To follow on from Mark’s amused at Japanese Pizza link, I have to hold my hand up. I have eaten Pizza in Japan. Kyoto to be precise, just down the street from the central Kyoto post office (very near the tremendous edifice that is Kyoto Train Station – wait til we start the architecture blog round here for more rhapsodies on this). Why – in a land of great food like Japan did I stoop to the pizza? Call it ignorance, but it was more based on enquiry. In as much as it is exactly the same reason I have had Indian food in Japan. After all, imagine a foreign visitor to England only eating English food: the mind boggles.
This Kyoto Pizza joint used a cheese not a million miles from kraft slices, and was mighty afeared of the tomato. The dough was more akin to pastry which gave the whole affair more of the feel of a tart than actually a pizza. But the main attraction was merely the knowledge of how to eat the damn thing. I had spent four days wrestling with chopsticks and slurping soups to the polite but obviously amused eye of the locals. After a somewhat stressful bath-house experience (why do they have the baths with electric current running through them) I needed comfort food. I need something I could point at on the menu and know exactly what it was. As it happened I didn’t but it was fun all the same.
And the Japanese Indian meal. Not very spicy, and served with oddly sticky pilau rice. The mango lassi was heavenly though. But heavenly nevertheless. I love Japanese food, but lurching from soup noodles to tempura day in day out can jade the palette. After breakfasting at the fish market I returned to Nipori and entered the Indian which earlier in the week I had guffawed at. And I am sure they laugh at our idea of Japanese food. Wagamama!