After a bit of a hiatus from Japan, I am some how back for the month of October! To start off, I'll cover some of the lunches I've had on the KEK campus.
The lab's main cafeteria has been having specials once or twice a week and on Wed., they had this crazy combination of carbs on carbs. The bowl on the right is udon with winter veggies (lotus root, carrot, onions, mushrooms) with an ankake sauce (potato starch based sauce), and a single slice of naruto/fishcake. It's served with some chicken karaage (fried chicken battered with potato starch and maybe a light marinade) and a bowl of rice. It's probably atrocious for me but having carbs on carbs with a nice soupy sauce in 15 centigrade is quite nice. At least while eating out, this abundance of carbs seem to be somewhat common so if this is a bad for my diet, it isn't just me.
The second showcased dish is from the nicer cafe near the lab. On this day, the don (丼) of the day was chicken cutlet with tartar sauce bowl. To be a bit specific, the tartar sauce is made with a hard boiled egg, mayonnaise, onions, some acid (lemon juice), and seasoning (herbs, sugar, salt) and is somewhat typical with fried chicken/fish. There might also be a sauce with onion and another ingredient I can't quite discern. There was a bit of tartness so I want to say maybe ume/pickled plum but I'm not confident.
The last one is quite a surprise. Every once in a while, there's a food truck that stops by the lab every once in a while and serves burgers/chicken sandwiches! And as one might expect, it's 'liberty' or American themed. Here below is their teriyaki burger. The teriyaki sauce was okay and the lettuce tomato were fine. But the patty was not a proper hamburger. It was a meatloaf or meatball in the shape of a patty cooked. I wish I had a knife to take a picture of the cross section but you could see some starch noodles as filling, like how one would see breadcrumbs. Nevertheless, the taste was fine but it made me think about whether I should give in and encounter McDonalds in Japan. Talking with a colleague, he said that it was a proper patty (shocking....).
That basically covers the main food options on the KEK campus (aside from the small convenience store). Very terse review and I'll start branching out again in the upcoming blogs!
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