Nevermind the challenging everyday aspects of Japanese cuisine—try these squid guts and cod testicles!—it’s the western-style foods in all-the-no flavors that I want to run away from, screaming…
Category 1: Things that should not be vegetable flavored
Pancakes should never be a vehicle for spinach
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Tomatoes and carrots should not be allowed anywhere near ice cream
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Purple sweet potato candy? Nope, nope, forever nope
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Please let tomato-filled donuts never be A Thing
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The only thing less tempting than the purple sweet potato soft-serve on the left is the buckwheat-flavored cone-o-blasphemy on the right
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As much as I detest matcha green tea flavored things, I will grudgingly allow that it’s not a wholly unthinkable flavor for sweets. Wasabi, on the other hand, has absolutely no business in a macaron.
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Category 2: Things that should not be a snack flavor, ever
A soda that tastes like sour milk or banana would be bad enough, but together? Abomination, thy name is Fanta Banana-Calpis
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Ice cream with seaweed on top? I’ll take the red hot pincers instead, please
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When your “Four Cheese” pizza is already topped with the freakishly un-Italian combo of camembert, gorgonzola, gouda and mozzarella, it’s barely more of an insult to add maple syrup to the mix. And yet…
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This Gari-Gari popsicles gets the twofer nope award: Spaghetti should never ever be topped with tomato sauce that has ketchup as its main ingredient and spaghetti topped with ketchup as its main ingredient should never ever be made into a popsicle.
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All the fat and carbs with none of the pleasure: looking at you, red bean and butter toast
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Intestine-flavored chips—in not one, but two horrifying flavors—I hope you are enjoying the view from the failed snack graveyard RIGHT NOW
Would you like to be whisked away to Japan, no matter where you are?
“The Samurai’s Octopus is a truly remarkable book, one that surprised and charmed me at every turn of the page…an enchanting, fascinating journey. You’re in for a treat.”
—James Ziskin, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning author of the Ellie Stone mysteries
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
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