The Bakery
I saw a red overhang with white bock letters reading, “Little Mermaid.” I found that perplexingly interesting enough to draw me nearer. By the time I realized that inside the glass windows were four or five white cloaked Japanese wearing tall French chef hats shelving the golden brown goods and sugary treats that define the Western bread culture, I was inside salivating. Immediately I began to imagine how expensive these simple Japanese versions of carbohydrate staples would be. Then, through the blurred vision of a dreamlike trance, I managed to see the prices were reasonable enough, in my Tokyo-adjusted sense of costs to be sure, but reasonable still.
After grabbing a small tray and a pair of metal tongs, I circled the 180-square foot, wood-floored showroom, teasing my tastes with long, gulping stares of piled baked goods and doughy breads. For less than 700 yen ($6 USD), I walked outside into a brightly-lit, windy afternoon with an oversized pig-in-a-blanket, a fried chicken drumstick, a narrow six-inch roll filled with potatoes and bacon, a doughy quiche with pizza-like toppings, and a long braided sugary donut. Well, I can’t begin to decide if this lunch was as good as I thought it was or simply as close to American food as I have come in four months. It doesn’t much matter, I voraciously devoured it all.
Now, I think this may have broken my pledge of avoiding anything similar to the diet I frequent at home, but it didn’t seem terribly wrong. It was a small, on-site bakery, which I could see from peering through a partly closed door, watching a handful of other such-dressed cooks rushing around a tiny room of commercial ovens, stacking trays of the warm and gooey. A great deal of Western-style foods have integrated into Japanese culture, particularly among the wealthier, more worldly citizens of Tokyo, so, really, my diet these few months have been more along the lines of a nearly poverty-stricken, rice-consuming fool.
I have managed to justify my drinking fruit juice, as I say it is for health. But, really, it shouldn’t need justification as the diets of Japan, an island nation that has been import-hungry since the late nineteenth, have long included foods that aren’t readily considered traditional Japanese fare. So, too, with the cozy, bakery with the French chef hat wearing cooks and their delicious treats.
The time is nearer and nearer still when I will go home and have American pizza and french fries from my favorite pizza place. My mother will make me Italian food and bake holiday cookies. I will grill a hot dog and finally have cheese again! I will rediscover creamy yogurt with granola I can recognize and will be able to afford apples again. Yes, American food awaits me.
My stop in the Little Mermaid bakery was a great break from the heaps of rice and sprinkled soy sauce that I have lived on for months, but, with so little time left, I do think I will stick to my somewhat arbitrary decision to eat only “Japanese” food, as a lifetime of U.S. delicious-ness is awaiting me.
Jaa mata,
Christopher
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