145. Street Food

Welcome to Sightseeing. And the podcast where we explore the land of piping hot delicacies. I'm Paul Bresson. And I'm Jason Nealing, Pipin' Hot. Pipin' Hot. If you don't scald the roof of your mouth, it's not do it right. Yeah. It should feel like lava. You gotta like swirl it around in your mouth while breathing to like not burn yourself.

I actually think I have heard that about Taco Yaki is like when they set it in your hand, if it's not at a temperature that would burn the roof of your mouth, you shouldn't be eating that takoyaki. That's not good takoyaki. Yeah, takoyaki's always crazy hot. Yeah. Like so hot. You gotta wait like fifteen minutes before you bite into one of those. Yeah. Or you will pay the price. I have paid that price. It's a steep price, but uh

But worth it. You know, they're tasty little balls. Yep. Well, I don't know. I d I didn't expect us to jump right into it here, but we're already talking about takoyaka. Hey, you brought it up. Okay. Do you want to ramble on about some other unrelated stuff for the intro before we get back to Takuyaki.

Well I did wanna mention how excited I am for your birthday party, bro. Oh me too. I I am I'm I'm excited. Everyone's gonna get over here for the first time all together and get to enjoy all your cool new stuff in your house. I'm excited to get to use the fire pit for the first time and show everybody

disco mode in the basement or whatever we're gonna call it. I haven't come up with a name for it, but your comfy deck chairs. Yeah. Bringing out the disc golf basket. Mm-hmm. Man, it's gonna be a good day. Yeah, it'll be real fun. That's what I got for life stuff. You you got anything? Well you know, just house stuff. Uh haven't seen a pill bug in a while, but now I'm battling the spiders.

I told you a little bit about that before we hit record. Yeah. It's not that interesting. There are just a lot of spiders. I oh, I met my first uh neighbor yesterday. Nice. Or was it the day before? Right next to me on the corner. Nice guy. Um he has a lot of spiders too. Apparently. Okay. That's the first thing that comes up. Yeah. A lot of things came up. I don't know. He's been here actually since like the very beginning of the neighborhood. He knows everything about the neighborhood.

Wow, was that like forty some years ago? Sixty years ago. Sixty years ago. Wow. That's his his stepdad owned the house before him, I think he said. Oh, okay. He's got all the deets, you know. Apparently the hill that my house is on didn't used to be there. They built a hill to put houses on. Oh. His house used to be the highest one in around. Okay. Like drainage reasons or something. I don't know. Can't get the basement flooded. I guess.

Oh, also, at some point people were making meth in our garage. Oh hey, there you go. Isn't that cool? Got some character. They burned a hole through the ceiling of it, apparently. At least they didn't blow everything up. Yeah. I mean the house survived, apparently. When I was driving here today, a beautiful early evening, I saw quite a few of your neighbors out hanging out in their driveways in your yard. I saw one guy stopping to talk to another one of your neighbors.

And the one guy looked like so daddish. Like he was there with his little daughter and he had on like the cargo shorts and he had one leg up on the bumper of his car and he was like stretching forward. I feel like yeah, the neighborhood is mostly senior citizens.

And the people that aren't senior citizens are uh pretty mommish and dadish from what I've seen. Sure, sure. Well that's just the demographic of who owns houses right now, I suppose. That's true, that's true. But yeah, it sounds like it's mostly senior citizens. Which nice quiet neighborhood for you. Quiet and safe. Yep. Yeah, they'll they'll report everything. Yes. No suspicious people are getting through this neighborhood. Yeah.

Well, I don't wanna go on for too long, but I did go to a neighborhood meeting the other day, a bunch of senior citizens getting around to talk about safety and complain about things. Okay. You'll fit right in. Yeah. I met this really nice guy, Merv. He seemed pretty cool. That sounds like a senior citizen name. Yeah. I like it though. I think Merv is a pretty cool name as far as as far as old names go, Merv is a pretty good one. I'm with you there. Yeah.

So well we're obviously talking about street food today. Yes, street food is our topic. You can find a lot of street food in Japan, but it's not quite as big of a thing as in a lot of other Asian countries, right, Paul? You could say that, yeah. I actually was really intrigued because I saw people arguing or making the argument that like street food culture isn't really a thing in Japan. Sure. And I was like, well, based on my experiences in Japan, I beg to differ.

So I dug into it a bit and I was like, what's the arguments behind? And I think the biggest root of it is that, you know, it's impolite to eat and walk in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the heart of it where people are like, Oh, there's not a lot of people out eating on the streets. You even hear some people say it's even impolite to stand and eat. I don't know if I really buy that. Especially depending on where you are probably too.

I think it really does depend on where you are. I think Look, I haven't been to China, haven't been to Korea, I don't know exactly what their street food culture is like, or, you know, other Asian countries. But I think I mean in Japan, we've eaten a lot of street food because we go to super touristy places. And that's where the street food is. Yeah. But like I feel like there's less street food just in random places around the city. And like I said,

Haven't been to China, don't know for sure, but I get the impression that there are just more like markets that you can kinda walk through in China where there's just tons like a huge variety of street food. You know what I mean? Maybe.

I haven't been to China either. But I think the street food always congregates where the people are. You know, it's always gonna be busy parts. But there are parts that are busy with tourists and parts that are busy with locals, you know? And I feel like there aren't as many I don't know. Street food areas popular with locals, like exclusively. I I don't know. What what was your experience like in Korea? Did you see a lot of street food there?

I should have asked her brother about this. Yeah. I I feel like I saw a bit. I remember getting some cinnamon filled pancakes. That I think maybe had chopped walnuts in them too that were really, really good.'Cause I was there in February and it was cold and they were hot and delicious. Nice.

But you know, I was vegan at that time already, so there was a lot of stuff I probably wasn't really looking very closely at. Sure. I remember the rest stops on the highway in Korea being like a huge food place. If you take a bu a long bus trip, they always stop at a rest stop and you get off for thirty minutes and they've got the sweet potatoes and the corn and the fried chicken and all these little stalls selling all sorts of little quick food bites. That's cool.

Another thing I think of in Korea, I don't know if this qualifies as street food, but it It is basically food that you eat on the street. You know those little like bars that pop up with like it's kind of a just a big tent? With the little bar or restaurant under it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. In the K dramas, they're always like getting hammered at one of those places. Oh

Dude, I also wanted to mention I watched solo leveling. Yeah and I just finished it. Oh dude, it's great, isn't it? It's really great. Yeah. And it takes place in Korea and they were eating in one of those exact things that I'm talking about. Yeah. And that's like

I'd say that is street food, but it's like almost becoming a restaurant with the big tent and everything. A little bit. But it does really remind me of the Yatai in Fukuoka, which we're gonna talk about later. Yeah. It's the same sort of thing, like You know, they definitely people call that street food in Fukuoka, but it's uh like you're not just standing there on the street eating it. Like they're you're kind of sitting at a little bar under a tent kind of thing. Yeah.

I think it also blurs the line in Japan, like do you call Conbini food street food? If you like buy it and then stand out front and eat it. Right, right. Like y it's quick, easy food that you might eat right away. Like that could definitely be street food under the right circumstance. Yeah. I guess. I was gonna ask, have you ever been I mean, no one's ever scolded you for eating food while you're walking or standing or outside or whatever, right? No.

I have a little story. Oh yeah? When I was in Matsuyama okay, I was at it was like a you know, one of those tourist streets. It was a shopping street and I found a little dagashi uh like one of those stores selling old traditional candies. And I got some of my favorite candies. And then just you know, on the other side of the shopping street there was this.

It was like at the end of the shopping street, so I'm kind of like outside the shopping street, okay? But there's this little bench in front of this shop. And I thought, well, maybe I'll just sit there and uh munch on a couple of these little candies that I got. A lady came out of the shop and with a very stern, borderline upset look on her face told me, like, You can't eat here. And I felt very

Shamed and uh embarrassed and I packed up my stuff and I said my Sumi Masen and whatnot and uh and walked away. That's my tail between my legs. Yeah. I feel like that could have been as much of like she just doesn't want people loitering, even though she put a bench there. I guess. Like she doesn't want people buying food and then coming to her place. Go eat that where you bought it kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like if you eat it

Standing in front of the place you bought it. Like I see that a lot. Like Japanese people do that all the time. And I think that's an expectation a lot of the time is that you you buy your street food and then you stand there right in front of the place, you eat it, and a lot of time they'll have a little trash can there.

One of the rare times you'll actually see a trash can in Japan. Yeah. Just so you can throw your stick or wrapper or whatever in there. And sometimes, annoyingly to me, the trash can will be like behind the counter and you kinda have to like go back and hand your trash to them to get them to throw it away. Yeah.

I remember when we were in um Inuyama, I even This might have been me uh playing the gygene card a little bit, but I like handed him a a can from the vending machine that I had emptied too and I was like, Do you mind taking this? I think I remember that and I was thinking like the gall of Jason to give him

Trash you didn't get at this store. But that street had so many vending machines and not a single recycling bin for the cans. I remember that. Yeah. Couldn't believe that. That was that was kind of annoying. Yeah. But I guess I get it. Like busy tourist street. They don't wanna have to empty those cans all the time. Yeah. I will say that I have made an effort to not eat and walk in Japan. Like I haven't done that very much at all because I know it's kind of taboo.

