Japanese products and chance meetings in Stockholm

In Stockholm, there is a shop that sells specially imported goods from Japan.When visiting this store, I saw some ramen from Sapporo. Since I can eat all kinds of Sapporo ramen whenever I want, I did not buy any, though.

I also ran into a guy I know from high school and university in Stockholm. He was there with his two children. He lived in Kyoto for a while. I was happily surprised to see him. It had been at least 10 years since I last saw him, I guess.

We talked over the Internet from time to time in Japan, for instance when the Swedish embassy called everyone living in Japan early in the mornings to suggest evacuating from Tokyo with some early flight during the Fukushima incident, even though we both lived very far from Tokyo and did not have to evacuate and if we wanted to could have done so much better without going to Tokyo first...

Natto, fermented soy beans. Look like the eggs in the movie Alien, and smell really bad. But I am told they are very healthy.

Swedish chocolate

In Sweden people eat chocolate. My brother recommended a new product from the Swedish chocolate maker: chocolate with salty almonds. It was great.

You can also find chocolate with licorice cream inside. This is great too.

I also stumbled across a store selling common chocolate bars but with non-standard text on the wrapping. These say "congratulations", "hug", "kiss", and "make out".

Blood pudding (black pudding/blood sausage)

In Sweden we eat something that in Swedish is called "blood pudding" (in English it would be called black pudding or blood sausage, perhaps?). It is made from blood, and is quite popular. I remember most people being happy the days when this was served as school lunch. Not everyone likes it, though. My father likes it, but my mother does not.

All my Japanese friends that I have had visit Sweden have in general loved Swedish food, but no one has liked this dish. They all think it tastes of blood. One said that if no one had told her that it was made from blood it would have been OK, though not "great", but once you know it is made from blood it no longer remains as something you would want to eat. Considering all the weird stuff people eat here in Japan, they seem surprisingly squeamish.

Since this food, nor anything similar, is not available in Japan I often end up eating it when I am back in Sweden and have dinner with my father on some day when my mother has something else to do.

Good food and puns at Minh Mat

My brother and his wife wanted to take me out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant they had found. The restaurant is called "Minh mat", and Minh is presumably the name of the owner. It also happens to spell "My food" in Swedish. The menu was full of "Minh's recommendation"/"My recommendation" type of word play.

We ordered a few starters and three main dishes and shared all of it. That turned out to be a huge amount of food, but it was all good. I ordered frog legs because it was the strangest (most exotic) thing on the menu. They were not bad, but the other main dishes were even better.

I was also given a big bag of licorice products. Licorice candy, chocolate, tea, and much more. In Japan, everyone hates licorice, so it is not sold here. In Sweden everyone loves licorice, so whenever I am in Sweden I eat too much licorice.

One magical night in Nagoya

After having worked the whole Silver Week holiday, I asked my boss if it was OK to use some vacation days and go back to Sweden for two weeks. He first thought I said one week and was a bit skeptical but relented. After I understood that he though I would be back in five days (which is a bit short since the just the travel to and from my parents' place takes three days) I pointed out that I would actually be gone for two whole weeks. He then said that that was pretty much impossible, but I argued that since I had just lost four public holidays to work and then had my salary deducted too, I did not feel that motivated to work. And since I did not have anything in particular that needed to be done in October, it was also a good time to use up the vacation days, and I was finally allowed to go on vacation.

In Nagoya they had 肉まん風パン, "bread that is similar to steamed buns with meat". I like nikuman (the steamed buns) and tried this bread. It was pretty good, but not as good as the steamed buns.

They also had chocolate that said "blueberry ice cream flavor". Why not "blueberry flavor"? Does blueberry ice cream not taste like blueberries? The chocolate tasted mainly like "chocolate", though.

I bought some surprisingly cheap tickets to Sweden (only 60% of what I paid the last time). I had a very early flight from Nagoya to Europe, so I had to fly from Sapporo to Nagoya the night before. I found a magic bar in Nagoya (there are many) and spent an hour and a half there. It was fun.

