Tour to Japan

Japanese Food

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Eating food is markedly different from eating food in Ireland. We were all rather clumsy using chopsticks the first day but it is surprising how quickly you become adept at this art. On entering a restaurant you remove your shoes, sit at a low wooden platform covered with tatami mats. Tuck your feet behind you and sit on cushions at the table. I found this impossible with my ‘wanky’ hip. Thank God they provided an alternative for my long legs and I was able to maneuver into a sunken area in the floor and sat on cushioned chairs with no legs. The next obstacle was coping with the variety of smaller dishes as well as the indispensable rice and miso soup (made from fermented soya bean paste.) Plain ingredients are given strong flavours such as a bowl of rice topped with pickled ginger or tofu marinated in a strong vinegary sauce. We all refused to eat rice topped with a raw egg! Mac Donald’s snack box wouldn’t get a look in with the

Japanese Bento Box holding pickled radish, omelets, salmon, seaweed, rice with black sesame and pickled vegetables. They tell me the Japanese people live the longest on this healthy food of sushi – raw fish. We didn’t inquire what we were eating. We just tasted and swallowed.

Toilets

Public toilets are very clean. Japanese toilets differ from western ones as they are simple troughs in the ground to squat over – can be a problem with weak knees or hips. In the high tech Western toilets a button if pressed allows you to play a tune or make a flushing sound to discreetly mask natures noises. They facilities. A toilet whose seat popped up automatically caused great laughter among us as we joked it could determine the sex of the user!!