Prepared Foods at Supermarket

This was an unusually gorgeous display of prepared foods at a supermarket in Japan. Yakitori, tempura, and croquettes. The attention to detail and presentation is very important in retail sales for the Japanese.

Seafood at the Supermarket

This is just a tiny part of the large selection of seafood at a large supermarket in Japan. Here you see chirimen and shirasu, the small anchovies that are good topped over a bowl of rice. The other photos are all of tuna, everything from the collar bones (great salted and grilled with an ice cold beer), grilled heads, saku cuts for making sashimi at home, as well as a promotion for southern bluefin tuna from Australia. The seafood section is always larger than the meat section.

Fish Eggs in the Supermarket

Fish eggs are an essential part of the seafood culture in Japan. Popular types include salmon roe (ikura and sujiko), mentaiko (spicy cod or pollack roe), tarako (salted cod or pollack roe), and tobiuo (fish eggs from flying fish). Fish eggs in general are called gyoran. My favorite is mentaiko that you can schmear into bread or with pasta. It can also be grilled and had with sake. We have tried some fish eggs like from maguro or fugu, but those are not as popular and rarely in the market. Karasumi is similar to bottarga and is great with a dry sake.

Here is what the gyoran selection looks like at a large supermarket.

Tofu in the Supermarket

Back home in Minnesota, my tofu options are slim pickings. Soft or Firm. That is about it. Imagine then coming to a Japanese supermarket and having all of these options at the supermarket in the tofu section. Fresh tofu, deep-fried tofu (thick and thin), tofu mixed with vegetables and deep-fried (ganmodoki), soy milk, and okara (the lees).

No wonder we eat so much tofu. In the hot summertime we have it as hiyayakko, chilled topped with nothing more than grated ginger and soy sauce, or with some katsuobushi. We love it in soups, miso soup, or in a creamy corn chowder, or in egg drop soup with some vinegar and rayu chili oil for a sweet and sour twist. Tofu is easily put into stir-fries or with ground beef for a mabo dofu. And, the abura-age (thin, deep-fried tofu pockets) can be stuffed with cheese and grilled for a low carb grilled cheese.

Japanese Supermarket - Corn

Although I was born in Tokyo, I was raised on the shores of Lake Wobegon in Minnesota. Summer meals were filled with corn growing up. Roadside farmer's markets sold freshly picked corn on the cob, a large paper sack for $1 for about a dozen. I even spent a summer detassling corn. Walking down long lanes of corn, pulling out the tassles on the top of the cornstalk.

Imagine then, my jaw dropping when I came into this Japanese supermarket and saw the corn laid out so carefully and artistically. The attention to detail and how produce is cared for is impressive here in Japan.

Yesterday at lunch with a friend at a kappo restaurant, the chef grilled fresh corn. He said that, like melons, all of the corn on a stalk were sacrificed except for one. The one corn then gets all of the nutrition and energy from the plant creating a very expensive corn.