Baud Attitude

OK, OK, photos of weird Japanese fast food aren’t that exciting.  I’ll try not to do this too often.

But it snowed yesterday.  It’s bloody cold.  I cannot be faulted for looking through vacation photos from August in an effort to remember what summer feels like.

On this particular day, I was at the Decks shopping mall on Odaiba, looking for souvenirs for the folks back home.  I’d just survived the third day of Comiket,  I’d been walking a lot, and I was kind of worn down – if I was going to get any souvenir shopping accomplished, I needed food.

I saw this sign:

It says “Go to Monster Burger!”, by the way.

I looked at the sign.  I said, unto myself, “Yes!  I will go to Monster Burger!”

This was actually a pain in the arse to find.  It turns out that they’ve turned one floor of Decks into… into… well, kind of a “fitness themed” amusement center called Muscle Park, with all kinds of activities that try to be healthy and good for you…And then they stick a massively unhealthy fast food place into the middle of it.

After you’ve enjoyed the exercise-themed fun of Muscle Park, why not relax with a Monster Burger?  And maybe some soft serve ice cream?  And cake?

I ordered myself a Monster Burger “Set” meal, with “Potato” and “Calpis Soda”, and took a window seat.  A few minutes later, a happy Japanese fast-food employee came up to me and deposited this in front of me.

Now, Y1630 is about 15 bucks.  That’s pretty expensive for fast food, and actually more expensive than some family dining places.  But at a family diner, you don’t get your food in a MONSTER BOX, now do you?

As an aside, the Monster Box – and the cakes they sell – are shaped like a piece of Japanese gym equipment.  Just to keep the fitness theme going, see?

All pretext of fitness goes away when you open your Monster Box:

I actually had a couple of doubts about this at this point.  The thing was far too tall to pick up and eat… and for some reason it had powdered sugar on top.

It took me a minute to realize that you could take the wooden skewer out, and when you did so, it separated into:

1) Dessert.  That being the bit with powdered sugar on it.

2) A chicken sandwich.  That being the next layer down.

3) A salad sandwich.  Yes, lettuce and so on in a hamburger bun.

4) A hamburger.

5) Another layer which was just another bottom hamburger bun.

The whole thing was actually kind of nasty to eat.  I managed to finish off the three “food” burgers, but the dessert – and the inexplicable extra bun – were just beyond me.

Still, what’s a guy supposed to do when he’s faced with something called a Monster Burger?  You can’t walk away.  You can’t say, “No, Monster Burger!  I’m afraid of you!”

You’ve got to eat that damn burger and pretend to smile.

Because that’s what a guy’s got to do.

Update (12/08/2008)

This one post gets as much traffic as the rest of the blog put together, and I can tell by the site numbers that someone out there linked to it again.

Here are some other posts about Japanese fast food, if this one didn’t make you queasy enough. 🙂

Teriyaki McBurger, Ebi Filet-O

Wendy’s Double Cheese Curry Burger

Mega Tamago

McPork

If you’re at all wondering what it tasted like, just imagine a sausage patty with a bit of lettuce and teriyaki sauce on a McDonald’s hamburger bun.

The double cheeseburger was, well, pretty much like any McDonald’s double cheeseburger at any American McDonalds’s.

And, yeah, fries and drinks are smaller in Japan than in the US.  Coincidentally, people in Japan are smaller than in the US.  This is where statistics geeks say “Correlation does not imply causation!” with the kind of smug look on their faces that makes you want to smack them.

OK, I know that line is taken pretty much straight from a Penny Arcade strip, but I think it’s good words to live by.

Today I would like to tell you about things that are filled with custard.

But, first, some expository buildup.

My first trip to Japan was at the end of 2005, and back then I wasn’t really prepared for it. See, I’ve never been one of those fanboys that tries to do the whole “lifestyler” thing – so I don’t have, for instance, tatami on the floor or futons in a closet.

We do have a rice cooker, but my wife had it when I married her so I take no responsibility.

Point is, I never really turned being fanboyish about anime, games, manga, etc into being fanboyish about other things Japanese, and that included food.

Sure, I’d gone out for Japanese food a few times, but I didn’t really know anything beyond tempura and tonkatsu. People would say things like “Oh, you like Japanese stuff? You must love sushi!” and I’d have to admit that I’d never tried it.

This had embarrassing consequences when we went there.  I really didn’t know what to eat, and so I spend most of our vacation steering us into such fine restaurants as, oh, McDonald’s, and TGIFridays, and Shakey’s Pizza Buffet… It was pretty shameful. I will admit this.

Anyway. I was a food wimp.  Let’s move on.

We were there over the New Year, and on January 1st we decided to go and see Shinjuku because we hadn’t been there yet.

We didn’t know that, as far as shops and restaurants and so on go, January 1 is pretty much a national day off. Not much is open, so our recreational activities were limited to wandering around looking at closed shops with posters for the January 2nd sales and wandering around looking at shrines.

It was freaking cold, too, shall I mention that? It might have been below freezing, but I’m not going to swear to that.

Anyway, being New Year’s day, there are a lot of Japanese going to shrines, and so there are little carts selling food at the pedestrians.

My wife, who is much braver than I am, and who was a little annoyed throughout the entire trip by my constantly steering us into American restaurants, stops at one of these carts and buys something that looks a bit like a hockey puck. Neither of us knew what it was, but it smelled good and it was hot, which was important because we were both, as mentioned, really really cold.

She gets me one, too, and biting into it was like finding religion. It was, basically, a little pancake full of hot custard, and it was glorious.

We each had, oh, three or four before it started feeling embarrassing going back to this little cart and asking for more.

When we got back to the states, I started trying to figure out what it was we’d eaten. It wasn’t easy to find search terms without knowing what the name of I’d eaten, but eventually something like “shinjuku custard” worked to lead me to a blog talking about some guy’s favorite “Imagawayaki” stand in Shinjuku… possibly the very same stand.

I like to think so, anyway.

Furthermore, googling “Imagawayaki” lead me to images that confirmed that they were what I was looking for.

Then I found out that the local Japanese market sold frozen microwavable Imagawayaki, and now they are a winter tradition.

They are outrageously priced (a package of five is a little over seven bucks), but they are so very worth it.

I have included a picture for your benefit, and because it gave me an excuse to make two and eat them.

…they come in “red bean” flavor, too, but I’m not as much of a fan of red bean. I do like me the occasional taiyaki, but that’s about it.

Oh, and, yes, in the last two years I’ve managed to become a LITTLE more brave about Japanese food. My last trip there, I ate at McDonald’s exactly once, and then only because I really wanted to see what a “McPork” was like. 🙂