Japan and Food

Have you ever seen food and just thought “wow that looks unreal I bet that tastes amazing”? Well I have and that’s exactly how I felt when I saw these pancakes in Japan, but sadly to my dismay they did not taste how they looked.

In 2017 I studied abroad in Japan and like any normal person living in another country for a limited time, I wanted to try as many new things as I possibly could. Now you might be thinking, how are pancakes something new? Well they aren’t, but sometimes you just crave something familiar and I had heard that Japanese pancakes were special from a friend who had visited the year before me. So naturally I had to seek out some to try for myself.

I stumbled upon these beautiful pancakes in Tokyo when me and my friend were visiting on a break. In Japan a lot of shops have a plate in the window of all or most of the foods on the menu so that you can see what it looks like. This came in handy more than once because Japanese food is very different from American food and sometimes it doesn’t sound as good as it looks and, in this case, it doesn’t taste as good as it looks either, but naturally I didn’t know that and all I saw was the beautiful artwork in the window and decided that would be my lunch. I figured “what could go wrong with fruit and pancakes,” boy was I wrong.

My friend and I decided to stop at the restaurant for lunch and honestly, I can’t recall what she ordered because my memory is only filled with the pancakes, I had that day, but I’m pretty sure it also had fruit and she actually enjoyed hers. We were given a table in the middle of the café and given menus. I took the menu but I had already made up my mind before entering, so honestly, I was really just looking for something to drink. I don’t know if you know this but in Japan it’s very normal to not drink anything with your meal and if you do there are no free refills. As an American, that was true torture, I am used to drinking 1 and a half glasses of juice before my meal even arrives, so having to daintily sip on my drink for 15 minutes before the food came, was torture.

When the food finally came, I was amazed at how pretty the display on the plate was. It looked exactly like the example in the window in front of the café. I was extremely happy with my choice, I first took a bite of fruit and naturally it was delicious, nice and juicy and they gave you a pretty good amount as you can see. After a few pieces of fruit, it was time to dig into the amazing looking pancakes.

When I lifted my fork with the pancake piece into my mouth, I had envisioned me running through a bed of flowers humming a nice toon wearing a sundress. That’s what I was expecting, but what I got was me sitting in the back of a rundown pick up truck driving down the street next to the sewage plant. Ok yes, I am being overly dramatic and those were pretty bad examples but what I had imaged the pancakes to taste like was honestly that drastic of a difference. I was expecting at least on par with iHop, and I got iSlop. These pancakes tasted down right awful. One bite is all it took to make me know I didn’t want to eat the rest. I was glad there weren't a lot of people there because they probably would have been staring at me, asking themselves what was wrong with me, because of the disgusted look on my face. I honestly thought it had a lot to do with the powered sugar, so I tried to scrape as much off as possible and try again, but still it tasted disgusting.

Overall, I was very very very disappointed, I would have rather they looked bland but tasted amazing, then be faked out by the beauty and then them taste so disgusting. I did end up finishing the fruit which was the only good thing I can say about that meal. All in all I would NOT recommend these pancakes and next time I will be very cautious of beautiful food because fool me once shame on me, fool me twice and guess I’m just sad cause who ever made them will still get paid so lol they didn’t lose anything. And hey at least I got a pretty picture out of it, so there is always an upside I guess.