Out after 10 Years (12): Food in Japan

I was at the brink of starvation during my trip to Japan, a few times! As silly as it sounds, it's true. I'm a very picky eater. Japanese cuisine contains lots of seafood, noodles, Tufu (Soy), high-fat Beef and some other things that I rarely eat! I didn't step in even one Japanese restaurant during my trip and it's just not because of the food. The restaurants and bistros are so tiny that people are divided by partitions! Besides the lack of communication always can be a problem like everywhere else in the country.

I bought one of this small slice Pizzas in a very nice and fancy supermarket next to Tokyo Tower one night that I was very hungry with some other stuff, but it was really bad. The bread was like a piece of plastic and no matter how you sank your teeth into it, it would not come off! 

I went to a breakfast place only once and that was the time you could say I tried a Japanese food. The result was not good! There're lots of different types of prepared meals available in convenience stores and supermarkets (which are not everywhere, by the way) but they are very expensive, and portions are very small. One thing I can say for sure is variety. Lots and lots of variety. But I think food is generally expensive in Japan, regardless of what type we are talking about because land to cultivate food is very limited. I eat salad, nuts and Whole Wheat Bread, the food which are expensive and scarce in Japan!

The only place I decided to go and sit for a meal was a few minutes from my hotel on the outskirts of Kyoto, mainly because I was very hungry(!), it was very close, it was very quiet and uncrowded place and it was reasonably priced, only ¥ 1,000, almost CAN $9.5 but it was closed!

Bread is not part of Japanese eating culture, and I don't know if Wheat and other grains to make bread are cultivated in Japan or not but if they are, they shall be very limited and for that, baked products are ridiculously expensive and mostly not delicious! 

(Photo, top: The only time I ate in a Japanese bistro. This breakfast cost nearly CAN $9 and was not so bad. I think it was somewhere in the Hiroshima main train station. The coffee was as usual: Not so good! The bread tasted good, but I hate White Bread and had to eat it! The salad was why even bother! The yellow liquid tasted really good and a right amount of salty and fatty but probably not very good for your health. I think it was a kind of soup or broth, but I couldn't taste any meat. The sausages were tasty but probably not so good for you either. I was served good milk for the first time, but I had to ask the waiter to refill it for me and still didn't help with the strong and unpleasant taste of the coffee!)