Although I have kind of crossed the line, I do sometimes, if I'm sitting waiting for a train, I might sneak a few bites.

of like a bar or something I've got, which you're not really supposed to eat in the train station. But no one's ever really called me on it yet. Yeah, I don't know. You know, when I see people online talking about this People bring up, Oh, you're not supposed to eat and walk and then other people will be like, I live in Japan and I see Japanese people eating and walking sometimes, like it's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, but people are gonna do rude things even if they're considered rude. Sure. Yeah. Right. But yeah, it's generally not that And I don't eat on the trains. That's a big no no. I will not eat on a train. Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. Unless it's, you know, one of the trains with dining trains or eating. Yeah, it's mostly just the shinkansen. Or uh limited express ones. So food culture

Or the street food culture I should say is really tied to Matsuri in Japan, right? That's where you're gonna find a lot of it is at the festivals. That's one place where you're like guaranteed to find street food. Yeah, there'll be all these little stalls all over the place. But like you said, tourist places. If you go visit a castle or a busy shopping street, you might find some food stalls to get.

Stuff. Sure. I mean, we we got a whole list at the end of the episode. We're going to talk about the various places that you can go to find street food if you want to seek it out. Speaking of lists, we also have a list of a bunch of different street foods we're gonna talk about. And I got a question for you, Jason. You came up with a really nice list, I gotta say.

Did you do this just say that they're thinking of all the tasty things you've eaten over the years? Or did you like go out and find some stuff that you haven't tried yet? You know, I put together a list of stuff that I have enjoyed and then I googled around to find some stuff that

I'm now very interested in enjoying. Okay. Okay. I'm curious which ones you haven't tried yet. So you have to let me know as we go which ones you haven't tried. Oh, I'll I'll be sure to share some personal experiences in this one. Okay. Yeah.

So Paul, you want to talk about some balls? Uh yeah, I always want to talk about balls. Like I said, they're hot. Hot balls, octopus balls, or takoyaki. Now, Paul, when you first heard about Takoyaki or when you heard the phrase octopus balls, did that make you think they were something that they are not? Probably I can't remember. I mean it's been a long time. Some people hear octopus balls and they're like, I didn't even know octopi had testicles.

Okay. I don't think that's what I thought. Okay. I maybe thought like octopus was like smushed into a ball and grilled or something. Sure. I think yeah, I think that's another common misconception is that it's just like a big ball of octopus. It's not that at all. Actually, by volume, very little of it is octopus. Yeah, there's a decent little chunk inside, but Yeah. Yeah. So just to give you some basic

This is a signature street food of Osaka. Mm-hmm. They're grilled bready little balls. They make them with a batter of eggs, wheat flour, and dashi. Just kind of a fish stock sort of thing. And as we said, there's a just a little piece of octopus inside there. And then they top these balls with takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise, katsuabushi, which is uh fish flake. and aonori, which is like powdered seaweed, basically. And they're tasty.

Yeah, these are the ones we were talking about in the intro that will burn your mouth off right away. Be very careful. Yeah. But that's because they always they're grilling them right there and they put'em straight from the grill into your little cardboard boat or whatever you call that. And that's how you know they're good. Yeah. They came right off the grill. Yeah.

I have actually heard, I just discovered this during my research for this episode, some places do actually put a whole baby octopus in there. Wow. I would be interested to try that. But I've never seen that. Literally never. You know, if you want to try takoyaki, don't be nervous that you're gonna get a whole baby octopus. I think that's pretty rare. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I think so too.

This is one of the, I suppose, few on here that I have tried way back in the day. Mm-hmm. And I'm not the biggest fan of octopus. It's a bit tough. It depends how it's prepared. I've had some incredibly tender octopus actually. Okay. Well I haven't, so I missed out on that. But I do think the textures play well. Like the hot, crispy batter on the outside with a little bit of the chewiness of the octopus on the inside and then all the sauces on top. It's a pretty delectable little treat.

Yeah, they're great. I feel like they're one of the more popular Japanese street foods to find outside of Japan too. Like they've been exported a lot of other places more than a lot of the other stuff that we're gonna talk about. Oh yeah, extremely popular. Another thing I want to note here, because this is going to come up again in this episode, that yaki, you might have heard that in things like teriyaki. That yaki just means grilled.

So we're talking about all sorts of grilled stuff in this episode and I kinda we grouped him together at the beginning. So there's gonna be a lot of yakkis. So just know yaki equals grilled. Yeah. Paul, do you know anything about the history of Takuyaki? Just that it originated in Osaka. I don't want to dwell too long on this. 'Cause we're already like twenty minutes in. But

I did a bit of a deep dive on these just'cause I came across a little tidbit and I it was like one of those things where you find the end of a string and you just gotta keep pulling on it, you know? I was curious coming into this episode.

On how deep you'd go. I was like, is Jason gonna have a full history on like all twenty of these dishes we're about to talk about? Not all of them, but you know, especially when I first start my research, this was the f one of the first things I started looking into and Then I end up with like a full page about the first topic and I'm like, oh no, I need to Yeah, I better start cutting back a little bit. Right, right. But I think this is interesting. Tell me if this is interesting.

Okay, so the story starts in the Edo period in a city called Akashi in Hyogo Prefecture. You know Hyogo, right? Uh is that? Yeah. South of Osaka? West. West, okay. Hyogo is where Kobe is. Sure, sure. Okay, so in this city, Akashi, they used to make this traditional decoration called Akashi Dama. Which is made by hardening egg whites with saltpeter. But they didn't use the egg yolk.

in this decoration. So with all these extra yolks, they eventually started making these little eggy balls that they called Tamagoyaki. grilled egg. Tamagoyaki means something different today. You'll hear that around. But um so these balls that they made there I guess they still make them, uh but they're now known as Akashiaki, named after the city. And another interesting thing about this city is that they caught a lot of octopus.

Octopi octopuses however you want to say it. So they started putting octopus into these egg balls. Okay. So we're getting pretty close to uh takoyaki, right? But with a much higher egg content and specifically using those yolks. The other weird thing about that, or different thing about that, is that they're eaten dipped in dashi. Okay. So they're kind of like soft. compared to takoyaki. Okay, then

In nineteen thirty-five in Osaka, somebody decided, hey, let me add some other stuff to this batter here. We'll use a little less egg, maybe I'll top it with this sauce, some mayonnaise, some katsobushi, etc. etc. And we'll call this takoyata. So there you got it. So yeah, since it originated in Osaka, if you haven't tried it and you're going to Osaka, I would recommend trying it there. You know, get the original one, right? Yep. I had some at Doton Bori.

Right by the canal there there are a bunch of takoyaki stands or in the restaurants, a lot of those will serve takoyaki as well. Mm-hmm. Where did you have it in Japan? I mean I don't remember. It was my first trip in like two thousand eight. I mean probably Osaka would be my guess, but I I couldn't tell ya. Yeah. I mean it is all over the place now. You don't have to be in Osaka to get it. I do think it's interesting that so many foods originated because

Food used to be so much s more scarce than it is now. It's like we have a bunch of octopus. What can we put this in? And they just kind of created new dishes and found what worked. And they didn't used to have all the high speed trains and the boat well, they had boats but

Oh, they weren't as fast as modern boats. I don't know. Food can just get around a lot easier these days. So you can find you know local specialties further away than ever before. Pre-refrigeration. You gotta like gotta eat it pretty quick. Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Paul, what's the next Yaki on our list? Yaki Tori. Okay. And these are grilled chicken skewers. So if Yaki means grilled, what does Tori mean? Bird, I believe. Yeah. A niwa tori is a chicken specifically, but I know this because there's a sub hollow live group. called Hollotori and it's all the bird-based VTubers in it. Wow. Okay. Interesting. So anyways I mean, I knew about Yakitori and I knew it's incredibly prevalent. You can get it all over the place.

But I was a little bit surprised by the incredible variety. So it's generally marinated in a soy based sauce and grilled, but they use all different parts. of the chicken. Like you can get chicken breast or chicken thigh or gizzards or livers. Or just about any part of the chicken you might find at some of these different places. Mm-hmm. And then there's different sauces too.

Like I think I've seen barbecue and different types of things. Barbecue. It's not prevalent. Yeah, it's not prevalent, but you you get all sorts of different varieties out there. Mm. So I thought that was cool. Yeah. Uh another note about Yakitori is it's not always exclusively chicken. Like if you go to a Yakitori place, I that word can you refer to other types of meat too.

So they could have like a wide selection of skewers, including vegetables or mushrooms, things like that. Yakitori mushrooms? What? Yeah. Okay. Kind of a umbrella term for skewered stuff. I like So from what I've seen when I get Yaki Tori, I feel like I'm usually offered two choices for like how I want it prepared.'Cause they got they got the little skewers on their charcoal grill, right?

And then when they're heating them up, you know, to to get'em right to the perfect temperature, to put'em right in your hand, they'll ask, okay, do you want shio or do you want tare? Shio is salt. So they just sprinkle some salt on there. That's literally it. Or tare is a a soy sauce based glaze kind of thing. They like brush it on there or maybe dip it into a a vat of this stuff. What's your go to?

