Bento Series BreakTime #11: "Buffet" food

For my "buffet" lunch, I picked up a ham, cheese, and asparagus "katsu," and two slices of roasted chicken, the usual lettuce bedding and cherry tomatoes, and for the katsu and lettuce, I have ketchup and mayo as dip. There's also a ball of mashed pumpkin salad in there, which is a little bit sweet and definitely yummy in a pumpkin sort of way. No pineapples this time around because there were none yet when we got there.

Marine Day

A beach on Chigasaki, the nearest one to my place.
Never been there yet and I probably won't ever be able to go.
Photo from Wikipedia.

Last Monday was Marine Day here in Japan, a national holiday. This year, it was on July 16. I totally forgot about it this time, but now I know why one of my meetings were scheduled for July 17 (Tuesday) and not July 16.

Bento Series Breaktime #10?: Cafeteria Katsu Karee

Literally, "Japanese curry rice with pork cutlets," this one is an L-size serving for 441 yen. The curry itself has the usual beef, potato, and carrot bits, and served with pickled radish. It's not so spicy so I sprinkled some crushed chilis on it. It became a little cooler tonight so I had me some free all-you-can-drink hot tea this time, but as usual I didn't miss out on the almond jelly with orange slices for dessert. Notice that I ate the curry with a spoon - this is the Japanese way of eating Japanese curry. No chopsticks, although technically this is easier to eat with chopsticks than Katsudon where the rice becomes soggy because of the "egg sauce." In the same way, I always make it a point to eat Japanese or Chinese food with chopsticks because I feel like they taste better when eaten with chopsticks. But did you know? The standard Korean way of eating rice is with a spoon. Everything else are with Korean-style chopsticks. Oh and Japanese chopsticks are pointier and Korean ones are flatter than Chinese chopsticks. In the Philippines, I think most chopsticks there are Chinese-style, even ones in many Japanese restaurants.

Bento Series Breaktime #9?: My "Buffet" Cafeteria lunch for today

I've blogged about the "new" cafeteria in school where they serve food "buffet" style. It is eat all you can, but it's not a "buffet" in the original sense of the word because you pay as much as you eat as opposed to paying a fixed price. I've also referred to this as the "by-the-pound" ( or "by the kilo") cafteria. If I'm not mistaken, it's 1 yen for every 0.5 grams (0.001 lbs), or maybe the other way around. The plain, steamed rice has a different unit price though. I was too early to get one of my faves, roasted chicken, so I settled for this plate of white fish fillet, a couple of shuumai, half a boiled egg, and my usual lettuce bedding, tomatoes, and pineapples for dessert. I was a bit generous with the mayo as you can see. It is Japanese-style mayo, which is kind of tasty and a little bit sweet. I did find a new use for this mayo - as a dip for the pineapples. Yummy. I was also a little generous with the rice, and this cost me around 550 yen in total. As always, the tea is free and it's free to refill any number of times. I should add that my Mainland-Chinese colleagues here call the shuumai as "Japanese-style," because up there they have bigger ones that are packed with some rice as well that make them full meals by themselves, maybe usually for breakfast, or as a really heavy snack or a quick hunger-stopper. Of course, to us in Southeast Asia and maybe even in HK, this certainly looks like a typical Chinese shuumai and not "Japanese-style," but it is maybe more like Southern China style as opposed to the bigger ones being Northern China style. Taste-wise, to me, it's just about right for something that's not served at a fancy authenthic Chinese restaurant. If these were sold in the Philippines, they would probably be 40 to 60 pesos for four - it's that much better than the street/kiosk shomai we get for 30 pesos or less.

Bento Series Breaktime #8: "Mara Chicken"

"Mara," pronounced "Maaraa," is actually Chinese for hot and spicy. This "Mara Chicken" dish literally translates to "chicken with Chinese hot and spicy sauce." It's actually quite good together with the veggies (beansprouts and some greens). With M-size rice and drink-all-you-can tea, this is all only for 398 yen at the cafeteria.

Very bad, very hot, second day of summer

Here, men with fans is commonplace. Image from  House of Japan.

36 degrees Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit). That already says it all.

Nice, very warm first day of summer

Bento Series: #13

"Tori Tatsuta Karaage Bento," 498 yen from 3F. Literally translates to "deep-fried chicken pre-marinated in soy sauce and cooking sake (Japanese rice wine)." Came with some sweet lemony sauce, 500g of rice with white sesame seed and seaweed sprinkles, and pink pickled radish and carrot-tofu sides. Expensive, but yummy and filling. :9

Bento Series: #12

It's a holiday today so no cafeteria for me. For lunch I ate something I've already blogged about before. But this time, I also ordered salad. Just got the cheapest one, "Fresh Salad," only 158 yen from 3F. It's mostly cabbage and onions, but with the sweet vinegary dressing (vinaigrette?), it's great with my main bento meal.

Bento Series Breaktime #7: Another cafeteria special sizzling plate

It's supposedly a Ginger & Pork Plate, but it's more like Onion & Pork. Tasted great though. 399 yen. Together with M-size rice and almond jelly dessert, and drink-all-you-can tea, the meal totalled around 580 yen.

Bento Series: #10 and #11

I bought rice with (roasted?) chicken that came with a salty-vinegary sauce, orangle pickled radish (that almost looks like carrots), some seaweed(?) on the rice, some spaghetti or soba maybe below the chicken, and some onions again on the chicken. 398 yen from 3F, and almost like a small version of one I blogged about earlier. I bought it then with this salad with chicken and egg and has a miso/sesame dressing. Quite nice. 280 yen though; expensive. But I imagine some people would have this alone for a meal. Oh and veggies here are generally expensive, with comparable prices to meat.

