Life in Japan: 3 – The food

As everyone that knows us will testify, we are most definitely “foodies” (and “drinkies” too, of course). As a family we take a keen interest in comestibles, and so we often find ourselves hanging around in food shops wherever we travel, looking for the new, the exotic or the exceptional.

One of the big gripes Big M has about English food is the lack of decent beef. If you’ve ever tasted Japanese Kobe beef, you’ll understand why. By comparison, English beef is about as palatable as old shoe leather. The reason is that European beef lacks the marbling of fat that the Japanese produce has. You can see this very clearly in this picture, snapped in one of our local supermarkets. The result is that Japanese beef is extraordinarily succulent and literally melts in the mouth. It also means that it can be cooked very simply. One of the tastiest methods is sukiyaki – cooked at the table in a pot of soy broth.