I like it both ways. Okay. It depends on my mood, I think. Okay. It's also not uncommon to see Neggy mixed in there, pieces of Nagy between the pieces of chicken. And Neggy is uh It's related to green onion. It's just like kinda thicker and a little milder I'd say. So that can be really good too. I had one like that at Fushimi Inari after I spent an hour lost on the mountain. Oh, okay. I was like Yeah, you were hungry and tired. Yeah, and it was it was delicious.

That's the best time to eat a yakitori, I think. Just go get lost on a mountain and then once you find your way back down the mountain, eat some yakitori. It'll be the best you've ever had. Another note is that Yankee Tori is considered an excellent accompaniment to beer. Yes, yes. Common bar food. I mentioned the Yatai in Fukuoka. I had a yakitori there with beer. Oh, okay. And it was great. Nice. Big glass of asahi. Sounds good. It was.

Have you seen Meatball Yaki Tori? I kept seeing that was a thing in my research, but I can't remember ever actually seeing that in person. Is it chicken meatballs? I think so. Hmm. I feel like I might have seen it. I don't think I've ever had it. Yeah. Something to try next time. Yeah.

We know Yaki is grilled. What is Ika? Squid. Grilled squid on a skewer. Ika, it's almost like ink. Ink, squid. Inka. See where I'm going there? I get it. Yeah. I can see the connection. Yeah, this one's pretty simple. You just take a squid, you stick it on a skewer, you grill it, dip it in soy sauce. There you go. Also popular in Osaka. Not tried this one. Neither have I, but I've seen it. Squid guy, you know. Never was.

Next time I see this, I'm gonna pick one up, I think. I'm curious. Going to Japan for me the first time when I wasn't vegan was interesting,'cause growing up right in the middle of the USA with like very little seafood here other than a few fish out of the lake.

And like my family didn't eat seafood really. Everything was new to me and I was like, I don't know about some of this stuff, you know. I feel like squid especially, that's probably one of the big things that you'll see in Japan that a lot of Americans are not familiar with at all.

I've had like the dried squid snack. I was gonna ask. And I didn't really like it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I liked it the first time I tried it, but it's kinda grown on me. Okay. And uh my wife Yeah is a fan. So once in a while we'll we'll just pick some up at the Asian market. They have all sorts of different flavors of that stuff too. You know, you can get spicy ones, you can get salty ones or sweet ones. Okay. I don't know. I like it. And it's it's a nice snack that like doesn't go bad.

kind of just keep it in your pantry or whatever and snack on it whenever you feel like it. Okay, Paul, this next one is misleading, I think. Oh yeah? Yeah.'Cause Tai Yaki, if you just look at the word Yaki is grilled, as we know, tie is a type of fish. called seabream. So you might think this is grilled sea bream, grilled fish. But it's not that at all. Yeah, that's very misleading. Yeah. So Tayaki is fish shaped pastries, almost like a pancake. Stuffed with sweet red bean paste.

They can actually be filled with all sorts of things. The the red bean paste is the most traditional one. Traditional, yes. These days you'll find them filled with uh Custard cheese, maybe, sweet potato, matcha, like a matcha cream sort of thing, chocolate. Nutella. Yeah. This one is my biggest regret. I wanna try one of these so bad. But they're not vegan or I never have. You could make it vegan, but I can't like find one vegan when I'm in Japan. Maybe someday I will at some vegan restaurant.

But I wanted one of these the first time I was in Japan and I just like didn't happen by a stand or I didn't notice it or something. I just somehow I never got one. And I'll regret it till my dying day, Jason. So do you know for sure that like the batter is made with eggs or milk or something? Did you find it Traditionally, yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah,'cause it's it's pancake like, it's a pastry. Or butter. Butter. Yeah, it's got it's got dairy in there.

Yeah, that's a bummer. I might have to make one at home someday. Maybe I should buy A little fish pan. Didn't we talk about a Tayake mold kind of thing from uh Bento and Co. Bento and Co. I think they have one. Yeah. I never got around to ordering it because I don't I think it said you needed an open like a gas stove.

You can come over here. I don't have a gas stove. Yeah. I do now. For the first time ever. It's ac it's awesome, man. I love having a gas stove. I guess I'm getting you a Tayake pan for your birthday. Sounds good to me. But yeah, I guess we didn't really cover how they're made yet. They're like these metal molds. They're two halves, you know, each half of the fish.

each side, not the front and then the back, but the sides. And then you pour the batter in there and then you stick your filling on there and then you squish the two sides of the mold together, put it over fire And there you go. Yeah. I hear they're especially popular in Asaksa in Tokyo, which is actually, coincidentally, the place where I first tried Tayaki. How amazing was it? It was amazing. Yeah, Paul, you're really missing it. I think I had a cheese one in Kawagoy. Oh wow. Yeah.

Yeah, try'em all, you know? Get'em filled with all sorts of stuff. You you won't regret it.

Moving on to another very popular one, Jason. This is probably my favorite Yaki. Fair, fair. Yaki is grilled. Soba, if you're a long time listener of the podcast, you might know that soba is usually referring to buckwheat noodles. But in this case, soba is just talking about noodles in general. They're not specifically soba noodles. But they take these

I think they're normally just wheat noodles instead of buckwheat. Take the noodles, they saute'em on a griddle type of thing with bits of meat and vegetables and sauce. And it's really delicious. Yeah. I love fried noodles, man. They're so good. This is one of these things that I make at home. Yeah. I get the packages of yellow. I do too soba. I do too.

I think pork is probably the most common meat topic. It seems to be ver very prevalent. Yeah. Some of the veggies they use, cabbage, onions, carrots. I like to use mushrooms myself. Sure. Some shiitake in there. Yeah. It's often topped with things like mayonnaise. When I say mayonnaise in this episode, we're talking about Japanese mayonnaise specifically. I guess I didn't mention that that's a little bit different than American mayonnaise.

Look for QP at your local Asian market and uh and try it out and you'll see why it's so much better than American mayonnaise. But okay, topped with mayonnaise, seaweed powder, that aonori stuff that I mentioned before, pickled ginger, just a little pinch of it. On top is popular. I see it occasionally with a fried egg on top, too. That sounds awesome. I s I gotta start adding fried eggs to uh to my yakisoba at home, although Paul

You know, hiccups a little bit. I was about to ask when was the last time you bought eggs? But of course you don't buy eggs. But I haven't bought eggs in months because of the ridiculous prices. I can't it's insane. Don't forget that I work at a grocery store. I am very well aware of the egg pricing situation. Well, right, right. I just meant that it would have been a dumb question to ask you, did you stop? Do you sell a lot less eggs now?

No. People still buying, they're just paying their ridiculous prices. Yep. You're the only one not buying eggs anymore. Five bucks a dozen. No, thank you. We sell like free range organic eggs. You don't even wanna know how much they cost. Like ten bucks a dozen? Not quite, but almost. Did we talk about the sauce? Not in detail, no. Okay. I think most popular is it's kind of like a soy Worcestershire. Worcestershire. I struggle with that word. Worcestershire. Worcestershire. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a little bit sweet and a little bit smoky flavored almost kinda. You get like that grill flavor from it. I suppose. Yeah. Very good. It is really good. When I buy this stuff at the market to make at home, they have the standard one, but then they also have a curry one. Have you tried that? I haven't. Sounds pretty good. But my favorite actually is the Shio one. It's just, you know, salt flavored. Okay.

I like the standard one. That little powder packet and you just mix it in a little water. Man, it's good. It is really good. I like to mix in a little extra Japanese mayo just into the noodles, make'em extra greasy and fatty and good stuff, man. Okay. When I worked in Santa Monica, way back in the my California days, in the mall across the street, there was a place that literally just did Yaki Soba.

And I would go there and it was cheap for like six bucks. I could get like a veggie yaki soba. Nice. And then make it right there in like three minutes and I'd be able to get back in forty five minutes on my lunch break. Mm. I got that a lot. That's cool. I used to uh when I worked uh at a recording studio in LA, I would bring Yankee Soba Lot for lunch in my bento. Ah nice. Actually this is does this sound super name droppy if I say I had a conversation with uh Bubba Sparks about my

Yakisoba'cause I was just eating it and he was sitting next to me. He was like, What's that? No, because I don't even remember who that is. Oh, okay, good. He was probably famous at some point, right? Yeah. You've worked with more famous people than that. Probably the uh most innocuous name I could drop. So I'll say not Dave Droppy. You could have gone you could have gone higher on that.

Oh, last thing about Yakisoba is that it's really popular festival food. You'll definitely see that if you attend a festival. Ah, yeah, yeah.

The next one's another good one. Yakiimo. Yacky is grilled. What's an emo, Paul? Sweet potato. Well, technically, emo just refers to any potato, but If you hear somebody advertising Yaki emo, they're talking about sweet potatoes usually. Thanks for the correction. No problem. You know how I like to be extremely gridantic. No, no, that was good. Yeah, roasted sweet potatoes.

They sometimes grill them on hot stones. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. I was gonna point out too that they're often Satsuma emo. You remember Satsuma, right? Yeah. Yeah, around Kagoshima. They're famous for their sweet potatoes there. That's actually where I had uh one of these uh a couple trips ago.

I rem I remember you getting that. It was very tasty. Yeah. Very tasty. And you might think like grilled potato, oh, that's like a savory kind of thing, but these sweet potatoes are sweet enough that it's kinda like a little sweet treat. Yes. I may be spoiled in my palate with all the disgusting food I eat, all the sugar and sauces and everything, but I like sweet potatoes, but like Man, I wish there was like Something.

