Missing Asian food…

I had had enough of Asian food by the time I left Shanghai in December. I was missing the vegetarian diet, foods cooked in an owen (Asian kitchens don’t have owens), proper bread, candy, etc.

However, the grass is always greener on the other side, I’ve started to miss especially all the spicy korean food, sticky rice on almost every meal, trying new foods all the time… There’s one Korean restaurant in Helsinki, it’s really good but rather expensive. Chinese food is of course available everywhere but it’s made to suit western taste and it’s rarely the stuff you could find in Shangai.

Kimchi and other stuff
Kimchi and other stuff
Korean seafood
Korean seafood
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In Korea the food is often cooked at the table.

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I really missed all the sweet stuff from Finland while in Asia, although there were some goodies available. I’m relly picky when it comes to the high sugar, high calorie things. If it’s just okay it’s not worth eating. In Shanghai I ate so many Snickers bars that I haven’t felt like having one since then.

Especially in Korea many coffee places have all kinds of local things that taste great!

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Korean dessert bingsu

Eating together and sharing food with other people is important and a lot more fun than the Finnish eating habits…

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There are some foods I don’t really miss, inluding intestines, lungs… In general everything’s worth trying, but sometimes one try is enough.

Chicken soup
Chicken soup

Finnish in Japan

During my trip in Japan I came across two shops with Finnish names. I noticed later both stores had “SM2” next to their own names, so I did a little research and found out there were four different store names under the SM2  brand. The stores I came across were ehkä söpö and olohuone. From the webpage http://www.sm2.co.jp/ I found also otan tämän “I(‘ll) take/have this one”  and keittiö “kitchen”.

The www-page was in Japanese so I couldn’t figure out whether they had any connection to Finland besides the names.

Ehkä söpö “Maybe cute” Harajuku, Tokyo

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Olohuone “Living room” in Tokyo or Osaka, can’t recall where, but anyway, sweet!

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A Swedish bag I found at a store in Tokyo. It says “Can I use your phone?” I don’t know if people actually buy this stuff. Most Japanese wouldn’t probably even recognize the language. It could say basicly anything. Or maybe they google before they buy…

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