The Road Less Traveled

Okonomiyaki

Saturday, September 27th, 2008 | Food | 5 Comments

I just got home from dinner. Me and Mike met with our friend Koutarou and his two friends, a chinese guy named Ding (who Koutarou called Dragon) and another (I think) Japanese guy from Osaka whose name I didn’t catch.

We wanted to try Okonomiyaki, a popular Japanese dish. The name literally translates to something like “cook what you like”. Basically when you order, you get a bowl of the stuff you ordered (ours had bacon, shellfish, shrimp, eggs, and various other things in it — it was a bit expensive at about ￥1100).

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Yookiso Multi-Cultural Event

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | Culture, Food | No Comments

Today we went to a multi-cultural event in Nagoya at a place called Yookiso. It was a good time, but I’m going to have to write about it tomorrow… I’m like dead tired right now, and I don’t think I’ll be able to do it without falling asleep at my desk. Instead, I’ve uploaded the pictures I took on the trip (60 total) for your enjoyment. Of course, these will receive explanation when I write the actual article about Yookiso. Until then, enjoy the pictures.

Yookiso Trip60 picturesSep 20, 2008

As a side note, there’s a nice, small ramen shop which isn’t too far away called Dosan-hime. Me and Mike ate there tonight, and it was quite good. I had shouyu ramen, and Mike had miso ramen, then afterward we shared a plate of (rather freaking good) gyoza. Suffice it to say, it’s the kind of place we could get used to going to.

So I promised…

Friday, September 19th, 2008 | Food, General | No Comments

So I promised to take pictures of my food, and I finally remembered to actually do so. For breakfast this morning we had scrambled eggs (they put ketchup on MINE for some reason…), some kind of rice, miso soup, a couple little side things, and, you guessed it… cabbage salad. Anyway, here’s the picture:

Well, that’s one promise down. My other was that this post would be about the people we’ve met. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of them, so I can’t really fulfill that one quite yet. Instead, here are a couple pictures from yesterday. The first one is me on my way to the welcoming ceremony. The other is a “fun” picture taken of all the study abroad students after the ceremony. I’m in the top right, and you can’t really see me because I’m behind a couple other people… :/

Breakfast & Dinner

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | Food | No Comments

I think I’ve said before, but the food here is wonderful. In our dorm, there are 4 floors. The 1st floor is all male exchange students, the 2nd and 3rd floors are Japanese freshmen, and the 4th floor is all female exchange students. On the 2nd floor is the cafeteria and lounge. The cafeteria serves breakfast and dinner Monday – Friday and breakfast on Saturday.

For lunch we generally eat at one of the many places around campus… I think I’ve already mentioned that the food at the student cafeterias is very, very good. So far we’ve only eaten at Cafeteria #2 (there are 5); it’s right next door to the Center for International Programs, which is where most of our orientation-related stuff has been so far.

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Placement Test & Cafeteria Food

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | Food, Japanese | No Comments

So I’m done with the first part of my placement test; the final part, an interview with the teachers, is tomorrow morning at 9:15am. All-in-all, I think the test went very well. I did quite horribly on the kanji section (I got 6, I think, out of 25 or so… yeah), but that’s actually expected. I did very well on the verb and adjective conjugations, and the general grammar section seemed to be mostly stuff I knew as well.

Finally around 11am I was able to go and get something to eat for lunch… I was pretty hungry. Breakfast consisted of a slice of toast, a hard boiled egg, and a small salad. Anyway, a bunch of people from our group decided to eat at McDonald’s for lunch, a couple of us thought that was retarded, and ended up eating in the cafeteria. In America, this may actually be a toss up.. often, McDonald’s food and cafeteria food are on the same general level of crappiness. However, this is absolutely not true of the cafeteria here. The food was very good, and worth the 470￥ (about USD $4.50) that it cost. And it was a good bit of food as well.

It was a bit funny how it worked though… generally, cafeterias in America are a buffet-style thing, or at most you go and tell a person what you want and they make it and give it to you. Not here. When you walk into the cafeteria, there’s a display showing all the different meals you can get, with their names and prices. Then there is a vending machine… you put money in, and (no, it doesn’t give you your food ) after pressing a button, it gives you a ticket for the meal you want. You then present this to the cafeteria worker in the right line and they give you your food.

Definitely worth the 470￥. Now I have to go back to the Center for International Programs for a campus tour. Yay.

Tags: Food, test, tour