Author: sallyyamada@live.com

Ramen has enjoyed growing popularity in Japan since the early 1900s, and the invention of instant ramen by Momofuku Ando in 1958 gave it even more momentum.   There are over 35,000 ramen restaurants in Japan and in order to survive, they have to offer exceptional broth usually flavored with salt, pork bone, soy sauce, or miso.  The toppings can include egg, fish or meat, and vegetables. Different regions in Japan have their own specialties.

You may like the 1985 movie Tampopo (with English subtitles) to see how a widow enlists the help of a milk truck driver and his friend to transform her noodle restaurant to the best in town.

Stop Signs

Tomare, 止まれ

From July 24 through August 9, 2020, the Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Japan, and Japan is already making plans to make the country more tourist friendly. One of their plans is to change all the stop signs in Japan from the triangle sign to the more common octagonal sign to help foreign drivers, but Americans may want to think twice before planning to rent a car. The Japanese drive on the left side of the road which is also common in India, Australia, England and former British colonies and a few other countries. Japanese roads are narrow and often congested. The availability of roadside parking is rare. Driving in rural and less populated areas may make travelling in a rental car easy, but in and around Tokyo a driver will be subjecting himself to enormous stress. Americans have been known to be issued tickets because when the speed limit on the expressway was posted as 80 km., Americans thought they could drive 80 mph. Eighty kilometers is approximately 50 miles.

Japan has the best train system in the world; trains are invariably on time and are clean and comfortable. Travel guides and agents will usually mention this fact when discussing transportation options to a tourist destination, and they usually recommend trains or the subway. Taxis are great if you are sharing the ride and the cost, and will travel a short distance, but the price of the ride is prohibitive for longer distances. As an example, a cab ride from the Kansai Airport to your hotel in Osaka could cost the equivalent of $140 compared to a train ride to a station in Osaka that would cost less than $10. In addition, when there is a toll charge for the use of the expressway, the passenger has to pay, not to mention suffering through traffic delays due to accidents and construction. Trains are definitely a better way to travel.

Rush hour in Japan

If at all possible, avoid the morning and evening rush hours in Tokyo. Those who have seen the videos and the professional people pushers wonder why they can’t add more trains. As my friend Koji explained, trains in Tokyo run every three minutes; in Osaka they may run every seven minutes. Adding more trains would jeopardize public safety. Areas outside of metropolitan Tokyo are less congested.

The good news is that by the time of the Tokyo Summer Olympics, Japan will be ready to welcome more than 20 million visitors and tourists will have researched all the aspects of travelling in Japan, including, perhaps, learning travelers’ Japanese.

 

 

Many department stores use their basements as the food floor and you can imagine how convenient it is for workers to be able to pick up an entrée or side dishes to go with the dinner meal.  Tourists too can pick up a reasonably priced meal to enjoy at the hotel.  I picked up a bento box one day from the Takashimaya Department Store, located next to the Namba Station in Osaka. The food was extremely fresh.  I purchased a salad from the conbini near my hotel to complete my meal.  You will begin to notice that the Japanese love corn.  They often use it as a garnish for salads and keep cans in their pantries, order corn chowder at restaurants, and I even noticed corn salad sushi that came around on the conveyor belt when I dined at a kaitensushi restaurant.

I purchased this chirashi box from one of the eateries at Namba Walk, an underground shopping mall located between Nippombashi and Namba subway stations.

Excuse me, I’m sorry, thank you

If you’re a first time traveler to Japan, you might be glad to know that one of the most useful words in the Japanese language is sumimasen (すみません).  It can mean excuse me, I’m sorry, or thank you.  I heard it many times and I’ve said it myself when asking “Sumimasen, where is the train station?”  My taxi driver drove me to my cruise ship and he asked the guard, “Sumimasen, where should I drop my passenger off?”  When you want to get the attention of the waitress, you would start your conversation by saying sumimasen.  When you accidentally bump into someone on the train or on the escalator, you would say sumimasen.  If someone returns your umbrella that you left on the bus, you would say sumimasen.  Go to Japan and you will hear it too!

Tutors

When I planned my trip to Japan in 2012, I wanted to learn as much Japanese as I could before meeting my relatives for the first time.  I signed up for a weekly Japanese language class at a senior community center where I met people with different levels of knowledge.  I soon discovered that some of the students had been attending the class for seven years and had not made any progress toward fluency.  Since I was in a hurry, I asked a favorite waitress at the local sushi restaurant if she could help me.  She said she was from Okinawa and did not want me to learn her dialect, so she gave me contact information for her friend (I’ll call her Maiko) who grew up in Tokyo.  Maiko showed me how to change the language settings on my computer to type in Japanese and helped me compose emails to my relatives.  We even spoke with my relatives using Skype.  It was a great experience.   

When I returned from my trip, I signed up with tutors over the next two years.  However, a weekly hour with a tutor was not helpful – and the cost – usually $35 to $40 an hour for a block of ten lessons was not working for me.  Once the session ended, I went back to my English speaking world and did not reinforce what I had learned.  Considering the math, I decided that the tutoring money was better spent booking flights to Japan whenever I could and immersing myself in the language and culture of Japan.  Every trip brings chances for practicing the language, tasting delicious food, and experiencing memorable and joyous times with my relatives.

Spaghetti the Japanese Way

The Japanese love spaghetti so much that they think they invented it.  They actually reinvented the dish by adapting it to their palate.  Tomatoes were hard to come by so they mixed ketchup and Worcestershire sauce in the early days.  Now, the chefs have created sauces and recipes to complement the seafood, shiitake mushrooms, and sea vegetables readily available in Japan.  At the Kansai International Airport, I was going to catch a flight back to Las Vegas and arrived early.  Thinking of American taste, I noticed a restaurant called the Margherita Kitchen with plastic food displays and ordered ketchup spaghetti; however, I decided that ketchup tastes better on hamburgers and French fries and couldn’t finish the meal.  I’ll be sure to try another dish when I’m in Osaka again.

Home cooks in Japan use olive oil and butter with soy sauce or chicken or vegetable broth for the sauce and add whatever is handy.  Instead of Parmesan cheese, they might add shredded nori as a garnish.  It’s a very versatile and budget friendly dish.

My daughter is fond of Japanese spaghetti so I usually pick up several prepackaged mixes for her at an Asian market.