Japanese Munchies

Crab guts. My colleague was eating crab guts. And loving it.

After two years living in Japan, I’d come a long way in my appreciation for the local cuisine. But not that far.

“That’s disgusting,” I said to my Japanese friend and fellow teacher.

“It’s delicious,” he replied with a broad smile.

I was seated with my coworkers in a small sushi place off a narrow alley in Matsue, the capital of Shimane, a rural prefecture a mountain range away from the hustle and bustle of Hiroshima, Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto. My wife and I were nearing the end of a two-year stint teaching English in Japan.

I could go into all the blah-blah-blah about living in Japan being a fascinating experience, full of weird and wacky….well, you get the idea. But my purpose here is to discuss food. Specifically, the best Japanese foods for stoners.

J-food isn’t just raw fish and seaweed. It’s yakiniku (fatty, barbecued beef), Izumo soba (cold buckwheat noodles dipped in a soy-based sauce), tako-yaki (morsels of octopus tucked inside deep fried batter, served with mayo) and even Mos Burger (a Japanese twist on an American standard). From regional specialties (Hiroshima okonomiyaki) to national obsessions (ramen, ramen and more ramen), Japanese food is sometimes disgusting—see aforementioned crustacean innards—but more often damn tasty, if a bit unusual.

I didn’t want this to be just a list of my personal faves, though. HEADS is nothing if not scientific. So I got in touch with “Dave,” a person I met back when I lived in Japan. Dave is a bit shy about using his real name—doesn’t like Japanese jails, apparently—but he knows smoke. He’s an English teacher but also a DJ. I enlisted his help. Dave started asking around, quizzing his stoner friends about their favorite foods when high. The result is a mix of mundane North American standards and signature Japanese feasts.

Kitsune Udon

This was one of the first Japanese foods I came to love. It should be served hot enough to give your mouth third-degree burns. The noodles are thick, and they’re usually complimented with a piece of fried tofu or a battered king prawn. For garnish, they’ll float a thin slice of flying fish sausage in the bad boy (delicious!—tastes like that fake crab meat they put in seafood sandwiches at sub shops).

You eat all of Japan’s noodle soups the same way. Hold the bowl up to your mouth and use a set of chopsticks to plow the noodles down your gullet. Make obnoxiously loud slurping sounds—the slurping helps cool the noodles, and you can compete to see who’s the most gratuitously noisy.

Chocolate

This was a popular choice among those polled. Dave says, “Chocolates are a big deal…they do like chocolate a lot.”

A word of warning, though: Japanese chocolate sometimes sucks hard. The problem is that most Japanese people claim to dislike very sweet foods. One time I tried to introduce some of my students to a Canadian favorite: Peanut butter and honey sandwiches, chased down with chocolate milk. They all partook, but afterwards, some claimed that the combination was “too sweet.”

Too sweet? Shit. What the hell was it supposed to be?

This dislike of sweet foods has had a pernicious effect on chocolate in Japan. The imported stuff is good. But the domestic chocolate—particularly in baked goods, like donuts or cakes—is sometimes dull tasting, with none of that ZING you expect when you harf down six pounds of Hershey’s Kisses.

Ramen with Yakkimeshi

Ramen is a national obsession. I had one colleague who took a weekend trip down to Fukuoka—an all-day drive—just to eat at Fukuoka ramen shops. Noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Dave says that both of these foods, which are often sold together in a “set,” are originally Chinese. But they’ve been co-opted by Japan. “Ramen to Japan is like pizza to North America,” he says.

Ramen consists of thin, Chinese-style noodles, usually served in pork broth. Yakkimeshi is fried rice. One of Dave’s contacts, a shop owner named Yoshi, identified this set as his favorite.

“It’s very oily,” says Yoshi. “Oil food is bad for body, right! Bad food, bad oil, will be good taste.”

For those of you with vegetarian tastes, ramen is sometimes served in miso broth, instead of pork. The miso stock is often made with tuna flakes, but can also be prepared with seaweed instead. Either way, miso ramen is the good shit.

