will do as a meal. Seriously.
Meats: ground beef (chili and lasagne), chicken, and even steak - if you could afford it. There was plenty of seafood, but I admit that I never bought it to cook. I did purchase a smoked duck from AiAi Town, another small grocery shop, that I ate once every two weeks.
Canned foods: baked beans, tomato paste, whale meat - I had to buy it and try it to see if it was really worth all the hubbub that the Japanese expelled about their right to hunt the magnificent beasts - it wasn't. Tuna (white meat - the Japanese don't eat this stuff... and call it Shi Chikan - Sea Chicken... what's the best tune? Chicken of the Sea - really!).
Pastas - spaghetti and macaroni, cheeses - brie and cheddar were common enough, and I was able once to bake a five-cheese lasagne a few times - breads, butter, margarine - people... I even bought both Marmite and Vegamite which made a nice salty treat every little while.
Popcorn - while I had a convection oven that also doubled as a microwave oven - there was no microwavable popcorn yet. Instead, Ashley might come over with a bag of kernels and pop it in a bowl with some oil - I had canola, olive, extra virgin olive, and corn oils - and we would share it.
While some I know might argue that it is better to have one's own bowl of popcorn, it's not as much fun, as the constant touching of buttery hands often made me a touch grabby, if you know what I mean. Poor Ashley. Always being jumped upon by a horn and buttery Andrew. Maybe she should have ensured we have our own bowl. Oh well. I got mine.
Alcohol - I didn't see too much foreign stuff in Japan. I stuck with Kirin Lager as my beer of choice, but did also go for the Asahi Super Dry beers. Vodka, whiskey, bourbon, rye, gin to go along with all of the Japanese shochu (fermented rice wine that people call sake), and all the Japanese energy drinks to supposedly cure a hangover.
I never had a hangover, despite being able to out drink anyone in the U.S. navy, or Japanese salaryman - things I proved I could do on numerous occasions. And while my liver has only recently begun speaking to me again, I had a high tolerance to booze. Yeah, I got drunk. Wasted even. But I never had to pay the price the next day - even if I had to barf on three occasions.
I admit that I certainly loved to make my chili, and Ashley loved the spaghetti, but I liked the skill to try and cook my own Japanese foods. I did make tempura once - veggies, deep-fried without the need for the fire department to arrive - but that was pretty much it.
I believe Ashley made sushi for me a few times, but I got sushi enough at parties (enkai), school lunches, or could buy it at restaurants and diners, or I could purchase ready-made meals.
Iseya may have had them, but I never saw them. Instead, I purchased ready-made dinners at AiAi Town. Though a small grocery store, it was right down town, and only a three minute bike ride from my apartment, as opposed to the seven-minute bike ride to Iseya. I know, no big whoop.
I would by kontatsu (pork cutlet) on rice, unagi (freshwater eel) on rice and the smoked duck breast meat, as well as fresh daikon radish there.
Oh yeah... when I was on a health kick after coming back for a third year (I had gone home to Toronto over the summer and everyone noted how heavy I was... I was 186 lbs... and for me, 175 was ideal - whereas now I would be happy to be 200 lbs, considering since them I bulked up my body with weights and training to take my chest from a 36-inch up to a 48-inch - that 186 would actually be the ideal, giving me a perfect six-pack and V-body again.... ahhh, to be 34-years-old and have my hair curly half-way down my back. I'm growing my hair again - because I can - but it's straight, not curly, now... sucks...), I started jogging every night.
I began at 1600 meters a night, and added 400 meters (one lap) every day.To help with the dieting, I would take home the special school lunches - extra stuff that the school staff would give to me - packs of natto, and lots of steamed Japanese white rice.
Every night, I would mix in the soy sauce into the natto (rotten fermented natto soy beans that smelled terrible - my nose doesn't work and is more for show than anything else), add a raw egg to the mix, stir it up and pour the goopy mess over a bed of hot rice, and gulp it down with one liter of white milk. Then go jogging two hours later.
I dropped the weight in no time and was down to 170, and up to 10 kilometers a night soon enough.
Was it all expensive? Probably. I have no idea.
One bit of advice I took to mind was to never calculate the currency exchange because it would drive you crazy knowing how much you were really paying. It's why, after the first year, I discovered the joys of the ready-to-eat meals.
Anyhow... I bring all of this up to tell you that you can find whatever westernized food you want in Japan. It is very true that some of you are going to be posted into a small hamlet of a place that has no train station or huge grocery stores or much of anything except the post office, a bar and a pachinko parlor or two, but let me just put your mind at ease - you are never that far from another town or village - bus, taxi, bicycle - where you will find a place that has the foods you crave.
So... if you are heading to Japan soon - don't worry. You won't starve even if you can't stand Japanese food.
My friend Jeff Seaman - who eventually married a Japanese woman there - and I think is still living in Japan 23 years later - hated Japanese food. He would seek out Dunkin Donuts (really... it's there), or prepare his own deli meat sandwiches and take them to school. Not my bag, really, as I ate what the Japanese school kids ate, but had a 50-50 split for dinner between Japanese and western cuisine.
Bon appetit and enjoy your time in Japan,
Andrew Joseph
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