Like some sort of like saucer. I was surprised. I was happy to go with these. I was surprised you didn't even try one when I got that. Like it's one of the rare vegan options, you know. Yeah, I wasn't super hungry at that point. You didn't even taste mine, did you? No.

But like the s sometimes I get weirded out when you're like too insistent. Like, Bo, you gotta try my sweet potato. Try my sweet potato. And I'm just kinda like, nah. I love introducing people to new amazing foods that I very much enjoy and Honestly, Paul, it makes me very sad that there are so many foods that I can't introduce to you, you know, because of your uh eating preferences by affliction. I wasn't gonna go that far. But

So it does make me a little it makes me sad when I find something vegan that's also delicious somehow, and then I offer that to you, you know, Paul, you gotta try this, and you're like meh. Okay, I'll try to be better on that. I don't know. Maybe I'm like You know, I grew up with two older brothers. I'm like this.

Distrusting when someone's too insistent on something. I'm like, what's the catch? What are you trying to get out of me? I wasn't like, Paul, Paul, open your mouth and close your eyes. Just trust me. Just trust me. Japanese sweet potatoes are great though. Yeah. They have a dark purple skin and then like a creamy whitish yellowish inside. They're very good. And like the sugar in the sweet potato caramelized.

You know? Yeah. Like I feel like it makes them extra sweet. And the skin gets a little crispy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're becoming really popular here. Like we sell a ton of Japanese sweet potatoes at work. Really? Yeah. More and more every year, I feel like. Huh. What does the label say? Does it say Japanese sweet potato? Yep. Huh. Yep. I wonder how much

That word Japanese on the sign like attracts people. Maybe you know. Some of the boxes when they come in from our supplier say Oriental sweet potatoes, but I'm like, that's not a good name for that. No. That's funny. They're very popular in winter too,'cause they're so piping hot, right? Well they double as hand warmers really. Yeah, yeah. Warm your hand, warm your body as they go down. Yeah. Another really fun thing about Yaki Emo is uh the way people sell it sometimes.

Heard about this? What are you getting out of here? So sometimes you'll see like trucks going down the street and they'll have like a loudspeaker and somebody's singing Yucky Oh okay, yeah. Advertise. Yeah. I don't know why none of the other street foods get a song, but it's pretty fun to hear. Like you can actually if you go on YouTube and Google like y Yaki Mo song.

You'll find a bunch of videos of trucks driving around Yakimo and they have fun with it. It's like they play around, you know. Yakimo. Yakeima Yaki. Flashbacks to our last trip to Japan, where we spent a couple days in Shibuya and those same trucks would drive around with the billboard blasting the advertisements. Yeah. And there was like a vegan perfume or something.

Do you remember that one? It was growing by Japanese, Japanese Vegan, Japanese, Japanese drive by Japanese. I forgot it was vegan. I remember the perfume one though. Yeah. That was loud. Yeah. We saw it all the time. All the time. Man, he we he had a small driving radius. Yeah. How much is he you know affecting traffic? Like those streets are busy. Right. Half those street traffic is just cars driving in circles.

The next one I have not tried, but I very much like the Mexican version of this. You know what I'm saying? Yep. Yep. Although those aren't vegan either. Nope. Or wait, is this one this would be vegan, right? Well no, probably not most of the time because of the butter. Right. We're talking about Yaki Tomorokoshi, which is Japanese corn on the cob.

And what makes it special is that it's grilled over an open flame, it's got that nice char on it, you know, and it's flavored with butter and soy sauce and mirin, and maybe miso. Might see miso in it. Yeah. You might also get some mayo on top, maybe some garlic and chili powder.

Yeah, this one I'm okay with. We live in the middle of corn country. We got some of the best corn in the world here. I eat plenty of corn on the cob. Do you? You make corn on the cob at home? Yeah, absolutely. Hm. Now that I'm moving into a place that I can have a grill soon. I'll be I'll be eating a lot of it this year. Yeah, I gotta pick up a grill. Although I should try a soy sauce glaze. I've never done that.

I usually usually vegan butter and salt is pretty pretty good. Yeah, corn doesn't need a lot, you know? Corn's pretty good ones. It's so sweet already. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I saw that this is most commonly found in Tohoku, northeastern honchu. But it can be found all over Japan, especially at summer festivals, because of course that is when corn is in season. Yeah.

Well that's the last of the Yakis. We got some other savory dishes to talk about though. Yeah. And this next one, I'm very curious to see if you've tried it.

TAKO TAMAKA Octopus A. I hadn't even heard about this until we started doing this research and now I'm super interested. I I like I want to seek this out and eat this because it involves one food that I really, really love quail egg. And uh I like eating those baby octopi as well. You know, they're pretty tasty. So basically what this is, I mean if you see it, it just looks like a baby octopus on a skewer, but there's a quail egg hidden inside that baby octopus.

And then they're glazed with a sauce. And I I want it. Very unique dish. Yeah. I wonder if I've seen these. I feel like I've seen little octopus on on sticks, you know? Right, right. It's one of those things where like I probably saw it and didn't know what it was. Yeah. If somebody had told me there was a quail egg in there, I would have been like, okay, give me one of those. Yeah. You'll have to try it on our next trip and report back and the trip recap. Yeah. Man, I love quail eggs.

You know, those have gotten expensive too. All the eggs. They've always been expensive. They used to be you could get I don't know. I I guess it's kind of expensive for the size of them. It's pretty small, but like ninety nine cents for a dozen or something. I don't recall ever seeing that. Oh, they definitely used to be that cheap. Okay. But apparently this taco tamago originated at Nishki Market in Kyoto, I saw. Oh. But now it's found all over Kansai. Okay. Yep.

Paul, have you ever had cottage? Yeah. Pretty good, right? Yeah. Can't go wrong with fried chicken. Did you just have that on your first trip? Yeah. Where'd you have it? Do you remember? No. Probably Colbini. I mean sure. I feel like it's better as street food, you know, on the street from an actual stand that specializes in that kind of thing. Sure. I had some really good karage in otaru in Hokkaido.

So tell us Paul, what's special about Japanese fried chicken? How is it different from other types of fried chicken? Probably the marinade. Yeah, it's marinated with mirin a lot and garlic, soy sauce. Ginger perhaps. Sake. Coated in ponko sometimes. I don't feel like I've ever seen it coated in ponko. I heard that i they usually use something like uh some sort of starch like corn starch or potato starch or something to make it extra crispy. Okay. Okay. Have you ever had it topped with mayo?

I don't think so. Okay. I saw that was an option apparently. Another thing about it is Like, they kinda... Easy to eat as a street food, you know. It's not like you're holding on to a a wing or whatever, getting your hands all greasy. It's boneless and it's bite sized. So you can usually I feel like they give you a little like toothpick kind of thing to eat it with. Yeah. Yeah. Easy to eat. Yeah.

Can be found all over the place. Another place I got it is there's a stand selling it right outside the bamboo grove in Arashiyama in Kyoto. But if you go there, be careful because the roof of that stand, it it's very low, and I totally bashed my head right into it, and it was very embarrassing and painful. Like it, you know, I got a lump from it. Yeah. So d don't do that. Double painful the emotional damage and the physical damage. Exactly. Exactly.

And it was like right after I took it from the person, you know, and it's like, Oh, thank you very much. I'm very excited to eat this boom And then I'm like Yeah. And everyone's like, Oh, are you okay? And you're not, but you're like, Yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine. Everything's fine. Everyone's like, I don't think he's fine. I totally didn't make it through that interaction without embarrassing myself. That always We've all been there. Yeah.

go to Japan and you're tall enough, you will hit your head a few times. That's true. Yeah. If you're over like, I don't know, what, five and a half feet or something, like just be careful. Just keep an eye out. That's all I'm saying. Sure.

Well next is one of your favorites, Jason. Okay, I'll take it from here. Yeah, go go ahead. Kobe Beef. This has come up on the podcast before, of course, I've talked about Oh my mouth is watering already. From all the times that I booked like a real fancy, expensive dinner to have some super high grade Kobe beef. Oh it's the best. And y it's not uncommon to see Kobe beef skewers sold as street food. I think I've had this a couple of times. I think I had it

at the sumo tournament in Fukuoka, I also had some in Akihabara. There's a I remember you getting it there. Yeah. And are you talking about a skewer? Is it kind of like a long strip of like grilled beef skewered or is it little chunks? I think it's little chunks. Okay. That's how I remember it. And it's generally gonna be more expensive than, you know. You get what you pay for. Yeah. Well, okay, here's my thing.

I think I've only had this a couple times. Like I said, those two those two places. I wasn't impressed. Wow. Like I feel like at those stands when you're getting Kobe beef as street food, they're not giving you the best cut. Like I got some gristle on these skewers, all right? Sure. And if you go spend I mean, of course, like you said, you get what you pay for. If you're dropping$150 for a dinner at a nice Kobe beef place, You're not getting any gristle. You're getting the perfect part.

Of the And I think that's your problem because you're doing that every time you go to Japan and then like two days later you're buying street Kobe beef and you're like it's not the same. I just don't want to get stuff stuck in my teeth. But bristle, man. Bristle's unforgivable. Unless it comes with a toothpick.

