Kuitan: A Gluttonous Traveler

Bento box goodies and sashimi lunch eaten on high school field-like trips near the Nara Deer Park.

Beautiful, graceful, and pleasing to all five senses, Japanese cuisine beguiled me from a young age. During lunch in first grade, my best friend would untie the salmon pink furoshiki enfolding her Hello Kitty bento box and reveal a treasure trove of cute petite delights. I loved going to her apartment, where her mother fed me dorayaki, Doraemon’s favorite chestnut and red-bean filled pastries, and takoyaki, fried dough balls with octopus tentacles inside. As I watched my favorite anime mascot Kero-chan, a flying teddy bear from Osaka in Card Captor Sakura, giddily gobble up the treats, my stomach grumbled jealously.

Takoyaki and okonomiyaki (a fried pancake) covered with a glazed sauce and frizzling bonito flakes.
These soul foods originated in Osaka.

What I look like when I stuff my face with takoyaki.

My appetite deepened once I became obsessed with a Japanese drama adapted from the manga Kuitan, which translates into “gluttonous detective.” Intelligent, empathetic, artistic, athletic, kind, but always hungry, Kuitan will solve any mystery, murder, and crime linked to food. Higashiyama Noriyuki fit the role perfectly. Despite constantly eating on set, especially during retakes, he exercised religiously and maintained his excellent form. Kuitan’s character was everything I wanted to be, and I hoped to become closer to his world by eating everything he ate.

According to Kuitan, justice is best served with a pair of golden chopsticks!

By the end of middle school, I was begging my parents for not just takoyaki, but other Japanese street food like okonomiyaki and dango. This was before a Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa opened near our house, so my parents struggled to meet my tastes. To celebrate my high school graduation, I jumped on the opportunity to finally travel to Japan. Rather than quenching my thirst for all foods Japanese, the trip instead opened my eyes to an unprecedented heavenly quality. 

Takoyaki stands using these special grills abound in Osaka's famous Dontonburi street.

Sticky rice balls (dango), sticky rice cakes, and meat cubes (yakitori) on sticks.

So it was a no-brainer that I would choose to return to Japan before entering an 8-year medical/graduate school program. This time, I ventured beyond Tokyo to Kyoto for its esteemed traditional sweets, Osaka for its fried street food, and Kobe for its wholesome beef. I have attempted to fill this blog post with the food porn that I captured and consumed on this recent trip. If you still aren’t salivating by the end, you can torture yourself with more photos on my flickr account.

I'll start with a meat-lover's fantasy: Kobe beef.

This picture speaks for itself. (Excluding vegetarians/vegans.)

Spider-man at Chinatown in Kobe, "where you can find the best Kobe beef for the best prices!"

These slices of marbled meat literally melted in my mouth. How is this authentic delicacy procured? A specific Wagyu cattle strain grown in Hyogo Prefecture is fed beer, massaged with sake, and played classical music. These happy cows then swell with unsaturated fat that has a lower melting point than that of any average cow. This also results in some pretty happy humans. In America, "Kobe-style" Wagyu cattle are also raised and sold, but real Kobe beef is THE Kobe beef.

I could go on, but China's firewall is quite an impediment, so I'll save my ramen and fishy adventures for another day that hopefully can match-a up with this post. (;

Convenience stores on the Shinkansen platform selling on-the-go bento boxes. Still as kawaii to me as ever.

"梅はその日の難逃れ. Ume-wa soon hi-no nan nogare. One Japanese plum a day is an escape from that one day struggle." - a Kotowaza proverb. 

Ume/dried plum is a popular rice accessory in bentos and resembles the Japanese flag/rising sun. It is a blessing that in my life one bite of happiness can ease a whole day's worth of pain.

"At it's best, Japanese cooking is inextricably meshed with aesthetics, with religion, with tradition and history. It is evocative of seasonal changes, or of one's childhood, or of a storm at sea." - M.F.K Fisher