Food... Japanese Food

One typical worry a tourist, a traveler, and/or a wanderer would have when travelling to new places is FOOD. Who doesn't need food? Who doesn't want food? It has been said that the portions in a Japanese meal is quite small in comparison to my country and in some other countries. I was worried that I won't get my fill of chocolate. But then when I came here to Japan and sampled their dishes (The real deal, folks! The real deal! asdfghjkl!@#$%^!) I fell in love with Japan once again. Below are some photos of some of the meals I've had so far:

A Buddhist priest's meal at the Chūsonji Temple

After hiking and visiting Chūsonji Temple at Hiraizumi, we went to a a place that serve meals that were traditionally eaten by Buddhist's priests. Yes, they're all vegetables. See that thing at the upper left corner? I thought it was a mushroom. When I bit into it, it turned out to be some kind of root crop. Its texture reminded me of taro.

Lunch Bento at British Hills

Eh, don't ask me why the place was called British Hills. Even our coordinator didn't know why it was called British Hills. The place reminded me of Baguio for some reason. Probably because of the log cabins we saw along the road.

At a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), every meal was always served with miso soup... and our hosts were always giving us something extra -  desserts.

I also would love to know where they bought their cereal. OMG. It was delicious.

We're going back to the same village in a month's time and I hope we stay in the same ryokan. Seeing the owners' little boy is a plus. 

On our very first night at the ryokan at Ten'ei Village, Fukushima, we were served a cold salad soba with vegetable sidings. Heaven. 

We asked why at that time we were served cold meals (except for the rice and miso). It was because it was still summer and here they usually served something cold to offset the heat. But that was a week ago and now it's officially autumn! Golly, the cold and the rain. This tropical gal is one wet fish.

Miso Corn Ramen

First night at Kitakami. Some of us were wandering around again searching for a place to eat that was within our budget and we saw this ramen shop. When we went in, some people from our program were already there. Apparently, they met someone on the road and asked for a recommendation on where to eat and he directed them to that place.

This ramen really had good flavor. Yum! I think they put butter in it.

Okonomiyaki

A few of the girls are not supposed to eat meat for religious and personal purposes, so off we went with our coordinators to a place that served something that would adhere to that and we landed ourselves with okonomiyaki. Yep, this is our meal. We cook it ourselves, top it with whatever we fancy and munch on it as we learned about each other's languages, preferred TV dramas and how we were great at flipping pancakes.

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Well, let's end this post here, shall we? I'm staying until December so rest assured that I'll be posting more photos of food... and some other things.