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One thing I forgot to mention was Kit Kats. I've never seen so many flavors in my life. There were cantelope ones (I'm pretty sure that's what they were, right next to the cantelope Pocky), sakura (cherry blossom, I believe) ones, I think green tea ones though I'm not sure ... it was crazy. The sakura ones were pink and very sweet. Btw, sakura ice cream is wonderful! The Japanese excell at taking existing things and making them their own (they're similar to the ancient Romans in that respect, I think). I suppose that shows up in the food along with everything else.

Finally, here is a picture of the hotel food court (my friend very much felt she didn't look good enough to show her face in it), and then my fried shrimp (I like tempura better), rice, chicken egg drop soup (that's my best guess on what it was, it was delicious!) and salad that I had at the airport while waiting for my flight home. I think I was the only person at the end who wasn't looking forward to having western food again. I'm proud of myself for that! I'm pretty determined to go back again. I loved Japan so much! Hope you enjoyed this little report from the front lines. Now that I'm home, I decided to take pics of the snack/treat foods I brought home for myself and for gifts. The first is the ubiquitous Pocky in four flavors (chocolate, chocolate almond, strawberry, and green tea). There also were some almond treats made to look like bird's eggs. I thought maybe they had a hard coating like Jordan Almonds (link chosen a bit at random to be informative, I've never ordered from these folks) I fell in love with those tooth-breakers at Italian weddings, being half Sicilian. However, the coating on these is quite soft. It's still good! I really couldn't resist getting the little candy sushi set, it was just way too cute! After having so much powdered green tea (hey, no steeping and you can even put it in your bath) I had to get some, so I think I got a packet of that. I won't be 100% sure until I open it. That's part of the fun of buying things in a place where you can't even guess at the writing. I'm not entirely sure what this is. My guess is some kind of soft, sweet rice coating with a plum-flavored center. I know it's plum for sure, there was a sign telling which box colors had which flavor. I'm not keeping it though so it doesn't seem right to open it! Last, there's the big sampler box of Japanese treats. Many of these are probably in a soft, sweet rice flour coating with a flavored filling inside. Very chewy and soft. I have no idea of what any of these things are aside from the little chiffon cakes in the green wrappers. I liked the mixed box idea because I'm taking bits of each and packing them up as gifts to people. Hopefully I'll have a little left over to try for myself. I did try a lot of sweets when I was there, often there were little sampler plates near things in the nicer stores where you could try a piece of one. For someone who's got weight issues like myself, though, I found that I love Japanese foods more than sweets. This would probably save me many pounds if I stayed over there for any length of time. Well, if I didn't settle down at a desk as a writer again! Hope you enjoyed your virtual tour!

Another food highlight of the Sapporo trip was 3,000 yen apiece, which is roughly (in quick mental trip math) about $30US. It's a Hokkaido (the island Sapporo is on) specialty, BBQ lamb. The deal is that you get a burner, rub lamb fat over it so things won't stick, and then put these odd, stiff, round slices of lamb on it and vegetables (my favorite was the pumpkin) on the burner and cook them as you like. You then dip them in a Japananese-style BBQ sauce. It was 110 minutes, all you can eat, and it was so wonderful. None of us lasted 110 minutes! I've included a bunch of pictures from there so you can see what it was like. This feast was in a brew house. If Sapporo sounds familiar, think of Sapporo beer! Oddly, this place also had the best cola in the universe. I don't know what it was but it was very, very good. I mentioned how much I loved these bottles, right? Then it was back to Tokyo. We went back to the food court there and used a vending machine with fun Engrish on it to purchase tickets for our orders. It was time to finally try Ramen, since we hadn't tried it through the whole trip and the Japansese are so nuts over it! The second picture is my ramen, and I think the third is another type, but I could be mistaken. ... finished in next reply ...

