"Betty Lee" > wrote in message
...
>
> I don't know about Thai, but I call apples from Japan "ringo" and mandarin
> oranges from Japan "mikan" because they're not quite like the apples
> (even the Fuji apples) or mandarin oranges here. (I got a whole tub of
> a dozen or so really beautiful and delicious mikan for only 250 yen.
> All the fruits they sold looked so picture perfect there. Even the
> fruits in the tiny shops on little, crooked, out-of-the-way streets made
> the stuff at large supermarkets here look frighteningly diseased.)
>

sigh! That's why I miss Japan sometimes. The food sold at supermarkets was
generally much better quality than what one can find in the average Canadian
or American supermarket. I attribute it to smaller yields and greater care.
That and the "fact" (in quotations because it's really just my opinion) that
Japanese people seem to expect better quality so they get it. My Japanese
friends who live in Canada now bemoan the lack of flavourful fresh
food--they say even the cabbages they buy are tougher and less sweet tasting
than what they are used to.

<snip>

>I was told that I should expect to pay
> insanely high prices for food there, but their idea of cheap fast food is
> so much better and more varied than our idea of sit-down restaurant food
> that I ended up spending only a small fraction on food that I expected
> to spend. Their portions also weren't as small as I was led to expect.
>

Except for at restaurants that served Japanese food (particularly kaiseki
restaurants), I found Japanese-sized portions to be just big as North
American portions. One of my favourite experiences in Japan was watching a
female friend chow down on a serving of noodles (sort of like Cantonese chow
mein but a bit different). It was an individual serving but was almost the
size of a shared-serving of Cantonese chow mein in Winnipeg (for 4 people,
depending on who's eating). My friend, who was about a child's size 10, ate
the whole thing all by herself.

To be fair, I had some lousy "ethnic" food in Japan, so the dumbing down or
adaptation of various ethnic foods is not unique to Canada or the US. Being
served samosas that had been frozen, defrosted in a microwave, then fried
and served with ketchup is one that stands out in my mind. Another one is
the "Chinese" food served in Kobe's Chinatown. It was as bad as food court
Chinese food found in malls all across Canada. I learned much later that
the best Chinese food in Japan is found far away from any of the Chinatowns
(this includes Nagasaki and Yokohama).

rona
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