On the way to magic bar "Move"

The magician in magic bar Move

Omelette flavored gummi candy

In Japan they come up with the weirdest flavors for ice cream and for candy. My convenience store now sells gummi candy with "omelette" flavor. I figured that was very unlikely to be good, but bought some just to try it out for my blog. It was not good. It does however taste very much like fried eggs, except much sweeter. After trying one piece myself, I put the rest on the table in our lab where it says "Please feel free to eat these" and people put omiyage candy. No one has touched these in the three months since I bought them...

Drinking cheese cake

Our university sells a "cheese cake drink". It is cheese cake flavored soy milk. Cake is not really a flavor that comes to mind when people ask me for something I would like to drink. I bought one and it was not that good. It is still selling strong half a year later, though, so I guess someone likes it.

Three types of cheese ice cream

In Japan they keep coming up with weird flavors for ice cream. I bought an ice cream that had cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and camenbert cheese in it. It was not good.

French fries on rice

Our university serves French fries on top of rice. With a mostly raw egg. This is called "Western food". Not sure I have seen anything similar in Europe or the U.S.

Plum flavored potato chips

In Japan the like sour plums. They also have weird flavors on their potato chips. I found a bag with sour plum flavored chips. I tried a few. Not good. I gave some to my colleagues. No one liked them. I put them in the "anyone who wants some, take these for free" at the university. They are still there two months later.

Pizza with marshmallows

At the airport on my way to the early Saturday morning research meeting, I found a place selling "marshmallow pizza". That sounded weird, so I bought one. It was not good. Not bad, but not pizza and not particularly good. Very sweet.

They also had cream puffs with melted chocolate instead of cream. They were very nice.

Eating strange parts of pigs

A friend of mine wanted to eat yakitori (skewers). We went to a place she likes that serves lots of different parts of pigs (though "tori" in yakitori means "bird" or in this case chicken). I learned many new Japanese words from their menu. They served mainly weird parts of the pig. Like forehead, and some part of the throat. The photo above is sliced pig ear, which is pretty common, though.

German beer garden in Sapporo

After the trick art exhibition, my friends had a scheduled English conversation practice lesson. This day it was held in the Odori park beer garden (4 weeks during the summer we have a few kilometers of beer garden, i.e. tables outside where you can eat and drink cheap stuff for expensive prices). I was invited to tag along, and did not have to pay the lesson fee. Someone even gave me a bottle of tea for free.

"Beer for children". Non-alcoholic, but still...

While we were sitting there having fun, a woman with a huge camera came up to us and asked if she could take a photo for the Facebook page of the German beer garden. We said sure, and in the end they put a photo of us on their Facebook page. We all got 100 yen coupons as a thank you for being on the Web.

"German potato" in Japan means potato, bacon, and pepper.

"German" sausages, and some sauerkraut.

Pretzel

Not a semla

Something called "semla" that was not actually a semla

My Swedish friends had found a place in Sapporo that serves food that is vaguely Swedish. It seems to be inspired by Swedish food, but possibly made by someone who has only seen the food in photos. They had something called "シューセムラ・マンゴ" ("shuu semura mango", cream puff semla with mango flavor), which kind of looked like a semla ("semura" in Japanese). It was a cream puff with mango jam that had a lid to look like a semla. This is very very different from a real semla. It was still good, though.

My friends tell me that the salmon they tried in the same place tasted pretty Swedish, though. The interior design was pretty Scandinavian, and they had lots of books in Swedish and Finnish.

Learning small number with Moomin

There was a big book on what to do with licorice. In Sweden (and the rest of Scandinavia) licorice and salmiakki is very popular, but in Japan people hate it. Here was a whole book about using licorice in chocolate, ice cream, alcohol, meat dishes, and more.

Warnings about the dangers of eating licorice.

Cute food

I bought a bunch of cupcakes because they looked very cute. The yellow one was extra special (only sold there) they told me. Bot only were they cute, they also turned out to be delicious.