August 26th #itsallaboutthefood

  I have a friend who likes to hashtag a lot of her instagram posts #itsallaboutthefood , so today I decided to really make it all about the food! We receive a lot of flyers in our mail because here the postal service doesn't own your mailbox so businesses can just put advertisements in there without paying extra for postage.  I don't read Japanese, but I like to look at the different adverts for fun as sometimes they will use English in their names. I received one the other day for a business called Lava, it advertised itself as teaching Hot Yoga. I'm not sure how that differs from regular yoga exactly but it did make me curious! Ha!
I also received this flyer:

 

Ramen shops here are serious business! There is one place we ate at in Tachikawa that was all Ramen shops and they had Iron Chef style competitions.  Anyway, I liked the different chef personalities on this flyer.

Chef #1

Before becoming Ramen Master he worked as Sub-Zero on Mortal Combat!

 

Chef #2

I would accept him as a traditionalist ...but WHAT is that eating his ramen in the picture?! Is it a person or a piggy with a mustache or a cat? His face says, "I'm no nonsense, take me seriously" but how can I ?!

 

Chef #3

 

 

Look! A Female Ramen Chef! Apparently, these are still rare in Japan. I think she's looking for a very ascetically pleasing plate.  Definitely, the fanciest look I've seen so far!

 

On to other food stuff! The other day, Gary brought home some somen noodles. With the hot weather he has been wanting to eat some cold noodles dipped in sauce as is common here in the very hot weather. He also found some tasty squid cooked with garlic and chili.. we think maybe it was cooked Korean style. Either way, it was a light tasty lunch!

 

 

I was in the grocery store and they had set up a small radio by the fish section. There was an old guy with a gravely voice talking. I didn't understand all that was being said of course but I kept picking up on the word Unagi. I guess unagi season is in, because when I looked there was unagi. I picked up a packet that I could heat in my little broiler that all Japanese stoves come with.

 

I heated them through, I also made some soup, rice and pork with nira (a Japanese garlic/onion type plant) and bean sprouts.

(this is nira)

 

Anyhow, it all looked like this.

 

I've never had Unagi before but it was light tasting and not fishy at all, which makes sense since it isn't actually a fish as it's eel.  Unagi is fresh water eel, though Gary says he prefers Anago which is sea water eel. I didn't even know fresh water eel existed!

 

A few days later, I passed my little corner fish market I saw they had pulled out the little grill and were grilling fresh unagi and something else that was much cheaper but looked tasty on a skewer. I decided to pick up a couple of the cheaper ones to take home to Gary. As usual, I had no idea what I was buying but it looked pretty good. I think we decided in the end that it was grilled fish entrails with a sauce on it. Gary said it was good, I didn't taste any, maybe next time. Sorry, I didn't have my camera but this is what the unagi grilling looked like.

 

One of Gary's favorites for lunch is sushi rice. I can pick it up ready made in the bento box section of our grocer. It's like sushi in a bowl!

 

 

In case you think all we eat is Japanese food we don't.

 Nothing beats a good old American breakfast!

 

 

There you have it! My #itsallaboutthefood post!

Provecho!