A toothpick would have been nice. Yeah. But uh this is just my opinion. I'm just one person, but I say don't get Kobe beef as a street food Or if you do, just like look really closely at what they're actually serving you, because I feel like a lot of these places will prey on tourists just using that name Kobe Beef and then they charge you a bunch of money for not really that great of beef.

Right. But I'm sure there are places that are selling really good Kobe beef on skewers too. I just haven't come across them personally, you know? Fair warning there. If you want real good Kobe beef, just do some research and find a good restaurant. You want a place that shows you the raw chunk of beef before you eat it and you're gonna look for All that just super amazing marbling with no like big strips of fat on the side, that's what you want.

Are you ready to move on to one of my favorites? I think I'm done talking about Kobe beef, I guess. All right.

Gyoza. I love Gyoza, Jason. Yeah, do you? Yeah, I do. I eat it fairly regularly. You make it at home? I mean I buy these like frozen bags of it that you can like fry up in five minutes. Get'em nice and crispy and tasty. Okay, let me ask you this. 'Cause you've seen like the places that serve gyoza and it's got like this perfect little really light, crispy kind of web that's like holding all the gyoza together. You know what I'm talking about? I do.

H have you ever been able to replicate that at home? I've never really tried. Okay. I do'em individually. Mm-hmm. But as long as you get nice and crispy. They're they're good. They gotta be crispy. I feel like I've had soggy gyoza and it's just not good. No. So Gyoza we're talking about Stuffed dumplings? Yeah, they're those little like crescent shaped dumplings. They look like a little crescent moon. Yeah, you know. They're not too big. They're kinda like bite sized. Mm-hmm.

They became super popular in Japan starting after World War Two, when all that wheat flour was flooding into Japan'cause of those rice shortages. We talked about that in the ramen episode. That's also why ramen became so popular, all that wheat. Yeah. And they can be steamed, but I'm a huge fan of the pan fry. Or even I think deep fried sometimes you can get'em. Uh I would eat that. Yeah. Yeah. So they're often filled with some combination of minced meat, garlic, cabbage, veggies.

I obviously go for the veggie ones. Here's a kind of a soy sauce based dipping sauce. Usually I usually do a little soy sauce and a little hot sauce. Very good. Serve it with some white rice is my preference, although that's not how you're gonna get it on the street. Sure. What was the city? The Gyoza city. Oh, um Mm-hmm.

N north just north of Tokyo. Yeah, between Kyoto and and Nikon. Where that like first Shinkansen stop is. It's no miya, right? Yes, that's the one. They have like three hundred Gyoza shops. Yeah. If you're like a real Gyoza fanatic Go to Utsunomiya. Yeah. It's on my list. Yeah, we should stop there next time. Yeah, there's some cool stuff there. Yeah, they got that cave, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Next up, Koroque. Or croquettes. Croquette, Koroquet. Yeah, pretty pretty good. It makes sense. It makes sense. Do you you know I I'd heard that word I think before I'd heard of Japanese croquettes. I'd heard the word croquettes in English, but I'm not sure I knew what really that was. Like do you feel like most Americans are familiar with croquettes as a concept? That's a great question. I would guess no, but I'm not sure. Yeah. Because I feel like I learned about them from Japan.

Like I don't think it's something I've ever had in America. Yeah. I don't think I've had it here either unless I I mean I used to buy them and make them uh at home. Or I think I m might have even made some from scratch one time. They're not hard to make. I feel like you you've made'em for me before. Yeah? Very possible. They actually originated in France.

And you know, Japan they they like French food and they like twisting foods from other countries to their own uh tastes and whatever. So Japan's created their own version since croquettes were first introduced to the country in the late eighteen hundreds. Do you want to describe them or should I? I could take it. Alright. It's a deep fried patty of mashed potatoes and chopped meat.

And I believe this one is coated in Ponko often. Yes, if definitely. Always. Yep. And then served with a dip too. Maybe that uh some sort of Worcestershire Sauce type dip. Yep. Uh there could be veggies in there too, potato meat and veggies, and you could also find vegetarian ones. And vegan ones. I think I got these at the uh that vegan restaurant under the train tracks in Akihabara. Yeah, yeah. I totally remember and they were amazing. Yeah.

You also had a uh wasabi croquette at Daya Wasabi Farm, didn't you? Yeah. That was I I think I had two. Yeah. Yeah, they're tasty and and like I said, super easy to make. You just like mash some potatoes. Cook some meat, mix it together, coat it in bread crumbs, deep fry it. That's pretty much it. Mm-hmm. They're they're good. I gotta start making these. Yeah, I was just thinking, why don't I make these more often? Like that's pretty easy. Deep frying is a pain.

That's true. I wonder how they do it in air fryer. Probably won't be quite the same. You probably pan fry them, especially if you made them a little bit thin. Yeah. I mean, you don't need like a whole pot of oil to deep fry things. You can just have like half an inch of oil or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just do it in a pan. I should do it. Yeah.

So let's see, we're starting to get to like we're almost to sweet stuff, right? We've been talking about a lot of savory stuff, except those Taiaki because of the yaki thing. Yeah. But uh but this next one could be sweet or savory. Sure.

Talking about senbei or rice crackers. Very popular and very traditional. It goes way back. They're these thin, usually round crackers made of baked or grilled rice. They're often flavored with things like soy sauce and meeting, very traditional flavors, but they can also be Like I said, sweet. You could see uh sugar uh a lot of the time, uh sesame seeds, other savory things might be like seaweed or shrimp could be involved. I had a really good one on our last trip at Narajuku, remember?

I mean you remember Naranjuku at least. The traditional street the post town that we walked through. Beautiful place. Really incredible place. And I got this little senbei. It was like a sugary senbei with walnut. Ooh. It was very tasty. That sounds good. Yep. I also remember getting some on the road leading up to Kiyomizudera in Kyoto, but you can find I mean you'll see Senbei all over the place. I mean I think Senbei, isn't that what you buy to feed to the deer in Nara? Yeah.

Probably less salt and sugar. Yeah, those ones are a bit different from the ones usually made for human consumption, but you could eat those deer crackers. They're they're edible. Yeah. They're not gonna poison you or anything. Yeah. I'm kinda I don't know why I never tried one. I'm kinda just curious what they taste like now. Probably not great. I don't know.

We'll we'll see. I feel like animals other than humans don't really sweat. So they can't take the salt intake like we do. So their food tastes super bland to us. You can't overload a deer with salt. Okay. So we'd probably get it and be like, Yeah, it's a little bland. What about there are all those animals that like salt licks and stuff?

I think it's cause they get zero salt in their diet. You know, if you're eating leaves for like ninety-nine percent of your food, they need a little salt. Well then why don't we give the deer salt? There probably is a tiny bit of salt. It's just not human-level salt. So which is it, Paul? Do the deer need no salt or do they need a little bit of salt? Less salt than humans. We need to call up a dear doctor here. Give the details.

Anyway, you got anything else to say about rice crackers? I have some history. Okay. Rice crackers go back over two thousand years to ancient China. They came to Japan around the Asuka period, which was around five hundred to seven hundred CE, and uh they evolved into basically modern Senbei around the Edo period, sixteen to eighteen hundreds. Rice crackers just make so much sense.

Because, you know, how do you make rice last? Like even dry rice only lasts so long. Eventually you have to cook it and turn it into something. Yep. And then a cracker would extend that life for you. It does make a lot of sense. I mean, you got all that rice, it's a staple food. You're gonna figure out all the different ways to make things out of it. Yep.

Time for sweets now. We're solidly into sweets now. Let's do it. It'd start with soft cream. Soft cream. Soft cream. I love it. Soft serve ice cream, right? Yep, that's what they call it in Japan. And this one is ubiquitous. I mean, pretty much every touristy place you're gonna see the soft cream. What makes it so unique in Japan is all the regional flavors. I love it. They go nuts on these flavors. I've seen you eat so many different kinds of this.

Every time I see a new flavor, I gotta eat it. I feel like the one that made me the most jealous was the sake flavor. I really wanted to try that one. It was really good. It tasted like sake. But you've had the gold leaf wrapped. That was really good. Yep. What are some of the other ones you you've had? Indulged. Um uh miso ice cream was super, super good. You got that at the miso place last time, or right? The miso factory. Matsumoto. Yeah. Yep.

Black sesame ice cream is really cool. I had that black ice cream, um it was like charcoal ice cream. Yeah, Hakoday? Yep, yep. Hakoday. Charcoal ice cream, too. Yeah. Seaweed flavor. I haven't had that. Is that a thing? Yeah. Oh man, I gotta look for that one. Squid ink. Mm. Maybe squid ink ice cream. Very interesting. I wonder I've had squid ink noodle.

But I I don't feel like the ink I don't feel like it really has a flavor. I feel like it's mostly used for colouring. Yeah. But I mean, what you'll see everywhere, probably the most common flavor besides vanilla, is the matcha ice cream. Of course. And um I don't know. Commonly like they'll have the options, vanilla or matcha or a a mix of the two, the twist or whatever they call it. Squirrel.

But have you seen the places where they actually have like different grades of matcha ice cream? No. I've seen places and I don't know if it's necessarily the soft cream like this or if it's actually like ice cream that they're scooping out of a tub, but some places they'll have like a range of matcha ice creams that use different amounts of matcha, like different concentrations.

