Bread in Japan? Guess I'll Have to Make It!

If you come from North America, Europe, Australia or many other countries that have bread as a staple food in their diet, you may be surprised when you arrive in Japan (or any other Asian country for that matter). Bread is something simple. Bread is something wonderful. Bread is something you may take for granted. If you ever plan to move to Asia, it will be something that you will eventually learn to appreciate in a new way!

Obviously, many, if not most Asian countries have rice as their staple food. For me, rice is good, but lacks in flavour. I feel this way, but my Japanese wife laughs and simply says that my palate isn't refined enough to know the difference between different types of rice (that is probably very true). This being a "rice culture" bread is something new. There isn't a long history of bread in this country. Even if it has been here for awhile, bread is consumed on a different way in Japan. Bread is by no means a staple food, it is a treat!

When you walk into a Japanese bakery, you will see many wonderful things. There are so many amazing paistries, cakes, muffins and very cool (if not downright weird) combinations of bread/food! Sausage and curry in a bun. Sweet potato and curry in a bun. Potato and mayonnaise in a bun. This of course goes on!

There are many wonderful types of baked product, but one thing you will soon realize, if you are a bread lover and long term resident of Japan, is that good loaves of bread are a rare thing. 95% of bread is white and lacking in taste (in my opinion). Rye bread, whole wheat bread, pumpernickle bread are almost impossible to find and if you do find them, will probably disappoint! The bread palate of Japanese people is very different than a Canadian such as myself! My wife always loves to say to me, "You come from a bread culture!" Maybe she is right!

If you plan to move to Japan and live here for more than a few years, there is a simple solution. Buy a bread maker, or "home bakery" as they are called in Japan.


We bought this bread maker last year at a major Wal-Mart-ish store called Izumiya. This machine cost about $150 and can make a loaf of bread in a few hours. It's a nifty contraption and we make bread five or six days a week! I realize that many people out there buy bread makers on a whim and use it a few times before it gets sent off to the "dust collecting" appliance corner of the room, but here in Japan, it is very necessary for me. I love bread and this is my means to an end!


It is pretty simple to use and only takes about five minutes to mix your bread ingredients together (flour, yeast, butter, salt and milk). One advantage to living in Kobe is that there are many "foreign food" stores here. While in Japanese supermarkets you can only buy processed and refined white flour, in the foreign food shops I can buy many more types. My wife and I tend to shop in a foreign food store in Sannomiya in the Santica shop area. There we can buy whole wheat, rye and graham flour. it is indeed more expensive than white flour, but for a Canuck like me, it's well worth it.

I still eat rice twice a day, but it is nice to have a piece of whole wheat toast for breakfast or some peanut butter on a peiece of graham and whole wheat toast for an evening snack!

Earlier in the week I made a video for You Tube about some of the "interesting" baked goods you can buy at a Japanese bakery. I featured a muffin that was made from two types of sweet potato. it was made from Murasaki Imo, a purple skinned sweet potato and a regular sweet potato.

This was a murasaki imo/satsuma imo (purple and regular sweet potato) muffin I bought at a bakery called Dans marche in Akashi Station in Akashi, Japan.

I also made a video about my PURPLE MUFFIN experience:



REMEMBER folks, you can follow my Twitter business here @jlandkev

Autumn Food in Japan

It's been difficult, but I have recently laced up my shoes and have begun running again. I was having a lot of motivation problems lately and just haven't felt the ambition to get out there. In August I applied for a spot in the 2010 Tokyo Marathon. I wasn't holding my breathe since I had about a one i six shot of getting in since there was a lottery. Much to my surprise though, last week I received an email saying I had a spot.It is on February 28, 2010. That's a Saturday. This will be my second full marathon and my first major one. I have a little more than four months to train and this time around I hope to take the training a little more serious than for my last marathon. I completed the last one without any problems, but I know I can push myself to do better this time around.

Long story short, I've been out on the road several times this week. Twice, running home after my Japanese class. It is about a 5 km run back home, but i have to do it with a fairly heavy pack on my back. Hopefully the training will continue and I will find my legs again.



Last weekend, I went to Osaka-fu with my wife. We were staying with some of her family for the weekend. it was a great rural experience. they live in a very small farming village called Nakamura. It just happened that on that weekend there was a large matsuri or festival. This village as well as more than a dozen surrounding villages were having a harvest festival. Groups of men from every village would push a danjiri, or portable shrine, throughout the streets of the village, singing, dancing and praying. They would begin around 6 am and continue into the night. The Nakamura danjiri stopped at the house next to where I was staying for a break. The men pushing it were refueling with tea, snacks and morning beers!



While in the country last weekend, we picked some sweet potatoes and soy beans to take home. It is Fall in Japan and sweet potatoes are a big deal here. Most bakeries carry seasonal treats baked using sweet potato. A few nights ago, Mai made sweet potato muffins at home. they were awesome. A great breakfast treat.



You can see what they looked like when they were fresh out of the oven. Many people also collect chestnuts and make seasonal baked goods with those as well. Yu can find both sweet potato and chestnut breads, cakes, muffins, etc., throughout the area.


Two Fridays ago, after work, I stopped in Sannomiya. Sannomiya is the main downtown area of Kobe. I was there to pick up a new camera. I purchased a Sanyo Xacti HD which will make my You Tube video making better. Mai and I needed a bite to eat so we wandered through the crowded back streets of Sannomiya looking for a restaurant. We stumbled across a Korean style bbq restaurant and decided to give it a try.


Korean food is really quite expensive when you are outside of Korea, but this place was reasonable. The meat was delicious, but the servings a little small. Grilled beef and a beer is a great way to finish up the week.


Great looking food grilled on hot coals. Although, I don't normally miss Korea very much, I do miss the food. Korean food is great and it was always so affordable to eat out at restaurant. It is no surprise that many foreigners who move to South Korea to teach and work, normally never cook at home. They don't have to because Korea has such an amazing restaurant culture. The food is cheap and good.