Normal Life

It's Thursday!! While this normally means that I have school to look forward to tomorrow morning, this week is different than most. Because of two national holidays, this week I only had three work days. (Monday was Respect for the Aged Day and Friday is the Autumnal Equinox). Funnily enough, the students had school cancelled on Wednesday due to a typhoon that caused it to rain a LOT on Wednesday morning. Because of this it's been a slightly weird week to be at work. I'm happy that it's the weekend and I'm looking forward to taking advantage of it. 

Tonight I went to Kaiten-zushi with a friend of mine and it reminded me that I haven't really done a post dedicated to what I generally eat on a day to day basis. When I thought about it I realized that my diet is completely different in Japan than it is when I am back in the States. I have found that the foods that I normally eat at home are practically non-existent or really expensive. After quite a bit of exploring I've managed to find a couple of cheap things that I can buy locally that make a variety of nice meals. 

As I have said before, I eat school lunch during the week. Kyuushoku is a fair amount of food and it's relatively nutritionally balanced (I think). What they serve each day varies a lot, and it's always a surprise to see what will end up on my tray. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are rice days while Tuesday and Thursday are bread days. Each meal also comes with a soup, salad, milk, and a main dish. On bread days the meal is more likely to be something foreign or western, whereas on rice days they often serve Japanese style meals like fish or tofu. Some days are good, some days are bad. 

Kyuushoku from last week. There is rice in my bento box, a carton of milk,  miso soup with potatoes and tofu, beans, pickled plum, and salt baked fish. 

There are also a variety of dishes that I cook at home. I have a rice cooker, which comes in handy a lot. The most popular rice is a white sticky rice, the kind that you will find in sushi in the States. It's not bad, but can be a little bland. I usually eat my rice with hurikake, a kind of flavoring that you put on top of rice. There are many different types, but I like egg, plum, and black sesame seed the best. I will often  steam up some vegetables or fry an egg or two to complete my meal. 

Rice with hurikake and a hard boiled egg.

Recently, I have also become addicted to eating Japanese squash, otherwise known as kabocha. They are the closest vegetable the Japanese have to a pumpkin and they are harvested in the fall so I have been seeing them everywhere. Thanks to the advice of a good friend I learned that if you steam it and eat it with a little bit of salt it is pretty much the most delicious thing on the planet earth. No lie. It's sweet and filling and good for you, all at the same time! 

Kabocha, how I love thee!

There are lots of other recipes that I want to try soon. Come winter I think I will start cooking a bit more (I hope). The heat has killed a lot of my motivation, so once the cold sets in I think warm food will push me to get my butt in the kitchen. In lieu of hot food, I often take a 15 minute bike-ride to Sushi-ro. Sushi-ro is a kaiten-zushi restaurant that is delicious and very cheap. "Kaiten-zuzhi" means "rotating sushi", which refers to the conveyor belt that circulates the sushi around the restaurant. Customers sit at tables next to a conveyor belt filled with sushi. Each table has an individual ordering pad which you can use to order specific sushi, or you can take what you want from off of the belt. Each plate is approximately 100 yen. If you eat 4 or 5 plates (which is usually enough to fill me up) you might end up spending 500 or so yen. It's a good place to sit and chat with friends while watching the sushi go around and around and around. 

SUSHI

Sometimes I try to cook other things, and sometimes I go out to eat at different restaurants with friends, but the food that I mentioned above makes up a large portion of my diet. Healthy? I think maybe it could be worse. I'm sure it could be better... but Japan definitely doesn't have as many frozen meals or handy microwaveable pizzas. They have a prepared food section, but it's just as cheap to go to Sushi-ro or to buy some vegetables and make something that will actually be tastier. It's inspired me to work harder at eating more vegetables and proteins. Hopefully I can make this habit last when I return to the States as well. Only time will tell!