Eating Japan.

While we were staying in the hotel in Hita we would start every day with a traditional Japanese breakfast: A piece of juicy grilled fish, fresh miso soup, steamed rice, homemade tofu, assorted vegetables and steaming pots of green tea. At first I really missed the five-pound bacon slab and monster omelette I was used to having every morning at home, but then I realized how much healthier these traditional breakfasts were. I didn't have to undo the buttons on my jeans even once or wash the whole thing down with a bottle of Mylanta.

There wasn't a formal restaurant in the hotel, so our room numbers would be handlettered on a sign in front of one of three large tatami rooms on the second floor. All of my family plus our relatives that were staying in the hotel (you know, the ones that had driven three hours just to see us) would sit and have breakfast together. I really, really miss those mornings.

We took an hour drive up into the hills one night to have dinner at the Sapporo Beer factory. They had an enormous restaurant that specialized in teppan-style cooking, where they bring out big platters of raw meat and vegetables and you cook it all yourself on grills built into the tables. When I saw them bringing out all those endless platters of beef I almost dropped to my knees in gratitude. Rigel managed to hold it together until they announced that there was unlimited beer, and then, well, he just cried like a baby.




Everywhere we went we saw these quaint little pastry shops, selling the most delicious, delicate little cakes and cookies you can imagine.

At this particular shop they had some tiny little cakes that were beautifully wrapped in rice paper and then set into small handmade baskets. I started loading six or seven of these things onto the counter to bring back as gifts, until my cousin pointed out that by the time I got them back to the U.S. they would be moldy puddles of goo. I strongly advised that they get with the program and start loading up their baked goods with preservatives and chemicals like we do in America, where a loaf of bread has a longer shelf life than a bottle of bleach.



The fruit in the supermarket is so beautiful it looks absolutely unreal. I wanted to take this entire display home, shellac it and set it up my living room. But then my sister reminded me that since a single apple costs fifty-dollars over there, this piece of pop-art would end up setting me back about three million dollars.


Since Rigel was pretty blasé about all the food displays, I was surprised when he expressed an interest in buying some of these. Until I pointed out that they were not, in fact, breasts that were wrapped in cellophane. He insisted on buying some, though, and I have to say I was very impressed with how they helped fill out my halter top.

Next up: The Dinner Cruise or How Our Relatives Managed To Outdo Themselves And Make Us Feel Even Worse About The Time We Took Them To Tony Roma's For Dinner.

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