There’s a moment in Stephen King’s Dark Tower where Roland, a gunslinger from a mythic land, finds himself in a modern-day New York City and tries a Coca Cola. He’s so amazed at how sweet it is, so floored at how brilliant the Coke tastes, that he wonders why and how anyone could ever get addicted to drugs.
How could anyone become a heroin addict, when there is something as great as Coca Cola?
I though of Roland as I roamed Tokyo and tried tastier and tastier food. Peach Coca Cola while jetlagged is like getting a bucket of champagne dumped on your head after hiking through the desert.
The pursuit of money, power, sex, drugs, rock and roll - all of these pursuits seem like a moot quest when you can buy happiness in the form of 80 yen candies. Seriously the discount candies at a 7-11 in Shin-Koenji were the tastiest candies I’ve experienced all year. Maybe ever. This peach treat from the Dragon Quest Lawson at Akihabara was pretty good:
I have no idea what this is
IRL I’m a pretty tall person and I spend a ton of energy on making art, walking around, and throwing my brain at nigh-incomprehensible problems. I tend to graze, or, lost in thought, I forget to eat for the entire day and eat a giant dinner. I’m no coward when it comes to wolfing down an entire veggie burger and fries. My pattern of forgetting and wolfing is easy - too easy - to do in the States, where it’s so easy to lose yourself in ideas and social events, and monster truck rallies. Andy Warhol was so popular, he ate three dinners each night to get all of his friend groups and social events covered.
In Tokyo, everything is tasty, but usually tiny. I found myself making double orders of everything. There were several points during my trip where I worried if I was getting enough calories. I hadn’t worried about the too-few-calories problem since being an iron-deficient distance runner in high school.
Like this sandwich - looks pretty normal at first, but it’s about the size of a Starbucks biscotti:
To get enough food, I found myself drawn towards melon buns, which seemed like the biggest and cheapest pile of carbohydrates that I could get for myself without straight-up purchasing a birthday cake.
During the day I mostly ate at 7-11 so that I could splurge at Ramen places at night, which worked pretty well!
Since I was jetlagged and fatigued for a few days, I also found it hard to know if I was getting the right vitamins while abroad. I don’t take supplements and do my best to get all vitamins directly from food. To achieve this, I usually pump up on juice that contains vitamin A, B, C, and if I can, D and Calcium.
I couldn’t even understand Japanese nutrition labels enough to know how much protein was in anything. Japan does not seem to have the “Percent Daily Value” scale that America has, which is probably because they are way ahead of us. There is no completionist status bar on food in Japan, no “20% of your daily sodium” or “50% of your daily fat” - all of which barely work for anyone, except maybe some guy who lives in Michigan named Ted.
So, when I saw an ad on the subway for energy gels, with the vitamins clearly listed out, I figured I should try a couple and found the energy gels at a 7/11:
I knew I was already dehydrated after flight and Tokyo ended up being a bit more dry than I thought, with dust wheeling around Shinjuku Park and UV rays pummeling my skin. Vitamins would make me feel better on some level, at least.
At breakfast spots, I often ordered two pastries instead of just one.
I also ended up trying a couple beers and alcoholic drinks too! With the above, I figured anything with a cat on it was probably good.
With the Kirin beer below, I was so infatuated with the pink can and the racing white dragon that I totally did not see the 9% alcohol clearly on the label. Oops.
It ended up making me extremely weepy, and if anyone had been there, I surely would have been hugging everyone and being extremely confessional and probably would have made everyone look at photos of my dog. Kirin the Strong is like a Mike’s Hard Lemonade but not as tart, also it didn’t feel like it was searing through my body straight into my bloodstream. It was a gentle 9%.
The White Dragon on this peach-flavored Kirin drink started to remind me of my poodle back at home, Geddy.
Crepes in Harajuku were good and the intimidatingly long lines die down after 6 pm where the younger crowd seems to disappear and go home (Where do they go? Home to work on homework? The club?). Either way, in the evening hours in Harajuku it’s a good time to grab a crepe or a giant hammer of cotton candy. There is even a small outdoor cafe where you can grab a beer near Laforet mall.
So what is the point of eating all of this cheapo gas station food? It was to have enough energy to walk through two art museums a day and also have enough yen for dinner, which was well worth it.
That’s the cheap food I ate in Tokyo! Surely it is nothing special to Tokyo residents, to me it was out of this world.
Catch you next time!
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