Kanji for "Filipino" and "Catholic"

Image from japan-guide.com

In Japanese, that could be written as:

加特力比律賓人.

That supposedly reads "Katorikku Firippin Jin." But actually, these characters are not used for Catholic or Filipino. They just simply write:

Bento Series: #9

Taco Rice with egg. 480yen from 3F. Expensive but yummy. Mmm, egg. And corn. And yup, they serve this with a spoon, not chopsticks.

Bento Series Breaktime #6: Cafeteria Sizzling Plate

Today's special at the school cafeteria: Mixed Grill. 399 yen. 504 yen with size M rice. (Pork) burger, roast chicken, and minced beef (but mostly potato) katsu, plus fries, spinach and corn sides. This was served to me smoking hot. Unfortunately, all the steam was gone when I took this picture. But I think it's worth the price.

Bento Series Breaktime #5: Supermarket Chuukadon

Chuukadon, 398 yen. Rice bowl with carrots, mushrooms, veggies, quail egg, shrimp, and scallops topping. Sound familiar? It's actually Chop Suey. Yes, the Chinese-in-origin dish, "Japanese style." Comes with pink ginger garnish. Usually, ready-to-eat food at the supermarket are cheaper than at konbinis, and maybe this is true for chuukadon. But 398 for this much felt too much.

Bento Series Breaktime #4: Supermarket Sushi

After I watched the documentary "Super Size Me" years ago, I craved for McDonald's food immediately, contrary to what the documentary preached. Recently, I was in a discussion about sushi with someone and why I should cut down on eating certain types of fish. And that made me want to eat sushi again. I realized that it has probably been over half a year already when I last ate sushi. So I thought, why not. Saw this set at the supermarket and had it for dinner. It's 498 yen but here it's a good deal. This has tamago (egg) sushi, maguro (tuna) sushi, sake/shake (salmon) sushi, two ama ebi (sweet shrimp) sushi, ika (squid) sushi, anago (sea eel) sushi, and three other items I'm not sure what they are. One might be hotate (scallop) sushi. Comes with pickled ginger garnish and light soy sauce as usual.

Bento Series Breaktime #3: Food Court Food

I ordered Katsudon at a food court here in Japan, which is rare. I had to wait for it first though, so they gave me this beeping, light-emitting, vibrating order claim number. The katsudon itself is 580 yen but pretty good. It came with pickled radish which was nice. Notice also the eggs. There's probably two in there. When I first ordered this here 7 years ago, I wondered what kind of sauce they put and why they put it because it made using the chopsticks on the rice difficult. I realized that what they actually put as "sauce" is raw egg, white and yolk. The egg then cooks a bit on the hot rice and katsudon. They do this also for gyuudon. The Japanese like raw eggs and maybe raw food in general. You guys all know about sushi and sashimi - but for the past more than two years I've also tried beef sashimi and horse sashimi here. Pretty good, but those two as well as raw eggs aren't things I'd try outside of Japan. I just feel it's generally safer here to eat raw stuff. I must warn you though that last year, some died after eating raw beef at one restaurant because apparently, that one time, they didn't clean the raw beef meat properly.

Not-so-known Japan: Origins of Tempura

Tempura. Image from Wikipedia

You might think tempura is something purely Japanese. It does have kanji: 天麩羅. The first character means heaven, the second is bran / wheat bran / mash, the last character means from. So tempura would literally translate to "bran/wheat bran/mash from heaven."

The word actually originated possibly from one of three Portuguese-related words:

• tempora, a Latin word that roughly translates to "a period of time" and more specifically to the Lenten / Christian holy days;
• tempero, a noun that refers to a spicy condiment or peppery seasoning; or
• temperar, a verb meaning "to season."

Peixinhos da horta. Image from Wikipedia

Actually, there is still today a dish in Portugal very similar to tempura called peixinhos da horta, that literally translates to "garden fishies." Tempura was introduced to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century by Portuguese Jesuits, during the same period that panko and such dishes as tonkatsu were also introduced from Portugal. It is also possible that the Portuguese picked the technique up from Goa which was their colony in India and this could very well be a variation of the "pakora."


Why does tempura have kanji? It's in the same way that the words "Philippines," "Catholic," and many other words have kanji that are pronounced very similarly to their Western/English pronunciation. That's going to be a topic for next time. :-)


Is tempura then not Japanese food? It is. In the same way that ramen (Chinese in origin; i.e. lo mien) and gyoza (Chinese in origin; i.e. jiaozi) particularly those you eat here in Japan are very distinctly Japanese, different from the Chinese versions of those foods, and that lumpiang shanghai (Chinese in origin; i.e. chunjuan or lunpia) and pancit canton (Chinese in origin; i.e. chow mien, chaomian) are distinctly Filipino, different from the Chinese versions of those foods. In the same way that American English is still English, though distinctly American and very different from their British origins.

Bento Series: #8

Simple, seasonal bento from 3F (498 yen): Fried chicken fillet with spring onion and mayonnaise (made from eggs!) topping, pickled radish siding, rice with black sesame seed sprinkles. Nice! But actually I had some extra rice to supplement the rice here. The chicken was a rather huge portion.

Bento Series: #7

398 yen, from Lawson: roasted chicken, half a burger, ebi fry, potato katsu, macaroni salad, egg omelette with ketchup, a bedding of spaghetti, and rice topped with.. parsley? Not so great, overall.