Bento Boxes

This post is about more than bento boxes. Japanese lunch (and sometimes dinner) is a lot of different food on one plate or tray. In Nagoya, I enjoyed flat noodles (in bowl on lefthand side) and pork miso (red miso, very strong, typical Nagoya style).

 In Nagoya, I also enjoyed a buffet for dinner - from a local, organic farm.

 In Keio (outside of Tokyo), we enjoyed a salmon tray - notice the seaweed, rice, daikon and other radishes.

Bento box from Nagano lunch!

 Bento box from Tochigi lunch!

Bento box from Tochigi dinner!

 Bento box from Tokai!

I may buy a bento box lunchcarrier so I can organize my food like this all the time!

Sushi

What else is there to say - Japanese sushi is better than American sushi, although most of the fish is imported. Here is the sashimi plate from our first night's welcome party.

Here is a sushi rice bowl I had for lunch one day.

Here is toro sashimi --it was absolutely delicious.

 A sushi platter from a restaurant near our hotel. Notice the toro (upper left), the crab (lower right) and the special roe (between shrimp and crab). It was good - and would be even better if I could remember the name.

 Here we have takana- the nigiri that looks like uni in the center - it is cod roe--saltier than either tobiko (flying fish roe) or ikura (salmon roe).

Japanese Breakfast

In Japan! The official tour blog is: japandebate.tumblr.com.  There you can see our official visits to schools. Here, I'm not going to provide as much narrative--because I know what our thousands of readers really want - pictures of Japanese food! So, in the next week, I'll give you what you've been waiting for, as well as some photos of our tourist excursions on our free days. Our first meal - Japanese breakfast. We have egg, fish, seaweed, tofu and of course rice. Our hotel has a buffet with both American and Japanese food. I've tried nearly everything on the Japanese buffet. I will take more breakfast pictures next week so you see some variety. Stay tuned!