Comments on: A $5 Culinary Trip Through Tokyo (Part 3 of 3)

By: Jeremy Yeh

Jeremy Yeh — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 09:49:30 +0000

well, ben, ‘Their meanings remain the same as the Chinese characters they were borrowed from, but the pronunciation is different. ‘ is not accurate. the meanings of some kanji characters remain the same as they are in chinese,but some others are not. e.g. 勉强 means ‘be reluctant to do sth’ in chinese,but ‘to study’ in japanese. this is a typcial example. however,many other characters do mean similarly or just a little bit differently in both languages.
furthermore,the pronunciations of characters are not exactly very different in both languages. actually the phonetics of many kanji characters sounds close to their counterparts in chinese southern dialects,especially the ones in zhejiang and fujian.

By: Al

Al — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:34:08 +0000

That white matter with pink sides is 鱼饼, also known as 鱼丸.

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 02:08:21 +0000

Yep. Like the others said. Fish cake.

By: Anqi Dai

Anqi Dai — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:26:26 +0000

Hi! Ben,
I have been reading your blog since your barber shop days.
Good luck to your new adventure!
Take care!
Anqi Dai in Kansas City

By: Tora

Tora — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:47:36 +0000

Hey there, long time lurker here. Glad that you’re back Ben, I find your blog to be quite insightful and unlike many others it’t makes for a really interesting read.

Anyway, the fish loaf that you had in your noodles is called ‘kamaboko’ which is a type of surimi like that imitation crab meat.

By: kuhad

kuhad — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:43:20 +0000

The white and pink bit was fishcake.

By: Beverly

Beverly — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:19:35 +0000

It’s Surimi.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:44:04 +0000

Say Hi to Chicago for me, I miss that damn city.

Noodle shops were definitely my staple in Japan. Also around $5 a pop.
Although…that’s still 37.5 RMB man…; )

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:30:20 +0000

The best way to describe that pink/white mystery food would be “ground, pressed fish product.” Sort of like hot dogs in America. Only fish.

I had a similar experience getting around and ordering food in China by using my Japanese kanji. Even in taxicabs, I’d often pull out my Japanese cellphone and write kanji for things like 国内 to show a driver who’d mistakenly driven me to the 海外 terminal.