Bento! #123: Karubonaara

378 yen from the school cafeteria!

I'm missing a certain carbonaramara, so for lunch I got me this カルボナーラ / carbonara (spaghetti). It just has a few mushroom and pork (bacon) bits, but it comes with soft-boiled egg for that only-in-Japan touch! They also gave it a good dash of black pepper / koshou / コショー. It is actually quite good, but to me, I think a little bit expensive. By the way, the bacon here in Japan looks more like ham than the bacon we know and love back home, but maybe only because here it's thicker, and so they don't usually fry it until it's crispy. In fact, in this case, the bacon might not have been fried at all. They might also use a slightly different kind of process or ingredients for curing the pork meat. But then, hey, I checked out Wikipedia and just found out that bacon is indeed unique in different places. One time, I bought something that I thought was simply a slab of pork, only to find out later on when I was able to read some Japanese already that it was actually bacon.

Speaking of meat, obviously this isn't enough as one meal for me, so I actually had to eat this with about 200 yen worth of meat (roast chicken, chicken nuggets) and salad (cabbage, tomatoes). The overall meal was great. I probably won't order this again until I crave for carbonara, the spaghetti dish, again; it's just no substitute for my carbonaramara. :)