Chopstick Handling a Cream Puff

Posted on May 9, 2007 by Ulara Nakagawa

Tofu, grilled fish and burdock root. I had it all planned out. Japan would be my fountain of youth, my supplier of all things healthy so that I could become part of the statistic: Japanese are to this day known to live longest in the world. (As of 2005 life expectancy is an average of 81.15, according the CIA World Fact Book). It’s not as if I was trying to magically turn a KFC diet into a daily ingestion of kelp and soybeans either. I am already practically a hippy by default, coming from the North American west coast. I munch on raw nuts and haven’t touched red meat in almost fifteen of my twenty seven existing years. I make a mean bean salad.

So I’ve had all sorts of salads and tender fish at many an IzakayaJapanese drinking pub - popular after work spot for Japanese salary-men.. When I go to the casual eatery chain Ootoya, I choose the menu items lowest in calories. I really appreciate a restaurant culture that goes as far as to reveal calorie and fat content of their dishes right on their menus. But there is an obstacle. A sweet, melt-in-your-mouth, fluffy, tender and indescribably satisfying obstacle I’ve come to call: crap that tastes delicious. I’m talking 100yen ice-cream, individually packaged convenience store pastries and cream puffs. Oh and the crispy dense fried potato sticks that come in a cardboard cup. What started with one drunken misstep has turned into a full-blown addiction. A topple from a possible 81.15 years old to a chunky 67 (if I’m lucky). If I continue down this path, I will never achieve the lean, beanlike figure of all those slight Japanese girls, and end up looking like a bloated cream puff. Mind you, one chock full of custard cream with a nice flaky outer flesh. (Not the sort sold at the Family Mart wrapped in plastic but the kind you buy from the specialty cream-puff stand in the train station.) A cream puff made so fresh that when you bite into it…er…me, you get just the heavenly mixture of textures and flavours. Creamy, sweet, buttery and a bit al dente-ish. Is that my stomach growling? No it isn’t. But I think I’m hungry anyway.

Top Five Ice Cream Kinds Everyone Should Try:

5. HokkaidoThe Northernmost of the 4 major islands of the Japanese archipelago. Vanilla Milk Bars

4. Chocobari Bars

3. Pino vanilla

2. Zacklet Ice Cream Sandwich

1. Any flavour SuperCup (Vanilla, Green Tea or Chocolate Chunk)