What I Ate and Drank in Japan.

 What I Ate and Drank in Japan.

Or, in other words, how to visit Japan and still eat like an American.

Above is a picture of my sister-in-law Krista and I buying our first food/drink item in Japan.

I bought a bottle of water.  She bought tasty orange juice.

I was nerdy excited to use a Japanese vending machine for the first time.

And then we debated whether we should eat at this train station or eat in Tsurukawa.

Hindsight, we shouldn't have waited.

 When we did get to Tsurukawa we found a nonsmoking fast food rice bowl like place, and ordered whatever seemed to have the most meet and wasn't curry.  This place had a ticket machine, an electronic touch screen, and there was an English option.  Oh, and pictures!  A lot of food places in Japan have menus with pictures! A lot of times you can just point, and try to look fancy and say "Kore o Tabetai desu." or was it "kore o kaitai desu"?  (Actually, I'm already forgetting what Japanese I know.)

 On our first breakfast we ate at Denny's.  There was one about a mile from where we stayed, and we walked there a few mornings.  It was a very pleasant walk.  And there was a nice sweet shop across the street that sold packaged cakes and gifts.

The Japanese like their scrambled eggs runny, and their bacon isn't quite right.  I did like the salad, and I should try to eat salad for breakfast more often.  Also, those little pound pancakes were good.

 The first page of the Denny's breakfast menu.  I got the meal set.

 Krista got the soup.  Actually, this soup looks pretty good right now.

 The vending machines!

And you can use the Pasmo/Suica prepaid cards on the vending machines in Tokyo and surrounding areas, whether the touch pad says Pasmo or Suica, they're pretty much interchangeable.  I actually got and used both cards when I was there.

 My favorite water :0)  I loved this water!  It was around 100 yen a bottle.

 Steak!

 Tempura shrimp noddle soup.  I love tempura, but this is sadly the only tempura I got on the trip.  And the soup made it heavy so I could barely pick it up.

 We got these graham like cracker chicks at the Tokyo station.  There were advertisements for these in different stations.

 What I ate before heading into Tokyo Disney Sea at the shopping center next to the monorail.

 What Michael ate.

 And the cute little dessert cup.

 You can't eat wherever you like in Japan.  There's rules, especially in Tokyo.  No eating or drinking while walking or standing on the sidewalk, or on trains.  But you can eat in parks!  We know this because we saw an elderly couple eating at this small park, so we knew we could too.  But beware, you won't find trash cans, so you have to carry the trash around with you.

 McDonald's!  Yeah, so I ate about 3 or 4 Big Macs while in Japan.  They don't taste the same.  Also, you order them as a meal set, and chicken nuggets/fries/salad is considered the side item.

 What I ate after visiting the Skytree on my last night.  This was the closest I could find to wheat bread.  The Japanese are obsessed with fluffy white Wonder-like bread.

And a KFC.  We didn't eat here, but I thought this was funny.

We did have Baskin-Robbins ice cream, and it was pretty good.