La Piccina Cucina: Travel Edition: Dining in Japan

(Tokyo - Pickled Vegetables, Various Tofus and Bean Curds, Sardines, Rice with Tiny Fish (Jayko!), Miso with Shellfish)

Time for a post that's long overdue: dining in Japan! Come on, you know I'm that embarrassing tourist who photographs every single meal item. And now - lucky, lucky you - I'm dedicating a whole post to those embarrassing photos.

One of my many, many favorite things about Japan was the food. The traditional cuisine is fantastic, the options are endless (we barely ate the same thing twice), and you can get just about any other international cuisine you want, and get it done right. So, in addition to Japanese food, we had Spanish, Thai, French, Irish Pub...aaaaand one trip to McDonald's (the most polite McD's experience ever, by the way - they even arranged the food in neat rows on the tray table).

Because everything is so clean, etc., you can really feel good about trying more adventurous dishes, which is fantastic.

One thing we noticed halfway into the trip was how fast the food was prepared, too. I didn't really realize this until two restaurants apologized that the food would take - horror of all horros - 15 minutes to make it to our table. Of course, that seemed more than reasonable to us, especially considering what was being prepared.

The single thing I didn't like: fermented soybeans, which made an unfortunate appearance in my last meal of soba noodles. Hey, I tried it. Not. Good.

Final food note: Tsukiji Fish Market. Massive and amazing. And they do it EVERY day!

The country is clearly still suffering from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters, and will likely continue to do so for years to come. As many people have observed, however, the Japanese are not ones to let themselves be set back by extreme adversity: three days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the community had the trolleys running again. I loved our trip, the country, and the people, and am hopeful for Japan's recovery.