My visit to Japan(Part 1)..

Back in December 2006, I went to Japan under the youth exchange program organized by the Lions' Club. It was fun and I had experienced a brand new culture, for instance, get into your birthday dress and bath with a lot of strangers in a room(おんせん).

There were a lot of sweet memories during my stay in Japan. Yet, due to my weak brain cells, I cannot recal a lot of stuffs especially the name of the places I visited and the foods I swallowed down in Japan. Talking about food, Japanese cuisine, I shall say, is one of the best cuisines in the world.

I love the sticky rice in Japan. It gives you a different taste compared to the rice in Malaysia. I do not know how they do it, maybe due to the addition of vinegar or maybe because of the way they squeeze the rice, it is a plain yet fantastic たべもの(food). I still recall that, I had rice as あさごはん(breakfast) almost everyday during my stay. According to my host mother, they need to have a heavy breakfast as to provide energy for the man to work for the rest of the day.

Another interesting fact, すし(sushi) is one of the well-known foods originated from Japan. Yet, do you know that sushi is quite expensive in Japan? There are two types of sushi, one is かいてん sushi(rotation sushi, something like sushi king in Malaysia), another one is sushi bar. For the かいてんsushi, it is comparatively cheap. But, if you eat at sushi bar, be ready to pay at least RM300 to RM 600 per person. When I was there, we ate sushi at the sushi bar and took a lot of sake during the Christmas Eve and my host mother paid 120,000 yen equivalent to RM 3700 ++ for 5 person. That's how expensive it is. Luckily I did not need to pay for it. Besides, there is no ebikko(prawn's egg) in Japan. It can only be found in Malaysia.

In one of my entries in this blog, I had mentioned about やきとり(Japanese style satay). I did not know that I have taken a real photo when I had it for my dinner in Japan. Anyway, ss what you can see in the next two photos, やきとりdoes not look exactly like satay.

Next is やきそば(fried mee). My host host mother is very good at it.

おさけ(Sake) is a must for every meal. I had a lot of sake during my stay in Japan though I was not allowed to drink. My host father always ask me to drink be it wain or sake and due to courtesy, I had to take it and guess what, he will stop pouring sake into my cup only when my face started to flush. According to him, we need to practice our drinking skill as a lot of socializing needed to be done for the sake of our job and our company in the future. Well, he has a point in a way.

One of the weird delicacies I tried in Japan was fried grasshopper. They fry it and then soak it into sugar water. It actually tasted not bad. Sweet and full of protein. Haha..


This is dried snake meat. It was stinky but still, I tried it just for the sake of trying.

There are uncountable foods I tried in japan but well, will talk about it in my next entry.

By the way, I stayed in Shizuoka, Nagoya and it was very near to Fuji Mountain. In fact, I can see it from my room.

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