So you can go for like the really sweet stuff with just a little matcha flavor, or you can go for like the really deep Super dark green matcha that's you know like ninety percent matcha. I want to try that. Me too. I haven't I haven't had it, but I really want to try that. Actually when we were in Osaksa there was a specific place that had a ton of matcha ice cream I think that I wanted to go to and we didn't make it there. Uh we didn't have a ton of time there. Yeah, yeah.

You had wasabi ice cream at the wasabi farm, right? Oh man, I can't believe I forgot about that. But yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, wasabi, like real fresh ground wasabi mixed with ice cream. And didn't it come with a little scoop of actual wasabi on the side too that you could dip in? It's awesome. It's so awesome. You should try it. And if you don't you know, if if you don't wanna go all the way to Japan to Daio Wasabi farm or wherever to try that.

Just get some wasabi at your Asian market nearby and uh mix it with some uh vanilla ice cream and just try it out. It's a really cool combination, I think. The spiciness with the uh sweet, cool cream. Uh it's just really good. Another one that caught my eye that I'm don't recall seeing is Yuba ice cream. Yuba flavored or is there Yuba in it? I think there's Yuba in it. But it's like

I don't think it's like chewy or whatever. We're talking about that tofu skin yeah residue type of thing. That's very p common in Nico. So it's it's like smooth flavor. Ice cream is interesting. Yeah, I would love to try that. That sounds really good. I wanted to point out the gold ice cream you mentioned just'cause it A fun little novelty. That's in Kanazawa. You'll see that all over the place because Kanazawa produces

a ton of gold leaf. Like historically they've been the main producer of gold leaf for the whole country. So they have this thing where you can get an ice cream cone that's completely wrapped up in gold leaf. It's pretty cool. Yeah. We could go on and on with flavors, but I think we should leave it there. You get the idea. Yeah.

Ooh, next ones I know you like. Yeah? Takigori. Very popular street food in summer. It's basically sweetened flavored shaved ice. It's really awesome. Like it's if you've had shaved ice in America and you're thinking, Oh, I don't need to try the Japanese version. I've had that here. Well, you still need to try the Japanese version'cause it's better. It just is, okay. Like the ice is shaved way thinner somehow. It's like it's got a different texture and it retains the flavoring better.

Like it doesn't just pool at the bottom. I feel like a lot of times in the US you get shaved ice and it's like, Okay, this just tastes like ice now and then you get to the bottom and that's where all the sugar and syrup is like you know, settled. Yeah. They have a couple squirts of sh syrup that just soak right through or Oh, also in Japan sometimes it has like condensed milk in there, which does a really weird thing to the ice, like it it turns it into kind of uh

Almost like ice cream kind of text. It almost like congeals it. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I just feel like the texture is better and the flavor is more evenly distributed in the Japanese version of this. Yeah, and sometimes they get fancy and they might top it with fruit or mochi bites. Especially in Kagoshima they have a special looked really good. It was so good, man. It was so good. Every bite was so flavorful.

Got a little history here, if you're interested. Yeah. Kakigori goes way back to around the eleventh century. very traditional treat was originally of course a high class thing because not everybody had access to ice. But in the eighteen hundreds, ice making machines brought it to the masses. And these days there's even a cockigori day.

Twenty fifth of July. What? Yep. That's cool. Yeah. Makes sense being pretty much the hottest time of the year. So hot in Japan. Yep. If I were in J there in July, I'd be just drowning myself in cocky gory.

Next up we got dongo. More balls. Yeah. I like dongo. You too. They're glutinous rice flour balls. served on a skewer and they're grilled often over charcoal to give it a little bit of that grill flavor. They don't have to be grilled. They don't have to be. I feel like I'm just kinda making this up, but from what I've seen I feel like they're most often grilled if they're coated in something savory, and if they're sweet, they might not be grilled. That makes sense.

Well, you know, let me take that back. They can be sweet and grilled too. The Mitarashi dango is often grilled. But So these balls, they're they're similar to mochi, right? Glutinous rice. Origins. But they're actually made from rice flour instead of pounded rice. Yeah. Although I think in the mochi episode we talked about how there's a a little bit more of an overlap these days. Yeah. Like the line between

Dango and mochi, the line between what's made with the actual rice and what's made from rice flour, it's kinda blurred a lot of the time. They're getting really good at mass producing it with the rice flour, making it taste really good. Yeah. But they if they're not cooked over a flame, so they have a little bit of char on'em, they could also be cooked in hot water. Keep them all soft and kind of sticky. Okay. I prefer the char.

I like'em both ways. And you get the I love'em with the soy sauce that's a little bit sweet. Like that sweet, salty. That would be Mitarashi dango, I believe you're talking about. That's my that's my go to. So I got a little list of types of dongo here and details about them. Okay. Or do you want to hear history first? History. Have one sentence about history. Dongo came about in the twelfth century and they're commonly served at tea ceremonies.

Yep. Yeah. Uh okay, so types of dango. There's the Mitarashi dango. It originated in Kyoto, and those ones are covered in a thick, sweet. Sticky syrup made from soy sauce, sugar, and starch. So you you're a big fan of those? Yeah, I like them. The first time you ever had that or that type of thing, do you feel like

It weirded you out at all, the uh idea of a a sweet soy sauce thing? Because I feel like most Americans have only had soy sauce in like savory contexts, you know what I mean? I'd say not really. Like even teriyaki sauce. Has a bit of sweetness to it. I guess that's true. It's not too unusual. All right. And I have a sweet tooth, so I like it.

Okay. The flavor has grown on me a bit over the years. I feel like I like it more now than maybe the first time I tried it. Sure. I think I'm a little more fond of another popular type, which is hanami dango. popular in spring. Of course, hanami means flower viewing. We're talking about looking at the cherry blossoms that bloom in spring.

This type is also called San Shoku Dango because you get three balls on a stick and they're each a different color. Ah yeah. You know these, right? I've seen these. Order the three colors. Uh white, pink. Uh I don't remember the third. Green. Green, yeah. The pink represents the cherry blossoms. The white is the remaining snow,'cause it's like spring, right? And then the green is the new grass sprouting up. Okay. I like it. Symbolism. Tasty symbolism.

Those are probably the most common ones that you're likely to see, but there are a bunch of other ones. We could really do a whole episode specifically about dongo if we wanted. There's cha dongo, which is flavored with matcha. Cha. Tea, right? There's goma dango. Yeah, that's my uh you know I like these. Me too. So these are filled with sweet red bean paste or sometimes even sesame paste.

And they're covered in sesame seeds and deep fried. I feel like they could also be made with like ground sesame seeds. Like in the dough? Yeah. Okay. So they're just kind of like grey balls. Yeah, you get more of that sesame flavor. I feel like it's definitely chewy though. Like there's definitely some rice in there. It's not it's not all sesame. Yeah. Yeah. But I think I had that in uh in Hakune. Okay.

Yeah. I I've looked into these a bit'cause I like'em so much. I think they originated in China, eventually made their way to Japan. Uh another popular one that I like is kinako dango. Kinako is uh roasted soybean flour. Mm-hmm. That's good. Popular in desserts, that flour. Yeah, you kinda coat it with the roasted soybean flour. Yep. Let me look at my picks from last trip. I'm sure I have a picture of that Goma Dango in Hakune. One sec. Sure. I always grab it when I see it.

Yeah, here we go. I don't know exactly how they make it. I would guess it's just like I said, rice mixed with the uh ground up black sesame seeds, but uh here, Paul, take a look at this. Huh, wow. And they even have the different types, like they they have a mitarashi variety of that. So it's like the black sesame balls, but then they're coated in that sweet soy sauce glaze. Yeah.

Looks good. Yeah, it was good. I I had a different glaze though. I got the walnut sweet miso glaze on a black sesame dongo. That sounds so good. Yeah, it was real good. I gotta go to Hakoday. Although I see like black food from Hakoday and I'm like, Ash? Charcoal? Probably not on those though,'cause it's why black sesame. Yep. We also did a cooking with PB and J episode where we made Shirotama Dongo, you remember that? Yeah. Those ones weren't on skewers and they weren't perfectly round.

But uh they're pretty tasty, I thought. Yeah, definitely. Those are really easy to make. Um if you're interested and you haven't heard of the cooking with P B and J stuff, those are videos that are available on our Patreon. It was our little cooking series. We try out making little different Japanese foods at home. It's pretty fun. I'm excited to do a few more of those. Those are always fun. Yeah.'Cause we get to eat it after we're done. That's always fun.

Got any more dongle for us? Well, I was just gonna say like They're all over the place. You'll see them everywhere. So keep an eye out. Uh, if you're traveling around Japan and try as many as you can, I would recommend. You could also check convenience stores. I've definitely seen a lot of dongo in convenience stores, especially the Mitarashi dongo. If you're just curious what it's Like, but the best ones are gonna be from street food vendors, probably. Yeah. The fresh and hot. Yeah.

So crepes are very popular in Japan. You mean crepes? No, crepes. They're originally French, and in France there's an accent grave over the E, which means they're crap. 'Cause I have to be pedantic. Yeah, sure. I will never call them that ever. Unless maybe I go to France, then I'll try. They're not quite crepes in Japan either. They're not gonna call'em that. No, but like they're here and I call them crepes. Okay.

