It's the little things...

Can you find the treasure?

Living here in Japan you learn to make do without a lot of foods you took for granted back home; hamburgers, Mexican food, pizza that doesn’t have corn on it…being a hardy ex-pat you learn to replace them with more available alternatives.  However, every once in a while you stumble upon a gem.  It becomes the high point of your day and you tell all your friends about it in a childish excited voice reminiscent of a kid talking to their parents about Christmas and Santa (pre-internet days).

‘Hey Joe, I found a vending machine that sells Mountain Dew on Kawaramachi Street!’ I announced cheerfully one day while walking down the street.  ‘Really?  I know one too.’  I looked at him a bit incredulously, ‘What, and you didn’t tell me about it!?

Little bits of information like that are nuggets of gold in a field of stones.  Small items like soda and chips tend to migrate around the city from vending machine to vending machine and store to store in some strange pattern making it difficult to obtain them on any sort of regular basis.  Import food stores are pretty good but as for a complete selection it leaves much to be desired and it’s these moving ‘sources’ that fill in the gaps.

Joe shrugged, ‘It’s over in Sagano near my school.  Didn’t think it was relevant (Sagano is about 35  – 40 minutes from my house in south Kyoto).’  ‘Hmm, you’re probably right…but it’s still nice to know’ I retorted.

The same goes for restaurants claiming to have Mexican, Italian, Indian, you name it, anything besides Japanese food.  Heading in to one of them is like playing the lottery.  You can go through a dozen places in utter disappointment (you call that a quesadilla/hamburger/spaghetti!?), then suddenly stop in one by chance and be totally surprised.

When the surprise happens it’s a good thing for the business and for the ex-pat community at large as the word spreads.  Lot’s of places don’t realize how much of a loyal following they can get (one that is willing to spend a decent chunk of money) by providing a little piece of ‘home away from home’ for us (and not that fake stuff they can so easily peddle to the Japanese crowd).

All in all it’s pretty funny when you think about it.  How your day can be turned around by running across a vending machine selling giant sized cans of traditional Mountain Dew (120yen!) or by taking a bite from a stale corn chip covered in what you thought was salsa (but was actually spaghetti sauce – thanks for the warning Joe).

I guess it’s one of those things you get used to living in a foreign country.

Only in Japan.