Won't Miss #518 - puny meat portions

A Thai meal "set" in Tokyo. See that little blob of chicken in the middle of my curry? See that enormous mound of rice? Discuss.

My husband and I have been back since the end of March 2012 and, oddly, we bought our first chain-made pizza yesterday. It was from Pizza Hut, and, coincidentally, that was the chain we patronized most in Japan. That means I have copious amounts of experience with pizza from said maker there. We bought a one-topping (pepperoni) pizza and were shocked to lift the lid on it and find that it was wall to wall with slices of said cured meat-stuff. Both of us remarked that we would never see that much meat on a pizza in Japan.

Ironically, that was the second time in as many days that we had an "American meat experience". We also attended a Portuguese cultural festival (because that's what you do when you're one of us) and got a pork dish from them which had half as much rice as pork. We both noted that such proportions would have been reversed in Japan.

I am not an enormous meat eater, but the carb to protein ratios in Japan when you went to restaurants were often insane. Here, there may be too much meat, but for a couple that has a strong inclination to split their entrees when eating out, this just means the whole experience costs that much less. I don't miss the puny meat portions in Japan. 

Will Miss #433 - tsukune

As part of my goodbye socializing, I went to a teppanyaki resturant with a few of my former students, now my friends. Teppanyaki, incidentally, is when meat and vegetables are prepared on a large flat grill in front of you by a skilled chef. I think it tends to be rather theatrical in America and is merely carried out with great skill in Japan. However, I'm not a big meat eater so I have limited experience with teppanyaki. At this restaurant (a great place in Takadanobaba called Daitokai Honkan which I heartily recommend), I ordered a tofu chicken "healthy lunch" and one of my former students remarked that burgers in Japan are different from those in the West because the usual burger of pressed meat is too dense and strong for Japanese tastes. Nowhere is the ability to dilute ground meat in a flavorful manner present for me than in tsukune, a chicken meatball which is grilled yakitori-style. 

Tsukune is one of my favorite items when I go to yakitori-ya (grilled chicken restaurants/shops), and I will miss the flavor and texture. While I can make a good chicken meatball, I'm sure I could never recapture the flavor imparted by the grilling process nor could I easily get the "tare" sauce that it is served or prepared with that is sold in Japan. 

Won't Miss #62 - limited lunch meat selection

Sandwiches aren't a big part of food culture in Japan, but people do eat them if you believe that convenience store food is purchased and ingested. Also, markets carry lunch meat, but only in very limited varieties. You can find ham almost anywhere, and occasionally various types of salami, but things like turkey, chicken, etc. are nowhere to be found in sandwich-ready form. The main problem for me is that most of the lunch meat you can get is very, very fatty.

I won't miss having so few options when it comes to lunch meat, and especially having no access to lean meat.