I've been meaning to do a food entry for some time, mostly on all the delicious food I've had here in Tokyo so far, so since no one has yet assigned me anything else to do right now...

1. Was the delicious Katsu-Don I had at one of those ticket places which seem to serve mostly salarymen. At these places, you buy a meal ticket at the entrance and give it to the cook who usually serves your meal at a round bar counter so you can see it being prepared. For those who don't know what a Katsu-Don is.. it's a breaded piece of pork cutlet fried so that it's crispy and subsequentlyl served with an egg, vegetable and soysauce mixture on top of a bed of rice. Anyone who says that Japanese food only consists of sushi hasn't really lived in Japan that long. In fact, most of the diet of everyday life isn't raw at all.

2. Going on in the same vein about Katsu-Don's, I also had a pretty unique version of this dish at a different restaurant. This place was quiet and done up in dark rosewood colours. Even though it's located at one of the busiest crossings in Japan, if you come alone, you can sit at the counter overlooking the glass windows and watch the world go by below as you eat your meal. Anyway, the katsu at this place was served on a plate with steamed cabbage. Accompanying this dish was the standard dishes of pickled vegetables and a black clay pot filled with dashi, which is a soup made of stock. The way this particular dish was to be eaten was to pour this dashi onto a chopstick's grip full of rice and Katsu mixed with a little paste that tasted of green tea. Definitely something different.

3. At the same restaurant, on a different ocassion, I also had the pleasure of enjoying little beef and onion patties, which came with a small dish with a round egg yolk in which you dipped the patties in before eating with rice. The slightly sweet glaze of the patties blended with the egg yolk to create a rich taste that contrasted nicely against the rice.

4. of course being in Japan, I have to mention raw fish sometime, so here's what I had this saturday. At one of the sushi bars near my apartment, I ordered a Kani-ikura don. Steamed cold shredded crabmeat was served with raw salmon eggs. Japanese crab meat is sweet and good ikura has a taste that is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't had it before. To give you an idea, to me when I first tasted ikura I thought it had been marinated in alcohol when of course that sensation was simply it's natrual taste. This combination of crabmeat and ikura was served on a cold bed of sweet sushi rice, perfect for a hot summer's day.

yep. That's it for my food entry. BTW, as I'm here on a budget, the even more amazing thing is that all of this stuff costs between 6 to 10 dollars, which for Japan or even the United States is rather good, especially considering that no matter where you eat, your meal always comes with a steaming mug of tea. Even though I've been here a while, i only get to go out for food on weekends so that's all the good stuff I've had so far but I suspect I'll be really sad when I have to leave tokyo to go back to providence where the food is definitely nowhere near as good.