Next is a drink I absolutely loved. I think from the picture that it was some kind of grape seltzer, but I could be wrong. My friends tried it and didn't like it, but that was fine, it was all mine! I loved the cute little metallic bottles too. At another food court, in Sapporo, I ordered a soup with a heavy meat broth (I'm not sure what it was, alas) with tempura shrimp floating on top of it. The little onions and whatnot on the side are to season it to taste. It was excellent. Mind you, I'd tried to order something else but this is what I ended up with, and I didn't regret it. One of the people ordered chicken cutlets on top of rice (I can't recall if it was donburi or not) with soba noodles (second pic), and another ordered a combo I'm really not sure of! It looks like soba noodles with seaweed, vegetables, and I know those were shrimp or shrimp dumplings. Our only Japanese speaker had terribly broken Japanese so he was only so much help, heh, but it was fun. A food court in Sapporo also had the best sushi we had during the trip. I'm a sushi nut and am happy to say that the sushi in Vancouver easily compares to the sushi in Japan from what I experienced. The best place we went in Japan is equivalent to our favorite places at home. However, we have to go to downtown Vancouver to get conveyor belt sushi and it was more common in Japan. I had to take pictures at this other one because of the cool plastic bubbles over the food. In the second pic, I'm the one on the upper right in the darker purple. The guy to the lower right is one of our guides who was just so so excited about how good the food was. He got people to try some things with some successes and some amusing facial expressions on the failures. You can see by the plates that we had a great meal. One cool thing about the sushi places is that they had powered green tea and a faucet right at the table so you could just make your own tea as you wanted to. The powdered stuff is essentially instant tea and it's quite good. It's also supposed to be good for you. I got some to bring home. I thought this next one was hot chocolate, but it turned out to be chocolate milk. Didn't matter, it was very good and very chocolatey! Another vending machine purchase. ... continued in next post so I can get the lamb dinner in one grouping ...

The hotel had a 24/7 "pasta and pizza" diner so we went there one night. In order, the pictures below refer to the mis-matched salad my friend put together at the salad bar, the mixed Italian appetizers that I ordered (all very good and fairly authentic), the pizza a friend ordered, a friend eating a little piece of octopus and making a sad face over it though she mightily enjoyed it, the crab doria that I ordered (if you search the Web for doria recipe you will find that this is a very creamy dish on top of rice with cheese on top), and another friend's seafood pasta. At the Venus Fort in PaletteTown, we decided to eat at the food court. This was our free day so there was no guide there to help us, and we had fun navigating the food and whatnot on our own. Here are two shots of the food court. As far as what we ordered, first a friend ordered shrimp dumplings (first picture below). The guy asked her several times if that's what she really wanted. She loved them. He stared at us the whole time she ate them. Another friend ordered some sort of sesame dumplings filled with, well, I'm not sure what it was. It was a kind of gritty greenish black, maybe seaweed? She liked them (second picture below). I absolutely love my order (third pic). It was, I believe udon noodle miso soup, tempura shrimp, an inari sushi (rice wrapped in a kind of sweet tofu pocket), and I think some sweet almond tofu in an almond milk sauce, with almonds sprinkled on top. The big ladel was for the soup broth I'm pretty sure. The chopsticks were for the noodles and most of the rest. The little spoon was for the dessert. Another friend got something different. She got soba noodles (which come cold, the dark cup is the dipping sauce for the noodles), tempura shrimp on top of something, I forget what it was, and a mix of seasonings to add to it. She wasn't thrilled with the soba. I'd tried it the other day and actually kind of enjoyed it. I think soba is buckwheat noodles. ... continued in reply ...

While in Harajuku (ever hear Gwen Stefani's song "Harajuku Girls"? She pronounces it wrong, but essentially this is the trendy part of Tokyo where the teens shop for funky clothes) we got more crepes. Here's my friend with hers, and the plastic display that shows the insides and ingredients. Then there was this crazy place called Namjatown. It's almost impossible to describe, really, except to say that the Japanese are fond of food-based theme parks. Namjatown is two levels. The first level is made to resemble a festival in the 1950's, with lots of narrow alleys, dark lighting, lots of little booths, festive decorations, and so on. There's where you get gyoza, which you can see below in its neat little package, complete with soy sauce. Upstairs are sweets. Primarily, ice cream and cream puffs. When I say ice cream, I mean a bunch of crazy kinds and flavors. Our guide said there's horse ice cream. I can't say that I was eager to try it, and I didn't seek it out. I tried two things here. One was Turkish ice cream, which I'd never had before. The stuff ... well, it stretches. Like taffy. We saw him stretch it about two feet long as he was preparing the cones with great ceremony. Then he dipped the tops in a chocolate fountain, and the chocolate hardened on the ice cream after a bit. It was quite good. The closest flavor I can give it is vanilla. After that, our guide pointed out black gelato. It was seriously black. Like asphalt. She read the ingredients to us and it had 5 black ingredients, including black sesame seeds. We saw a guy eating it (which sparked an amusing conversation in which he showed off his black mouth) and my friend just had to have some. She went and got a cone and a bunch of little taster spoons. Honestly, it was very good. It had a buttery, rich flavor to it. However, it made your teeth and tongue black and looked really disgusting. None of us could eat more than a few bites. Later, I saw black sesame ice cream available in a tiny Haagen Dazs tub in a convenience store. One cool thing about Japan is portions. You can get lots of things in small portions like tiny, less than a pint-sized ice creams. I wish we could get that here. Here's another sign from Namjatown that represented the decadence of the place! ... continued in reply...