Chips

You may have heard of these. Usually made from potatoes?

Chips are big in Japan, too. But you’ll find the grocery stores stocking some rather unusual varieties. Wasabi chips, squid-flavored chips, tako-yaki chips, soy sauce chips. Until you learn how to read a bit of Japanese, grocery stores are a minefield. You think you’re buying BBQ flavor, but wind up with crab guts flavor instead. No, not really.

Actually, maybe…

Mos Burger

Japan’s fast food hamburger chain. If you need a taste of home, you can go to McDonald’s. It’s virtually indistinguishable from Mickey D’s in North America. But if you want a Japanese hamburger, you go to MB. Instead of Harold and Kumar taking a drive to White Castle, it’s Takeshi and Hiroe riding their Honda Cub scooters to Mos.

“Mos Burger is like the Taco Bell of Japan because it’s open until 2 a.m.,” says Dave.

The first thing that strikes you about MB is the size of the burgers. They’re little. And the beef doesn’t taste like it’s 100-percent cow. It’s more like a processed patty. Tasty, but a bit off-putting the first time. MB also has some strange menu items, For vegetarians, there’s the rice sandwich—a “bun” made of sticky rice, with just a mix of saucy burdock root for the center. Another, seasonal option, is the potato croquet sandwich. Yes, a potato burger.

Hey, don’t laugh—you can also buy noodle sandwiches at convenience stores. Starch anyone?

Agedashitofu

Okay, I’ve never actually eaten this. But this was a favorite of at least one of Dave’s sources. Dave says it’s tofu “that’s been lightly breaded and fried, and it’s in a soupy thing.”

You can just imagine the scenario…

“I’m so fucking baked. I need some food, man, badly. You know what I’m craving? Like, really, really craving? Tofu, dude. A big bowl of tofu.”

Yeah, hard to imagine. But then the Japanese are crazy for tofu. My wife was a vegetarian in Japan (we’re both vegetarian now). When we’d visit someone’s house for dinner, they’d often serve us a block of tofu, as in, “Here, have this half-pound square of bean curd.”

(Of course, there were also folks who, upon being told my wife was a vegetarian, would ask if she could eat tofu, like they had trouble distinguishing between animals and vegetables. And these people weren’t even high.)

Pretz, Topo, Fran and Pocky

These stick confections rock. I don’t remember when I discovered them, but it was pretty soon after I arrived in-country. There are numerous varieties, maybe dozens, and you can buy them at konbinis (corner stores) or suupaa (supermarkets). They come in single or two serving boxes, with each serving consisting of perhaps a dozen to 20 sticks. Some flavors and brands are more like crackers. Others are sweet. Regular Pocky (pronounced “pokey”) consists of cookie sticks—the cookie tastes like a bland, arrowroot—with the upper two-thirds dipped in milk chocolate. Men’s Pocky is the same, except that it’s dipped in dark chocolate, instead of milk chocolate, because, um, men apparently eat dark chocolate. Some snack sticks are dipped in yogurt, others are coated in coconut, and still others are hollow and filled with chocolate “mousse.” At least one variety of Pretz is made from sweet potato and then coated in a shell of hardened syrup

One warning: These sticks are more addictive than crystal meth. A Japanese person might be able to nibble them one stick at a time. But I bust out a whole pack and bite the heads of twenty of these bastards in a single chomp.

Okay, Dave and I have helped you get a handle on your post-pot-party munchie options. The real challenge, though, is finding these foods in your own community—especially when you’re stoned. In some cases, you might pull it off. Asian grocery stores occasionally stock Pocky or potato chips with strange flavors. Homemade miso ramen is possible, although, after a buzz-killing effort, it will still be a pale imitation of the stuff you can get in Japan.

No, let’s face it: If you’re serious about satisfying the munchies, Japanese-style, you’re gonna have to get your sorry hide across the Pacific. Tell them Dave sent you. They won’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but most Japanese are so polite, they’ll pretend to.