Japanese food

I've been in Japan 9 months now, and there are a lot of foods that I've grown to love. Foods that are not necessarily popular in Australia.

Edamame

The first of those things is Edamame, green soy beans. I liked these a little when I came to Japan, but now I have a deep love of their salty, umami flavour! In Australia, we pretty much only get edamame if we go to a fancy Japanese restaurant, given to us in a little complimentary bowl. That was the extent of my experience with edamame. In Japan however, not only are edamame a common bar snack, but they're also a deeply appreciated flavour. You can buy edamame chips, snacks, and my favourite thing, edamame cheese bread. This is a soft, sweet white bread, with cooked edamame and cheese tossed through the dough before cooking. The beans are slightly chewy, and add a certain meatiness to the bread, in contrast to the sharp cheese. It's delicious with butter!
Every time I go to a festival or picnic, I always want to bring a tub of salted edamame from the grocery store near my house. They are always fresh, with super salty outsides, and soft,delicately flavoured insides.

Red Beans
Red beans are of course, very important to Japanese people. A sweet filling in mochi, pastries, pancakes, and sandwiches, and a savoury addition to rice, red beans are versatile. I had already been acquainted with red beans before, loving red bean paste (adzuki) dando (mochi balls on a stick) and daifuku (red bean and strawbery stuffed mochi. But again, when you live in Japan, there are so many more ways to eat red beans.  First of all, you learn that there's different types of  bean paste. Anko is the generic word for bean paste. Tsubuan means that there are whole beans in the paste, tsubushian means that the beans are smashed, leaving bits of beans in the paste, and koshian which is a smooth bean paste, passed through a sieve, with no bits of beans remaining. These pastes are all used in a variety of products, most commonly desserts. They're even found in pre-packaged icecreams! But my favourite red bean product is something from the small bakery near my house. It's a fresh, chewy french bread stuffed with red bean paste and salty butter!　And it's amazing!


Condensed milk
Condensed milk... What child didn't love that sweet, sweet syrup? I remember being in grade 7 and going on camp... My mum packed me a tube of condensed milk in my bag! It was great! But condensed milk is not REALLY an eating item in Australia... It's more an ingredient... People don't usually eat it by itself, or even on things. Only inside delicious slices to lend sweetness.
But here in Japan, condensed milk is a big part of Summer! It's put on stawberries and fruit as a sweet, cold dessert, it's used as a topping for kakigoori (shaved ice), and it's put inside and on top of icecreams! And I'm loving it! I love biting into an icecream, to hit a well of condensed milk! I don't understand how, when every child's guilty pleasure is licking the can of the condensed milk, we still don't make the most of its deliciousness!



Tea
Britain is famous for its love of tea. But I don't think they have anything on Japan. Most of the items in vending machines in Japan are unsweetened coffees and teas. Green tea, black tea, jasmine tea. All completely unsweetened, cold tea. In Australia, if you want tea, you have to either make yourself a cup, or buy a bottle of hugely sweetened, flavoured tea that tastes like cordial. You can't really buy any simple, healthy tea.  My shopping center has a whole row full of different bottles of cold tea. So many more types of tea than I'd ever known existed, to be honest, and nearly all of them with zero calories. There's rice tea, wheat tea, something called 16 tea (made with a large variety of things), red tea, health tea, macha tea, and soooo many more. Honestly I don't know what some of the names even mean...

So being in Japan, I've just gotten used to drinking cold green tea while at my desk, bought from a vending machine at the train station, or my local convenience store. It fills you up, and has lots of good health benefits, as well as a little caffeine boost. I'm going to be so sad when we return to Aus as to continue drinking my cold tea, I'm going to have to brew big batches of tea and then leave it overnight to cool. It's so inconvenient compared to Japan.


Japan's love affair with tea doesn't stop there though. They have tea flavoured puddings, tea flavoured breads, cakes, and icecreams! I even see tea flavoured chocolates, and biscuits!

These things have become a big part of my life since being in Japan, and I'm going to miss them and lots more! Although I AM starting to miss Aussie foods now...