お酒

Sake is awesome. Often referred to as Japanese 'wine', If you don’t know too much about sake, this article will change what little you know about drinking and cooking with Sake. I found everything about this article to be good news.  For example:

Cheaper sake is better for cooking – great.
Sake doesn’t age well, so get it fresh and drink it quickly – done.
Sake is more like beer than wine, so I guess that means it’s cool to just drink it from the bottle?
Sake and mirin are also good ways of adding the mysterious umami taste to your food – awesome

 My latest sake du jour

Many people point to umami as the reason Japanese food is so filling and delicious. And interestingly, combining salty/sweet/sour with umami creates a tasty sensation greater than the sum of their individual parts. For you Japanophiles, it’s like a half saiyan/half human being more powerful than both species apart – they compliment each other and make your taste buds go super saiyan…or something lame like that.

I'd like to conclude with what I call, the void.  Not to get too sidetracked but in addition to ‘reverse culture shock’, a return back from Japan leaves a hole in your stomach that cannot be filled with American cuisine. If you go to Japan for any extended period of time, going off of Japanese food cold turkey is a rough time. On my visits to America I found myself eating all day, every day and never EVER getting full. This may have combined with the sadness of leaving Japan and the crying myself to sleep, but it is not just me.  My friends who have visited for mere weeks reported the same thing happening to them.  Just one more reason to never leave Japan.