Wanna be an un uncultured American, I suppose. Every culture takes words and makes them their own. But we're not talking about American crepes. Okay, well what are well how is it pronounced in Japan? I don't know. I assume it's like Karepa or something. So anyways, what are we talking about here?

In case anyone doesn't know what a crepe is. Uh cr crepes, um because Japan is pretty into French cuisine and that's where it came from. You know, it's one of those another one of those things that they took and tweaked a little bit. So French crep

If I can start there. Sure, why not? French crepes they're basically like super thin pancakes, right? They can be filled with sweet or savory ingredients, usually served on a plate, and they're a r the relatively flat. The French version I'm talking, remember?

Like the crepe is kind of folded over the ingredients. That's the way I've seen them. I actually I've been to France, but I didn't eat a crepe there, I don't believe. But when I lived in Boston there was a great little French crepe shop in Cambridge. that uh mostly did savory crepes. They weren't like the sweet ones with all the fruit and whipped cream or whatever. It was like a lunch crep, like you'd get meat and cheese and stuff in there and they were really tasty.

But that's French creps. Japan tweaks things. Japanese crepes are mostly sweet. After hearing you say crep twenty times in a row, I regret letting you be the one to describe these. But go go on since you're already. I can pass it on to you now. You can finish it up here. Crapes. Yeah, with the crepe. I think the biggest difference in Japan is that they fold it over a bunch and kind of put it in a little piece of wax paper for you so you can hold it in your hand.

Well I was thinking the Japanese version is usually like more of a cone than like a flat triangle. Like they make it flat. Well they fold it over, but they like roll it up so it's like Yeah, stops in the middle. Yes. They're more three dimensional. Yeah. The stuffings are all kind of in there and they're it's like so full of stuff that they'll sometimes give you like a fork or a spoon so you can dig stuff out of there. Yeah.

And like anything, Japan goes wild with the flavors. You know, you get the strawberries and cream and the chocolate and all that nice stuff. But there's ham and cheese, tuna salad crepes. Thought that was a good one. I think the sweet ones are more popular. Most popular, yeah. And like ice cream you'd often find. Cheesecake. Sure. Sure. Yeah.

So I think they're still really popular in Harajuku. Yes. But I feel like when I was first getting into anime and manga, like crepes were like the go-to, like trendy high school kids. Are like stopping to get a crepe. Hm. I wonder if that's why there's so many of them in Hadoju,'cause that it's so connected with youth culture. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess it's still popular with the kids.

Sure. But they're sweet and delicious, so I get it. Yeah. Have you had one of these in Japan? Not that I recall. I don't think I have. But yeah, Takeshta Street and Harajuku, you're gonna find a bunch of famous Crep shops, or maybe there's one specific one that's more famous than the others. I don't know. But if you want a crep, you can definitely find them there. Or if you want a crepe, they're probably there too. There you go. I can't get over the crap thing.

I took French in school for a long time. I I can't I can't say crape. It feels wrong. My argument is just that every language takes over words. You know, like in Japan they take American words. So you're saying I sound like totally pretentious, like somebody that's like I forget how do you say computer in Japan? Koputo or a puzzle con Yeah you'd be the guy that was just like computer every time instead of saying it the Japanese way and it's like that's a real word in Japan now.

Yeah. Tay Ray B. Television. Yeah, Tay Ray B. If you were like television every single time. Yeah I don't know. Maybe I'm the one with the problem. I mean, I feel like this kind of thing comes up a lot in the podcast where it's like, well, this is a word in Japanese, but it's also a word in English. Do I say it the English way or do I say it the Japanese way and risk sounding pretentious and weird?

You know, for insisting Yeah, but you're saying it the French way. I know. In the context of this podcast, I feel like Japanese or English would be okay. And throughout the course of this conversation I've realized that that's a weird choice to go with the French pronunciation. I'm just defensive'cause I say a lot of words wrong and you correct me. I understand. I'm sorry, Paul, if I If you feel like I attack you for the words or pronunciation

That you use. No, it's my fault for being wrong. That's just my defense mechanism. I'm glad you agree. Cause you are wrong all the time. Your words, not mine. Anyways, anything else on Crepes? Nothing. I'm done. Let's let's move on.

To Choco Bananas. This one's pretty straightforward. Really popular festival food. You'll probably see this at like every festival. And they're absolutely delicious. Have you had a lot of these? Yeah. Yeah? I think we sell these at work. Vegan ones? Yeah, dark chocolate. Oh, cool. Yeah. Frozen banana dipped in melted chocolate. Put it on a stick.

But of course Japan, you know, they go all out. It's not just a frozen banana dipped in chocolate on a stick. They gotta cover it in sprinkles, nuts perhaps. I love the crushed nuts. I feel like they'll have all sorts of different colors too. White chocolate, pink chocolate. Yeah. All sorts of stuff.

Do you remember getting like the dipped soft serve cones when you were a kid? Yeah. And they'd like sprinkle nuts on those. What happened to those? Do you have to go to Dairy Queen to get that or something? Like I don't go to Dairy Queen. Maybe. They must still sell did you ever do that at home? Like they sell the the chocolate shell kind of thing.

No, never. And it's like hard? And you like put it on top? It hardens when it touches the ice cream. Oh. It's like the temperature of the ice cream hardens it. I've never seen that. It exists. And I don't know why I have this memory. Uh this must have happened uh when I was a little kid. I think I bought some of that thinking, Oh, I'll make like a chocolate shell on something that's not ice cream and that's how I learned, oh, it has to be really cold for it to harden. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just melted all over everything. Yeah. But yeah, Ye and I had one of these chocolate bananas in Kawagoe when we stumbled across a festival. It's kinda funny actually. Yi and I went in twenty fifteen and we stopped in Kawagoe and we got to this festival right as they were setting up.

And then Paul, you and I went the very next year in twenty sixteen, we went to Kawagoy, we stumbled across the exact same festival when they were setting up. And it was totally coincidental. Like we didn't plan out the time that we were going to this temple or anything. Yeah. Remember that? I do. Kawagoi's pretty cool, man. It is. That was good. It was a good time. All right, Paul, let's talk boba. More balls. Tapioca balls. Yeah.

In sweet tea, usually. Sweet milk tea. It's like tea and then sweetened with condensed milk. And uh and they got tapioca balls at the bottom and then you get this really thick straw so that you can suck up the tapioca balls so you got a nice little thing to chew on while you're enjoying your milk tea. You've probably seen it. It's popular all over the world now. Yeah. It's actually not it's not like originally from Japan. I think it originated in Taiwan. Somewhere Southeast Asia, I think.

But you get your Japanese flavors, you know, like matcha. It's gonna be pretty popular. Sure. They like melon flavored stuff in Japan. Yeah. So you might find that. Yeah. You don't have to go, you know Well I was gonna say you don't need to go to Asia, which is obvious'cause I already said that it's you know all over the world, but you don't even need to go to a boba shop, really. Yeah. You can order flavored powder. I did that, and it's awesome.

And you can, you know, save some money that way. And I got a or just reminded me the melon thing,'cause I got some melon flavored powder and it was pretty pretty good. Ah, nice. Nice. Anything else to say about Boba? That's all I got about Boba. I think people know Boba. Yeah, it's kind of

There's not a ton to say about it. I added one to the list here because I found this recently. Candied fruit. Oh. And I really enjoyed it. Okay. So it's basically like strawberries or grapes out of stick. And then you dip it in Syrup, sugar syrup and let it harden so you get a crunchy coat of syrup on top of your already sweet food. And for someone with a sweet tooth like me, the sweet unsweet with the crispy texture and then the juicy fruit underneath. Very good.

So this makes me think of when we were in Kobe and uh in Chinatown you had some candied cherries on a stick that was super good. Yeah. Did you look into these? I wasn't sure if it was like Chinatown thing is more of a Chinese street food or if it's common in other parts of Japan, do you know? I've seen a couple other places. I think I saw it in Iruyama on our on our last trip. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's tasty. Yep. But I think that's our last one. Which I think that was enough.

Probably even though there's way more options out there. We never said we would cover every single street food in the whole country. No, no. We didn't commit to that. We would never commit to that. We reserve the right to make a street food part two episode at some point. Exactly. We got one last topic to cover.

Where are the best places to find street food? Well, we already mentioned touristy streets in general. Yep. Takeshta street and Harjuku, if you're if you're in Tokyo, that's a good place to go. They're gonna have all sorts of street food. Uh in Osaka, Dotombori, tons of street food. Um like Okihabra, you could find some stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean really if you're going to a real busy touristy kind of street. There's probably gonna be some food that you can buy on that street. Mm-hmm.

We mentioned also streets leading up to castles or major temples or shrines. Yep. I g I mean they're kind of a subcategory of popular touristy streets, right? And we mentioned Matsuri. I kind of blew all this in the intro. My bad. That's all right. I was just gonna mention, just in case people are near these places and curious, uh the street up to Kiyomizu, Kiomizu Dera in Kyoto. We had a bunch of street food there. Uh Sensoj's Nakamise and Asakasa in Tokyo, tons and tons of street food.

And Oogie, remember Paul walking up to Beodoeen, if you like green tea, Oogie is known for making a whole lot of excellent green tea everything. On that street, yeah. Tons of street food that all is infused with green tea. It's great. Inuyama we mentioned. Takayama's old town area had a bunch of street food. Yep. Also major post towns on the Nakasendo we mentioned that too. Uh Narajuku or in Magume did they have street food? Makome's much smaller. I don't know if it's a little sleepier.

