Japanese Breakfast

Food. Already covered the fact that I've been eating traditional Japanese food. Most of which, is pretty good. But.....the food situation here has only proven to get weirder. Wiggins and I are apparently the only Americans who have played for Denso, who have actually tried the Japanese food. I was shocked!! Everyone told me upon coming here that I was going to lose a bunch of weight and was going to be living off of nothing. In my head, I pictured my meals to be a bowl of rice and water. And zero coffee within the country (this, obviously, was my biggest concern). Needless to say I was not expecting anything eatable. I was expecting an entire raw fish, head and all to be slapped down in front of me.
Little did I know, the other Americans only ate peanut butter sandwiches and water. PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES! And these aren't just any sandwiches. I had one on the first day and that was enough for me. They're like the Smuckers no crust sandwiches that are enclosed all the way around - yall know what I'm talking about - but the peanut butter itself is not really peanut butter. I'm a PB&J girl....love me some peanut butter. This, however, is more like peanut flavored marshmallow. Like whipped peanut butter. No, thank you. I'll take the raw fish and weird vegetables instead - ok maybe not the raw fish.
Speaking of raw fish........
Breakfast here is a bit different. You might be scared by that connection: raw fish and breakfast, and you should be. Because here in Japan those two are very much connected...


We traveled to Kumano, a city up in the mountains a bit, this weekend for some scrimmage games. The hotel we stayed at was a traditional Japanese hotel (I'll cover that in a later post). So everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was completely traditional. Including breakfast. I woke up our first morning in our hotel - bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 530 (for those of you who don't know me, I'm not a morning person. At all. Zero. Nilch. None. Not for me). I stumbled to the team breakfast. Somehow folded myself up into a small of enough position to fit under their miniature tables. The hotel had "American" style breakfast for the two of us. At this point, I had no idea what the Japanese style breakfast was and didn't really feel like finding out, at least not at 6am. I LOVE breakfast. That is one meal I will not mess with. No way. I soon discovered that I will refrain from any attempt at trying their traditional style of breakfast.....
About 15 minutes into the breakfast. I was starting to actually gain consciousness and awareness of my surroundings. And thats when I saw it........Five little sardine heads staring directly at me frying on small heater in front of me. After almost choking on my orange juice I started asking everyone around me, WHY?!? "Thats normal" is the answer I received. Fish and rice. That is the Japanese traditional breakfast. They basically have dinner but in the morning. The next morning, they had sushimi, or raw fish.
I instantly had flashbacks of waking up to my younger brother eating egg rolls and left over Panda Express at 7am one morning. I'm thinking he would fit in here......

This would be the breakfast they had the next morning. Those square kind of things next to the oranges are fish skins. Yup.....

So, as adventurous as I said I was going to be, eating little fishes at 6am will not be on the adventures list. I'll leave that to the Japanese to take care of. I'll stick to my eggs, sausage, and toast. Speaking of, can anyone from Michigan ship me some Benny's please?!?! I'll love you forever and ever and ever! Just kidding........but seriously, someone make that happen. I ❤ Benny's!!!






xoxo Jordan