Cooking in the dorms was definitely a fun and worthwhile experience for me. Since our dorm rooms had a small kitchen area but no means of cooking, one of the first appliances I bought was an induction heater. Although the kitchen work space was very limited, I adapted to be able to work comfortably within it and eventually became used to the layout of the kitchen. It was fun cooking in Japan because I would start to learn which shops to go to, how to look for deals, and expand my options by learning to cook new things. Most grocery stores in Japan had a wide variety of cuts of meat that I slowly worked my way through during my year abroad, including a large selection of thinly sliced cuts which have been hard to find in the U.S. This was complemented by the equally large selection of different marinades to cook the meat with. I didn’t really eat all that much seafood in Japan, which still shocks a lot of people I tell this to, and so I never really felt the need to learn how to cook it, despite having a large selection of seafood available to me. I remember hearing about the high cost of fruits and some vegetables in Japan during my time abroad and seeing first hand that a small watermelon would cost around $10. I never really felt the need to splurge on these expensive items and mainly stuck toward cheap vegetables and frozen vegetables. Another mainstay of my cooking in Japan would be rice which was served with almost every meal because it was fairly priced and could last a long while. The only downside to buying bags of rice would be carrying it back home, as I didn’t have any method of going shopping other than by foot.
One of the main downsides of cooking in the dorms for me was that I did not own a microwave, so storing any leftovers was kind of complicated and not that feasible. It took awhile to get used to cooking the proper portion size that would leave me both satisfied and without any leftovers, but I eventually got there. Life would have definitely been easier if I had invested in a microwave earlier on in my trip, but by the time I had this realization, I did not feel like buying one for the remainder of my stay abroad. Aside from the rice and meat dishes referenced earlier in this post, here are most of the food options that I would cook for dinner throughout the year: pasta dishes, hamburg steak with mashed potatoes and veggies, dumplings and gyoza, egg dishes, ramen, giniling na baka (a filipino poor man's dish), different kinds of stew/soups, and curry. All in all I thought it was worthwhile experience to get myself used to cooking away from home and to learn to explore more cooking options available to me in Japan. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI am Kyle Sablan and I studied abroad at Yokohama National University (YNU) during the 2016-2017 academic year. This blog was created as one of the requirements for receiving the Gilman Scholarship. The purpose of this blog is to share my personal experience with everybody and encourage interest in studying abroad. Archives
April 2018
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