I arrived to Hirakata 6 months ago from Barcelona, but I still remember my first impressions and I think that giving some advise to the new hordes of gaijin could be useful. Welcome to Japan, aliens!
Yes, I said aliens, not only because this how your ID card will define you, but also because this is like another planet. Comming to Japan is maybe one of the closest experiences to be born again, to be like a little kid again. Infinite things in daily life small things work different, you will find yourself pointing at everything and asking about everything, extremely curious about what does that sign say, what does that store sell or what is that green-haired girl doing with that pink miniskirt at 5º in winter. You are going to feel like a 5-year-old boy/girl again. 100% recommended experience.
But not everything are posies of roses, sometimes you might find yourself lost, like Bill Murray in his movie. In this post I am going to talk about food. Because when I got here, although I had tried several times japanese food before and even had some "favourite japanese dishes", I tried to keep on eating more or less like I ate back in my country. At first I did not realize because I was not used to the exchange rates between Euro and Yen, soon I noticed that sticking to a mediterranean diet in Japan is REALLY expensive. Pasta is around 4 times more expensive; bread is like 5 times more expensive; sausages, cured ham, cheese is like 3 times more expensive; wine is whether bad or 10 times more expensive and fruit... well, let's not talk about fruit. I can't imagine myself buying ONE orange or ONE apple in a supermarket in Spain, they would laugh at me in the cash register.
This is what I found when I wanted to buy some olives:
Olives. Olives are the cheapest appetizer in Spain. One of my favourite, I remember that I hated them when I was a kid but I have the theory that the best things in this life work like this: you don't like them at first but then you come to love them forever. I REALLY WANTED SOME OLIVES so in the middle of my olive crisis I walked all Osaka looking for them. Not easy to find, but finally I found them, and they were real spanish olives, imported from Andalucía. I found myself buying an exotic rarety, getting only the tiny tin with 12-15 olives (40 cents in Spain) that was 499 yen, around 5 euros.
Soon after it was New Year's Eve, and I went to a pub to celebrate. There was Cava, sparkling wine from Catalunya in the menu, made in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, 30 minutes driving from my hometown.
What is my advise? ADAPT. Change your diet, habits, food and drink. I ate lots of fruits, now I drink juice. I ate bread almost every day with every meal in Barcelona, now I rarely eat sandwich bread. On the other hand I am eating rice at least once a day, which I barely ate once a week in Sunday dad's paella. I used to eat more beef and less chicken, now just the opposite. I did not like the fish very much, so I never ate fish, but now I eat fish almost every day. Sushi, oposite to my country, is good and cheap!! And I love it now.
So, basically my advise is to adapt as soon as possible to the country's basic diet, because if you try to keep on eating the same you ate back home, as lots of things will be exotic and imported, you will soon go bankrupt just by filling your belly! Meat into fish, bread into rice!
PD: One day is one day, and New Year's Eve party tasted "home" anyway ;)
