Japanese Food Bites: Indulging in the Taste of Summer

Hi again everyone! It’s only been a week since my last blog post, but I feel like so much has happened since then. To sum it up for you, we’ve travelled across Nagano to places like Ueda, Bessho-Onsen, and Kurobe, and as I’m writing this now I’m seated on a train named the “Thunderbird” en route to Kyoto. For my food adventures yesterday, it might not be the most exciting day in terms of eating but it was an eventful day of travels.

My morning started off in Ueda at our hotel’s continental breakfast, where I engulfed a large plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes and a fried meat patty called Menchi-katsu. I also tried a fried egg with a savory sauce on the side, and to help digest the numerous carbs and protein I had some oranges and a yogurt (thinking of my health occasionally). This might have been the first instance this trip where I had fruit which isn’t really a good thing but I’m showing you my honest diet. After we left the hotel, we took a train to Kurobe, a small coastal town with a large fishing presence. We actually went straight to the beach there, which by my American standards was more like a lot of pebbles by the water, however we all had a fun time.

A few of us snuck away as I found a small area to jump off of, but we were told that this was off-limits due to the season, so we didn’t stay long. After I burned through all my energy, I returned to the group and indulged in my bento box I had bought earlier that morning, which I unfortunately didn’t take a picture of. I apologize guys, this feels like a letdown but I was so hungry that as soon as I opened the box my hands moved faster than my thoughts and as soon as they grabbed the chopsticks I knew there was no way I would remember to take a picture first. It was a really delicious beef bento, with rice, salted noodles and thin slices of marinated beef, paired nicely with some pickled vegetables and rounded off with a small preserved apricot (surprise surprise). We then had a nice long walk back to the hotel, which had us in high spirits listening to old songs on my speaker while trotting along, reminiscing on easier times (greedy to say this while I’m in Japan right).

We had another quiz on neurons, plants and animals/fish for Young-Sensei’s class, and then wrote our poems about food after in Professor Ito’s class. I wrote about my ode to sour cream which was difficult to write but I was happy with the final product. I sat through all 3 hours of these classes covered in salt which didn’t feel the best to be honest. I was, however, pleased to see that at the Aqua Kurobe hotel there was a beautiful Yamaha piano awaiting me in the lobby. I wasted no time and knocked some of the rust off of my fingers, which haven’t managed to play pieces like Fur Elise and Rondo Alla Turca perfectly in years. The hotel staff was impressed with what I remembered, and one apologized that it was a little out of tune, but honestly I was just happy to play on a real piano. After I got my musical tunes out, I felt hungry again (no one should be surprised at this point) and I went out with Amelia, Niki and Annika to explore a local Izakaya (kind of a Japanese pub). We walked in and were met with glances by the guy at the bar sitting alone and the aged, hunched-over waitress but the icy stares turned warm as we took off our shoes and entered this traditional dining experience. The man at the bar kept asking if we were movie stars, which we didn’t deny of course, and we laughed with the locals in the izakaya despite the language barrier. I asked them each about the town and they mentioned that it felt as if we were the only foreigners there, and we were definitely getting more looks than normal (at least compared to Tokyo). Annika mentioned that despite the looks, once we started talking to the locals of Kurobe they were welcoming and we all clinked our glasses in cheers as we drank in the izakaya. Amelia and I split what they called a “megabeer”, and we enjoyed traditional drinks such as sake and highballs as well (just for the experience of course).

This is a picture of the table next to us who we chatted with duing our dinner. You can see the size of the megabeer is no joke. The menus were fully Japanese with not an image in sight, so we relied on ChatGPT to translate our orders. We ended up with fried chicken cartilage, fried whole shrimp, and assorted skewers to assemble the perfect dinner fitting of the Japanese salaryman lifestyle we were roleplaying that night. 

After cleaning house at the Izakaya, we headed out and enjoyed a nice walk at night back to the hotel, ready for an early morning the next day on the way to Kyoto. Thank you all for reading and listening to my blog!