So I was talking with a friend I ran across today after work about how the Chinese food in Japan is Japanized. Or rather, in better English, it has a Japanese flair.
In America, there are two kinds of Chinese food: Americanized Chinese food and good Chinese food. Americanized Chinese food is the fast food stuff that everyone gets. Not necessarily delicious, but usually good enough to eat if you’re hungry or in the mood for anything that can pass off as Asian food. Sometimes they can be down right nasty. Good Chinese food usually comes from restaurants where there are ducks hanging metal wires in front and you see a lot of Chinese people sitting inside.
I’ve only had Chinese food in Japan once so I can’t say what other types of Chinese food there are in Japan. There was the Chinese pickles, which strangely enough I don’t see in served in any Chinese restaurants in the US. I don’t even know what they’re called in Japanese. I just see those pickles labeled as “Chinese pickles” at the deli section in Nijiya. *shrug* I just remembered my mom buying them and serving them to us when I was a little kid. They were good. I saw them again when I was working as an administrative assistant at GMI during my lunch hour break. Yum. I ordered a chicken dish and in the chicken dish was stuff that usually comes in sansai dishes. Now that I’ve never seen in Chinese dishes here. Not to mention, my meal was on an o-bon, teishoku style. So anyways, now that a week as passed between when I ate the Chinese food with the Japanese flair and now, I really can’t remember what else was in the rest of it.