Japan Trip Food Report by Dee-Ann LeBlanc I went on a tour of Japan that consisted primarily of Tokyo and Sapporo, with a side-trip to Mt. Fuji. During the trip, Mr. Perlow asked me to pretty please photograph all of the food I ate while I was there. I forgot a few times but he's done me some kindness in the past (like preventing me from having to eat cannoli in Manhattan during a conference) so I did my best. That said, here's my "food log." I'm not a professional food reviewer or anything and I don't even know what some of the dishes were called--let's face it, sometimes I was just pointing at the menu at something that looked good in the picture--but I'll tell you as much as I remember. If you want to see my full trip report, then take a look at the trip report here. There's where you'll find lots of links to the places I'm talking about. I'm not taking the time to do as many here. The first thing I had was while waiting at the airport. I could read the sign and it was a rice ball with salmon. I love salmon and I love rice and I love sushi so I figured it was hard to go wrong. I was surprised to find out that it was, in fact, hot! But it was very tasty. It stayed steaming hot, too hot to touch, until I finally opened the plastic wrapper. Then it cooled down enough to eat. Here's two pictures of it, one before I ate it and one so you can see the cooked salmon inside. Next I had a chocolate, banana crepe at a food court but I didn't take a picture until halfway through, and it looks kind of gross! I have other crepe pictures so I'll spare you. I will say that the Japanese are very fond of crepes. There were stands everywhere! Most were sweet crepes but there were some savory ones like cream cheese and salmon. I thought it would be interesting to chronicle drinks as well. Japan is full of vending machines, at least the places I went. These vending machines have a wide variety of drinks, often there's 5 machines lined up in a row. Some are hot (in cans) and some are cold. This is a Royal, British-style Milk Tea and it was quite good. Different, it took me a bit to get used to, really, but I enjoyed it. That night we went to a conveyor belt sushi place. This was the only place we went where you had to take off your shoes, and we found out later that (oops) we did it wrong. You typically take off your shoes at a step. The deal is to never go up the step with the shoes on and never go down the step with your sock-feet or bare feet. It's a "clean" versus "unclean" thing. However, they didn't throw us out and probably just rolled their eyes at the idjit foreigners. The seating, as you can see in the pic, was on the floor. There were these cool half chairs and beneath was a depression where our legs and feet went, so we were actually sitting normally. It was just as comfortable as regular seating. Past my friends there you can see the conveyor belt, but I've included another picture just of the belt so you can see it. There were pretty common items on there, and we could ask the chef for anything else that we wanted that was on the menu. The amount you spent is tracked by the little plates the food comes on. The plates are color-coded to the price. At this particular place, they had this very cool electronic wand that they waved by the plates to calculate the total. When we went to Mt. Fuji, there were vendors near the first station (the first level on the mountain with the visitor's center and whatnot) selling fresh food. One was selling BBQ corn and it looked so good that a bunch of us had to have it. The guy put some form of sauce on it and then put it on the burner when you ordered, and was kind enough to give us a discount since so many of us ordered. It was delicious, as evidenced by the pic of me with my empty cob, which I tucked back into its neat little wrapper. One very cool thing about Japan is all of the plastic food displays. I kid you not. Apparently plastic food is a massive industry there. For those of us who can't even puzzle out the menus, it's a godsend, since we can just get up, walk over to the display, and point if we have to. Here's one example from a Japanese Italian place. Everyone I know who got pizza in Japan didn't like it, by the way. I didn't try it myself. ... continued in reply to this post ...