But yeah, festivals, Matsuri. I think I kinda said this in the intro too. That's like the most reliable place to find street food. That's ground zero for street food. And you could find some like pretty wild local specialties sometimes there that we maybe didn't cover in this episode. Sure. And that's also a great thing to seek out because they happen all over the place at all times of year.

Like no matter when you're going to Japan, if you Google around a little bit, you can probably find a Matsuri happening near where you're gonna be. Yeah. I've stumbled across Matsuri that I didn't even hear about. I just like started seeing food stands and it's like, oh I guess it looks like a monsterie to me. Yep.

Another good place to find street food is fish markets. Oh, yeah. Tsukiji in Tokyo used to be the biggest fish market in Japan. The inner market has since moved to Toyosu, just a little further along the bay, but Tsukiji still has the outer market, which is gonna have a lot of street food and restaurants. Uh Nishki Market in Kyoto will have street food. Kuromon market in Osaka will have street food.

Whatever city you're in, if it's a decent sized city and it has a place with market in the name, you'll probably find some street food there. Yes. And now let's talk about fukuoka because they have kind of a they're a little bit famous for a special type of street food they have there, right? Yeah. They're Yatai. Which I think you might have mentioned earlier. I did. With the uh Yaki Tori. Yeah. These are small mobile food carts, often made out of wood.

that they bring out onto the street and open up in the evening and then stay open very late. And they're really cool because it's like five or six seats with a little ledge and like an awning over you and that's it. And they just make it right there for you, give it to you. It's open late so it's Hit the bar, stop at the Otaya on the way home, get some greasy food. Oh man. I'm reminiscing now because

I had the greatest day in Fukuoka. I spent all day at the sumo tournament. Yeah. And I had like great food from the food trucks right outside the sumo tournament. And I got a bento at the sumo tournament and then after the sumo tournament I went to Nakasu and had some food at one of the Yatai and then I walked across the canal to get to Canal City. Ooh. And I hung out at this mall, like one of the most mind blowing malls I've ever been to.

This is a great day. Um so Nakasu is one of the places where these Yatai congregate in Fukuoka. It's a little island in the river. I might have just called it a canal. I think it's an actual river. But uh it's like a little island just covered in these little pop up bars. It's just a really cool atmosphere. You can look out at the water and stuff. Yeah, they serve alcohol. Yes, they do. They do, I can confirm that.

I kinda deep dove into you Thai. And I think I'll save a bit of it'cause I think we're due for a Fukuoka Fukuoka. I think we're due for a Fukuoka. Fukuoka episode at some point. He should, yes. Yeah. So that that'll be coming at some point. So I won't go too crazy, but I saw that they were much more popular in the Majera and in the early post World War Two era.

You know, after kind of the infrastructure got destroyed. But then regulations came in and kinda made it way harder for them to stay in business. They stopped giving out new licenses. But I thought it was really interesting that a lot of Japanese chain restaurants started as Yatai post World War Two and eventually moved into storefronts and grew from there. That is really interesting. Another interesting thing is there's some loose ties to Yakuza.

Because they operate so late, like into two to four AM range. And they're not run by the Yakusa, but I saw that they can be used kinda to try to advertise their sex workers. Huh. And find clientele at these places late at night'cause it's kind of where people are at night. Interesting. So you might if you go there late enough, you might see a yakuza hanging around somewhere. Had not heard that. Hm. Yeah. Okay. I'll save the rest for Fukuoka. Ha, I said it right. Well done.

It's been a long episode. Yeah. So I mentioned Nakasu, that little island. There are a couple other spots that are known for Yatai around the city, so Yep. You can Yeah, Fu Goku's pretty much the only place you can go to really find them these days. The only place that's well known for it at least. Yeah. And another thing The last place I have that I was gonna mention that you could find street food if you're interested.

You could seek out a street food tour. Those exist. Okay. They're businesses that'll bring around to areas to try a bunch of street food. That sounds kinda cool. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really know exactly what they're like. Like how much food can you really eat all all at once? How long is this tour? You know what I'm saying? I've never even done a bar crawl or anything. Or maybe you get a group together and then it's like, okay, here's a thing.

Everybody take like a little tiny bite of it and then we'll go move on and then you can try like a hundred things without getting full. Sure. Sure. I don't know. I'm just guessing. I don't do enough tours. I'm too into like planning everything myself and I want to control every minute of it, but

You know, the tours I've the few I've done have been great. Yeah, the Mau Fuji one and the ice caves was fantastic. Like Yeah. That was probably better than if we would have just went there on our own. Yeah. I've never had a bad experience with a tour. I don't know why we Haven't booked more of those. I mean

cheaper to book it's a yeah to do things yourself usually saves some money but you can definitely learn some interesting things that you wouldn't have otherwise if you take a tour. Maybe I need to change my mentality. You know, until a few years ago I was pretty broke most of the time. You know, and I was always trying to go in the cheap. Or maybe I'm just doing the math like, Well, if I spend less, I can go back to Japan sooner. Yeah, that works. A lot of considerations there. Yep.

Actually got one more thing before you go. I was trying to surprise you but it didn't really work'cause I need to borrow your freezer. But I figured after talking about all this food we'd be hungry. Sure. And I was like, what street food ish thing could I bring over? And none of the hot food really seemed to work, so I brought ice cream bars.

Nice. Because it has been super hot lately. It really has. So once we wrap this up, we can go upstairs and enjoy some uh salted cashew caramel chocolate dipped ice cream bars. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Paul. That was very thoughtful. I was gonna wrap this up by asking you what's your favorite street food that you've ever had? Uh just I just on the spot.

I mean Go back, look through the list. I know, I know. I've never I don't know if I've ever had gyoza as a street food. You know, I've had it in a lot of restaurants, but I do love gyoza. But I might go with the uh my new favorite Goma dongo. Oh. I really love those. The sesame fried dongo. Those are really good. They're really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? Oh, I knew you were gonna turn it back on me and now I'm looking at the list like, Oh wait, what is my answer?

Next year it'll be the uh quail egg octopus. Yeah, right. Oh man. I was just talking about quail eggs earlier today, actually, and how expensive those cans of quail eggs are. Ah, man. Um I mean honestly, I don't know, looking at the list, this feels like it shouldn't really be Like this feels like an easy way out or something, but I really love boba. You know? Boba's great. If you can get a good boba place. Okay. I actually went with your brother to a a new boba place recently that I was like

This ain't this ain't quite it. Uh oh. I feel like some places I've been to multiple places where it feels like they're skimping out. on the flavored powder because it's cheaper. They're just trying to save money, but it makes a worse product. Terrible. And that means I will never go back there, so they're really not making more money that way. How are they making money? They sell a glass of milk tea for like seven bucks.

I know. But if they scare away all their customers because they don't make a good product. You're not gonna last. Yep. But can I set Boba aside and'cause I just Yeah, that that is your surprise. How about some real food? Maybe it's just because boba is the one that I have the most often because it's available here. Sure. But if you were Japan, what would you go get in Japan? Japan. Oh man.

You know what I just thought of that we didn't even talk about in this episode? In Inuyama I had that fish oh yeah the grilled fish on a stick. The whole fish on a stick. That was amazing. I think I'm gonna say that was my best street food that I had. Okay. It was really, really good. Had an eyeballs and tail and all. They just take the whole fish and they kinda make it curve so it looks like it's swimming in the river as the point, and then they stick the skewer through it, sprinkle some like

Salt, but like the big big grain salt, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then they grill that over fire. Really amazing. If you if you see that stuff, give it a try. If you're not too freaked out by the idea of eating, you know, an entire fish. They're small enough fish that it's not like you're not crunching through big bones or anything. Okay. It's just super good. Take your word for it. Yeah.

Anyway, that's probably enough, huh? Yeah, I think that that's good. Good episode. All right. Me too. I had fun.

But before we go, we should thank our Shogun level patron. Kevin Harris, Michael Morris, Brady Kay, Jack Tory, Shiked Rosenthal, Pamela Arola, Kevin Phillips, Kelly Ardong, Dennis Pearson. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you. If you're interested in seeing a picture of that just incredibly adorable tanuki that Paul got for me.

Go check us out on Instagram. I just made a post about it. Did you see Paul? I did. People liked it. Yeah, it's an adorable. You made a good picture too. It's cute. Well I I had to get it from the angle where he looks like he's looking right into the camera, you know? Yeah. Um, but yeah, on Instagram we are at SJP Podcast, and uh there'll be more fun stuff there in the future. Or you can scroll back through the hundreds of posts that I've made already. Paul, what are we talking about next time?

Our next episode is going to be on Kinkokuji and Ginkakuji The Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion. Yep. Only one of which is actually covered in the metal in its name. Oh you spoiled everything. I didn't say which one. They'll be they'll be in suspense until next time, wondering is there a one covered in gold or one covered in silver?

Two of the most famous temples in Kyoto. Yes. And between the two of us, we've been to both of them. I've been to both. Yeah. I've only been to one. One of the very few things that I've been to that you happen. I'll get there eventually. I'm more interested now that I know because you know, people always told me that it was just the the pavilion that was interesting, but there's more interesting stuff. Yeah. We'll get into it. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening. See you next time.