Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

***Disclaimer: Yuki is still studying for his huge upcoming exam at work (3 weeks and counting), so until he's free and we can run away on more vacations, I'll likely be blogging about local events, the cat, and of course food. Consider yourself forewarned.***


We found the soy yogurt that I mentioned last week! (Quit yawning; this is a big deal for me! Besides, I warned you). As that saying goes, sometimes you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Or rather, until your stomach doesn't let you eat it anymore. Such is the case with me and dairy products. I used to consume cheese and milk in amounts that would shock your average onlooker. A big block of chedder cheese, mmm. And blue cheese dressing. And buttermilk ranch dressing...sometimes I'd even dip my (cheese-flavored) potato chips into buttermilk dressing. Cheese and peanut butter sandwiches...cream cheese and pizza sauce on pretzels....ice cream....at Taco Bell, I'd order my tacos with extra cheese and sour cream. You get the idea.
But that blissful love affair ended in college, when my stomach decided that dairy was no longer its friend, let alone lover. Stupid stomach. Perhaps it was denial, but it took me forever to figure out that I had lactose intolerance. Actually, it took a doctor to tell me that, after I went in trying to figure out the cause of so many stomachaches. Even then I didn't want to believe it, but sometimes one must accept the truth, however difficult it may be.
So, while my stomach has likely saved me from a massive coronary down the road, it's also made for some rough going here in Japan, cuisine-wise. Traditional Japanese food is of course fine, but you'd be surprised by how much dairy the people in this country consume. And I thought that lactose intolerance was way more common in Asians! Not in Japanese, apparently. These people looooove Haagen Dazs, cream puffs, real butter, cream cakes, cream on just about anything. And French food. French food with lots of butter, to be exact. Actually, want to make any food 'Western'? Just add cream, milk, butter, or cheese. Or all 4!
In terms of locating substitutes, soy milk has been easy to find, but you could forget about soy ice cream until just last year. Any ice cream with soy in it also contained lots of dairy; the soy was only for 'health' benefits. We finally did locate a brand that is dairy-free, so now I've got my choice of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, or green tea. Of which the chocolate and strawberry are the only flavors worth bothering with: the vanilla tastes like tofu, which would be fine if I wanted tofu, and the green tea is really sweet and gross. Green tea should never be sweet....Soy cheese is still non-existent so I just do without that, same as I've been going without any soy yogurt until last week. Enter...'SUGOI Daizu'! I would buy this stuff based on the name alone, which basically translates to 'WOW Soybeans'!

SUGOI Daizu
The not-so-cleverly-named cholesterol-lowering yogurt

















SUGOI Daizu is pretty sweet, even though it's supposed to be plain soy yogurt, but I'm not going to complain. We also found some other dairy-free yogurt that's competing with SUGOI Daizu; unfortunately the name isn't nearly as fun and involves something about lowering cholesterol. Not that I'm going to get picky about it or anything, especially since it tastes more like real yogurt than SUGOI Daizu does.
Moving on to a product more fun than boring old soy yogurt, Yuki's dad and I also found another flavor of Kit Kats at the store last week. Well, we really found 2 more flavors, but I could only be bothered to buy one of them. There was Lemon Vinegar and also Sour Orange; we decided against Sour Orange, though. Good choice; the lemon vinegar ones are amazing! A 10 out of 10; too bad we only found one bag and haven't seen any more since.

P.S. Yuki may force me to remove his modeling debut pic, but I thought he was too cute not to post. The headband is not, repeat not, the current style here: he was just about to go wash his face.

Lovely Lemon Kit Kats


Even the wrapper tastes good!


Sour Orange Kit Kats