Sunday, October 08, 2006

Do Japanese people eat sushi all the time?

I've answered "No!" to this question bazillions of times, but then when I've been asked follow-up questions like "Well, then what do you eat?" or "So what's a regular Japanese meal look like?" I wasn't able to give a good answer.

So here's a picture of a standard Japanese meal. From the top left: broiled Komatsu-greens (similar to spinach) with soy-radish sauce; grilled salmon fillet with soy sauce; seaweed and green onion miso soup; Japanese rice; pickled radish. It was a tasty, and most of all hearty, meal. Totally comfort food for me. In any case, you can see why most Japanese people tend to be slim--there's very little fat content. Maybe a bit of fat from the salmon, and some carbs from the rice, but all in all it's a pretty healthy meal.

It's not what I would call 'standard', but this dessert is fairly traditional. The reddish-brown stuff is sweetened red-bean paste (if you are in Vancouver you can go to pretty much any bubble-tea store and have a taste of red-bean), and the white balls are literally called 'white balls' (shiratama) in Japanese. They are kind of like mochi (rice cakes) but slightly sweetened. Japanese desserts like these are also fairly healthy compared to a cake or a cookie, and (I think) they're pretty tasty, too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That looks yummy! I love how you get the little side dishes in Japan, like the ohitashi and takuan. When I cook myself Japanese stuff I never have enough energy left over to do all the little things that make it complete :(

Anonymous said...

so jealous! I wish I could eat like that all the time, yum. I eat so much american CRAP every day ;P

I love asian desserts. but dude - bubble tea here (with all of FOUR flavours, like... soy and tofu :P) is a $1.75!! nutty.

- chris