Fake Food
In Japan, when you go to a restaurant, many of them have extremely realistic plastic versions of the meals & foods they are serving placed in the window. Apparently this serves 2 purposes – 1.) It lets you see what you’re going to be getting and 2.) The fancier & more expensive the fake food, the better the real food you’ll be eating (or so they say). Here you can see some pictures of the store that sells the fake food… and no matter how good this stuff looks – you can’t eat it. It’s plastic. (My favorite was the whole rotisserie chicken).
Sushi on Parade
If you remember WAY back to one of my early food posts, I talked about going out for sushi in Tokyo. Here you can see the actual conveyer belt on which the sushi was paraded. No one here spoke any English. I was able to order 3 things in the restaurant – eel (unagi), water (mizu) and Coke (no translation necessary)… I have to say the sushi available in NYC (at better Japanese restaurants) is as good as what they have in Tokyo. We have closed the gap…
Dinner in Japan
Just like anywhere else in the world, if you want to know what food is like in a country – spend some time with the locals. Here you can see a home-cooked meal (though the fish isn’t technically cooked). This meal was delicious! Once again, kudos to my host family.
On the second night, my host family took me out to dinner. We went to a restaurant that had stove tops on each table. You would order different flavored broths – which would boil in front of you – then you would add in vegetables, meats, etc… It was like fondue, just without the cheese (which I, of course, approved of). The only weird thing was that after you cooked your meat, you were supposed to dip it in a raw egg. Supposedly, this is delicious. I just couldn’t convince myself to try. I ate the octopus, I ate the squid, I ate the fish candy (yes, there’s fish candy), but I just couldn’t do a raw egg. If you think you can, by all means give it a try – cook up some beef and dip it in raw egg before you eat it. If the salmonela doesn’t get to you, let me know how it tastes. 
