Convenience Markets: A World Beyond Sushi (Recipe included) (JAPAN - post 1 of 1)

Think Japan, but don't think sushi. Beyond raw fish and vinegar-rice-rolled vegetables thrives an entire realm of Japanese food. Of course bento boxes, miso soup, and sushi immediately come to mind when a friend suggests Japanese food for lunch, an assumption created by sushi restaurants popping up in coastal states, run by groups of mainly Chinese and Korean immigrants. Aside from being painfully pricy, (one exception was a box of tuna sashimi cubes fresh from the Tsukiji International Fish Market in Tokyo - you'd think the closer you got to the real source the more expensive it'd be), sushi and sashimi is unrepresentative of the daily foods Japanese locals eat. I was very fortunate to travel with a friend who grew up in Okinawa, an island east of the mainland, and she introduced us to all her favorite staples bought from local convenience stores to stand-and-eat counter noodle emporiums.

THE MARVELOUS CONVENIENCE OF CONVENIENCE STORES
One of the remarkable discoveries I came across in Japan was the plethora of simple but delicious meal options available at corner convenience marts. In Japan these stores truly live up to the definition of their name. Prepared and packaged foods are microwaved-to-order by a store employee and range from udon and soba hot noodle soups and donburi (steamed rice bowls), to yakisoba (stirfried noodles) and crackly, fried tempura veggies. Surprisingly, the food is of decent quality and all within $5. My favorite find, however, were triangular molded rice balls called onigiri, filled with various meats, pickles, or fish eggs. A layer of nori (dried toasted seaweed) is wrapped in a lining of plastic, separate from the rice, to maintain the nori's crisp freshness until consumption (same concept as the popular single-serving yogurts that were packed with packets of sprinkles or granola in a thin plastic container topping the yogurt). I found them to be ingenious and notably the salmon-filled onigiri made up a majority of my grab-and-go lunches in Japan. Costing just over a dollar, they were the cheapest way to fill up on healthy, flavorful food.



HI-TECH
It seems that the deeper we venture into the developed world, the less available street food becomes. This trend was certainly true in Japan, a poster child society for advanced technology. Their appliances are perplexingly fancy with more dials and settings than any gadgets we rely on to facilitate our own lives in America. My friend's response illustrated this fact to me when I asked about the bathroom conditions at a pitstop McDonald's, "Oh they're fine. The floors are dirty because it's McDonald's, but they still have the heated toilet seats, flushing music, and everything." For Japan, being in the forefront of development, street food is more of an orderly managed novelty than an actual food source. I passed by no more than two impeccably clean, assembly line operations featuring takoyaki (griddle-baked egg-battered octopus balls) along the sidewalk. Perhaps one explanation for the scarcity of street vending can be explained by a fascinating insight provided to me by a Tokyo-raised acquaintance I met in Hong Kong. According to her patchy knowledge, street vending in Japan is tightly controlled by underground gangs; vendors typically emerge only for festivals or holidays to sell snacks such as takoyaki or grilled mochi skewers (glutinous rice flour balls usually filled with sweetened bean pastes). She warned me against absorbing her comments too seriously. Nevertheless it was interesting and the first I've heard about such an organization around street vending. The pockets of street vending only appeared in quiet residential areas and never in downtown commercial centers. After spending a day in the crafted quaintness of Kyoto, I indulged in a thought, inspired by the inactivity of the takoyaki vendors, that perhaps their presence mainly served to complete the charming atmosphere more than anything else.

JUKEBOX FASTFOOD DINING
Cutting-edge machinery doesn't stop at heated toilet seats or even hot coffee vending machines, which are plentiful at every other corner block (and a few in between). Perhaps as convenient as convenient store food are jukebox-like, unmanned fastfood booths; only rather than playing an old-fashioned jingle in response to your money they spit out tickets printed with your food order. The receipt is taken to a small open kitchen at the rear of the shop and minutes later you're presented with a scalding bowl of udon soup (thick wheat noodles) swimming in salty dashi broth or a generous dish of rice and curry or a fried pork cutlet. During mealtimes, solitary businessmen in suit and tie stand around narrow counters, loudly slurping up their bowl of noodles. This food is commonplace and down-to-earth, resembling hearty Chinese cuisine minus the unnecessary grease, and plus extra doses of sodium. Despite the opportunity for conversation, being crowded around a narrow counter, customers rarely interact with their neighbors, preferring earbuds and a newspaper instead.



While I thoroughly enjoyed my taste of sashimi during our stay in Japan, I more appreciated the lesson in daily Japanese cuisine that is severely underrepresented and perhaps even unknown of in our society.

RECIPE
Okonomiyaki (Japanese meat and vegetable pancake)

An interactive meal shared in Tokyo was at a "grill your own" restaurant; similar to a Korean BBQ or Taiwanese Hotpot Restaurant. "Yaki" refers to any food grilled / stirfried / griddled and "okonomi" loosely translates into "choose your own." Thus, Okonomiyaki is a griddled pancake in which the ingredients are personalized to each person's preferences (similar in nature to personal pizzas). The pancakes are thick and packed with flavor, slathered with okonomiyaki sauce (tasting like sweet bbq sauce) and drizzled with Japanese mayonnaise and dried tuna fish shavings.



Ingredients:
(serves 1 or 2)
- small handful cabbage, thinly chopped
- 1/4 carrots, julienned
- 1/4 yellow or white onion, thinly sliced
- 1 tsp red pickled ginger strips (optional - found in Asian markets)
- 4-5 thumb-sized chunks of meat (octopus / squid / dark meat chicken / or strips of beef depending on your preference)
- 1 egg
- flour and water to create 2/3 C thick batter (pancake consistency)
- salt
- oil
- (Japanese) mayonnaise (comes in tall pear-shaped plastic bottle with a red cap - regular mayo works just as well if you're not picky for authenticity)
- Okonomiyaki sauce (found in the ethnic aisle or a Japanese supermarket - or substitute vinegary bbq sauce)
- katsuobushi flakes (shaved dried tuna - found in a Japanese supermarket)
- dried parsley (optional)

1) All the vegetables should be chopped to roughly the same size (carrots should be thinner)
2) Make your batter of flour and water (start with 1/8 C water and 1/4 C flour, adding a little of each until you reach a thick pancake batter consistency); measure out 2/3C - 1C of batter
3) Whisk the egg into the batter and add vegetables, ginger strips, and a dash of salt
4) Heat a nonstick saute pan, add 2 tsp oil; add your meat to the skillet and allow meat to brown evenly on all sides (about 4-5 min total)
5) Pour batter with vegetables over the meat and form into a circular disk with a spatula (batter should be thick enough to form a 3/4" thick patty)
6) Allow pancake to brown over medium heat; flip and brown on the other side (about 10 minutes total? <-- experiment with the time; limited resources aboard a vessel)
7) When the pancake is done, remove from heat and slather with okonomiyaki sauce, drizzle with mayonnaise.
8) Top with katsuobushi flakes ; and dried parsley to taste