Japano-files
Missing Japan: O Glorious Foods
Sigh, I’m missing Japan, particularly the foodies. It’s been more than a year since my business trip, summer of 2007, and double’s recent post made me reminisce the time I spent in the wonderful place that is Fukuoka. I still wasn’t attached to the blog / blogging community / readers when my lucky trip happened, so I didn’t get to share about it in public. Only to Seleria and other close friends IRL ^^;
I already talked about the loot I bought during my trip, so I won’t talk about that cliché topic anymore. Instead, I’ll show you some of the foods I fell in love with during my 3-week business trip.
Presenting, the Habanero ring chips~! I mentioned a bit about this in my Natsu no Sora episode 4 post, but it was really random lol. Anyways, this is one of the spiciest chips out there in the world, made from the spiciest chili pepper Habanero. Eating just a few of these chips is enough to give your mouth and tummy a burning sensation, as though your stomach is being pierced to its very core. That said, this is obviously for hardcore spice fans so don’t blame me if you get a hemorrhage from eating it!, and thus I am the only one who know about it in our little office. Well I still hope my beloved officemates in Japan can bring me home some of these… I miss them so much 
I’ve only been to a few places in Fukuoka, but I’ve got to say, Hamakatsu tonkatsu is a MUST TRY! This is the first restaurant I visited during my trip, recommended by our boss. The meal sets they have are a little pricey, but I consider it to be really affordable given their service and the eat-all-you-can goodies that are part of the meal set. Tonkatsu is their specialty, and they have this special sauce which you’d have to add with grinded sesame seeds (you have to perform this ‘ritual’ of grinding, it seems), and voila! Yummy tonkatsu~ I’ve been telling my kouhais about this, but it seems that this isn’t easily accessible from where they are in Tokyo, so they have yet to taste this. Seriously, the pics of the foods here not only LOOK delicious, it also tastes delicious, reallyyy.
My memory’s a little vague but I do remember this restaurant being located in Hawk’s Town Mall. As written in that little sign (if you can see it in the pic), they offer meal sets which comes with eat-all-you-can bread (hurray!!), and both the meal itself and the breads were really yummy~ I loved the croissants (kurowa-san 
) the most. But sigh, I fail for not taking a pic of the actual meal I had that time 
And last but not the least, is this not-so-scrumptious looking pic of another 食べ放題[tabehoudai] (eat all you can) feast I had back there. Eat all you can shabu shabu!!! 
This is somewhere in Chuo, Fukuoka, but gah, my memory fails me right now… what I know is that we walked a few blocks from where we ate Ichiran Ramen to here (ugh yes, food after food… pigging out ^^; ).
I’d love to say something about Ichiran Ramen, one of the best ramens in Japan, but alas, all I have is this not-so-fresh-looking pic of it (half-eaten) lol. That’d be quite eww of course, so never mind And, I don’t know if it’s a standard in other ramen houses or especially for Ichiran, but I found it nifty that you can customize your ramen there, the spice level (I chose ‘double’ :3), the size of the noodles, amount of fat, etc. Sigh, Ichiran… TT____TT
I could also talk about the yummy Kitkat maccha and strawberry chocolate wafers I ate there, as well as other chocolate goodies and other chips, but bah, I’ll just leave this up here If I get to taste them again, I’ll see to it that I’ll post about them.
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Now that I’m back from Ooita, I’m so going to some of the places you’ve mentioned tomorrow.
Mmm food, glorious food.
OMG Shabu-Shabu, F’ YEAAAAA~! Ah, the food looks so yummy. *is hungry again*
Yum…the food pictures looks delicious.
And I understand what you mean. Sometimes, the worse part of not being somewhere it realy really wanting the food but being unable to get it!!
omg the tonkatsu looks so overly delicious *drool*
even the plastic meals look yummy!!!
I’ve seen those chips in the grocery every time and I’ve yet to taste them. I’ll have to get some next time!
I know I’ll miss Japanese food too but I think I’m lucky that I just like food. It will be sad to have less access (and certainly less authentic atmosphere) but there’s a whole range of US foods to get through. And I’m moving to the city of restaurants so things should be just fine for my stomach. ^_^
I generally can’t associate spicy with Japanese food (barring wasabi, but that’s more up your nose than anything) so I’m going to be on the look out for those chips from now on (wait, since when were potato chips Japanese? Oh nvm :P).
And oh god, you just had to mention ‘tabehoudai’, the word that unleashes my inner pig
@double: I do hope you can at least get to eat in Hamakatsu! And remember that the rice, cabbage salad, miso soup and pickled vegetables are eat-all-you-can
@Panther: yes, drool at their gloriousness *__*
@Ryan: muahaha! Feel my pain of craving for these stuff!
@Catherine: definitely… foods, you can almost feel it right in your mouth, but alas, it’s not!
@ShiMan: haha yeah, those plastics look soo real!! They’re the exact same replica of the meals… yummy as it looks~!
@Caitlin: Try those spicy chips at least once and be proud that you were able to! And ‘city of restaurants’ seems just like the place for me (*looks at poor wallet*)!
@issa-sa: rofl, just eat it and see!
I want to try the Habanero yakisoba too… yum~
I should really stop drooling..xDDD
Those…look delicious..really SCRUMPTIOUS. -wipes drool-
That’s why this blog’s name make sense.
Ah Ramen…reminds me of the bowl of Ramen that I’ve eaten recently. I think different places prepare ramen differently though the displays might look similar. I was eating a bowl of ramen prepared by a local stall by it was way more salty than a bowl that I had in South Korea. Really, South Korean has a unique way of preparing their food; even the KFC in South Korea tasted like frozen chicken material.
I too miss Japan…:D yummy food!
@Wija-chan: yeah, I really think we should post more about food stuff to live up to our blog’s name
@Hynavian: Now I’m confused if you found the Korean food good or bad!
I like the spicy korean stuff though :3
@jenlee: *sniff* yeah… yummy stuff, I miss buying loads of my anime/manga loot too. lol.