An Ode To Japan’s Junk Food, From Pocky To Sweet Potato Soft Serve
I’m sitting at a traditional Kaiseki dinner in one of Japan’s fabled ryokan inns. In front of me, a spread of 10 different, painstakingly-prepared dishes are laid out: a delicate, single shrimp, slices of salmon sashimi, and thin strips of wagyu beef among them. It’s all very artful and I’m sure it will be delicious, but my mind keeps drifting to the two boxes of Pocky in my room upstairs.
Japan, anyone will tell you, is one of the global leaders in fine dining. Tokyo alone has the highest number of Michelin-starred restaurants of any city in the world – 230 of them, to be precise – some of which seat only a few guests per night and charge through the roof for the honour.
But when I went there, all I cared about was the junk food.
Every day I was in Japan, whether it was hiking in remote national parks or shopping in Shinjuku, I was on a one-woman mission to eat the country clean. I started my day with toasted sandwiches that oozed multiple types of cheese (lactose intolerance be damned) from a coffee chain called Doutor, then followed that up with a hash brown from 7-Eleven. I ate five meals where there should have been three, I snacked on skewers of saucy chicken skin, I devoured Nutella-filled crepes from Harajuku holes in the wall.
Then, every night, I came back to my hotel and ate two boxes of Pocky, thin biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate with a reputation for being Japan’s favourite sweet treat. I really, really love Pocky.
I started my junk food degustation before I even touched down in the country. Flying business class with ANA (part of their schedule of flights to Australia that will soon include a direct service between Perth and Tokyo), I ordered complimentary instant ramen and chocolates after my three-course dinner, then surrendered to a mid-air food coma.
I quickly realised that if Japan is good at haute cuisine, it’s even better at the cheap stuff.
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In Tokyo, I marvelled at the collection of fast food chains imported from the USA; evidence of the country’s embrace of all things Americana. As well as the McDonalds outlets selling teriyaki burgers alongside Big Macs, there’s Shakey’s Pizza, Denny’s, and Wendy’s (the burger chain, not the ice cream franchises found in the malls of Australia’s outer suburbs). There’s even a lone Taco Bell nestled incongruously in an alleyway in Shibuya.
But nowhere is Japan’s unique take on American takeaway more endearing than in Nikko, a sleepy, small town famous for proliferating the east-meets-west fusion cuisine called Yoshoku. The most famous Yoshoku dish is the “hamburg”: literally a burger patty topped with a cube of butter or sauce, served just like a steak. Late one night, after a bowl of ramen (like I said, five meals per day), I sought one out at a cheap diner chain. If any of my meals in Japan were going to be a fizzer, this was it. I broke the $10.50 (¥799) patty up with chopsticks and stuffed it down, surprised and amused by how enjoyable it was. The hamburg is conclusive evidence that, in Japan, even the cheapest, most surprising food is delicious.
That’s not to say the country doesn’t have plenty of homegrown creations, too. In Nikko’s small town square, I burnt the roof of my mouth hastily eating a patty of red bean paste that was deep fried in tempura batter and sprinkled liberally with sea salt flakes. In Tokyo, I fuelled up on a beef and rice bowl that cost all of $4 (¥295) at chain joint Yoshinoya. In the city of Kawagoe, I licked at a cone of sweet potato-flavoured soft serve. At the Nakaminato fish market on Ibaraki’s east coast, I chased my lunch with half a dozen gooey takoyaki balls exploding with diced octopus.
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But, of course, ground zero for junk food in Japan is the convenience store. When Nikko went to sleep at night, only the Family Mart remained open, its bright white glow luring me like a moth to the flame.
This is where I procured my daily Pocky supply as well as boxes of savoury Pretz, thin biscuit sticks artificially flavoured with soy sauce and butter. It’s also home to a dizzying array of other treats: buns stuffed with mango cream, cheesy croquettes, handbag-sized bottles of Kewpie Mayo, sour dark chocolate balls, ready-to-heat cheeseburgers sealed in plastic bags and, at the 7-Eleven, a frothy, Suntory-branded red wine that was sold by the glass and far tastier than its $2 (¥150) price tag gave it any right to be.
Of all Japan’s junk food sources, I was most powerless to resist the convenience store. One night in Kawagoe, I loitered outside restaurants buzzing with the after-work crowd, trying to settle on one to eat at. In the end, I skipped them all and went to the 7-Eleven, where I bought a ready-made dinner of pork katsu with egg rice. And, of course, some Pocky.
Katie Cunningham was a guest of Japan National Tourism Organization and All Nippon Airways.
(Lead image: Fabrizio Chiagano / Unsplash)
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ANA flies direct from Perth to Tokyo from September 1.