Summer Foods

Now that the hot weather is here to stay in Nagoya, I have realized that Japan changes their ENTIRE menu based on the season, too!

For instance, previously when you were seated at a restaurant in Japan, you'd receive a moist, hot towel to clean your hands with.  Now you get a clammy, ice cold towel.  Yikes!!  Everyone uses it to mop down their sweaty brow and face, too!

Next, most items that were previously served hot are now served cold.  A few good examples: tantanmen (spicy ramen soup) or soba noodles.  It just doesn't seem right (or taste right) to be eating soup or noodles icy cold.  (Literally, the noodles are often floating around in water and ice cubes!!)

The other extreme is some restaurants choose not the cook the food at all!  I have seen the amount of raw food served to me dramatically increase in the past month.  In addition to the usual raw fish (sashima) and recent raw horse, I have also had the pleasure of eating raw chicken!  This time I even remembered to take a picture of it:

The pile on the right is already half gone because we've already tore into this dish (including me).  As it turns out, raw chicken tastes exactly as you would imagine it... cold raw chicken!!  LOL.  I'm not saying it was yummy, but it's just a small piece, not an entire meal, and I've had a lot worse here!!

Here's a few more fun photos from a recent work dinner. 

After multiple drinks (it was a Monday night after all), I decided to switch to iced tea.  I ordered it in Japanese, which is udon cha.  At that moment (slightly tipsy) I realized that udon cha sounded dangerously similar to the song "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls.  (Click this link to hear the song.)  After I relayed this nugget of info to my co-workers, I had to entertain them by singing the song, too.  If they didn't think I was crazy before, they surely do now.  But they loved it... for the rest of the evening, they kept asking me to sing the chorus line for them...

Mari, Honjo, and Kerri singing to "Don't Cha".

Kataoka, Ema, Miyamoto, and Shimizu also help out with the singing.  They liked my "Don't Cha" dance moves, too.  At the time, I swear I was snapping my fingers, but based on this pic it looks like they just thought I was doing "the Elaine dance" (from Seinfeld) with my thumbs sticking out... 

How I maintain my American princess status while pulling stunts like this, I'll never understand... 

I will just count my blessings!  The Japanese are very easy to entertain :)