Japanese Breakfast

Few weeks before my departure to Japan,  I found few people complained about hotels that only serve Japanese breakfast instead of Continental ones. I was wondering, how different could Japanese breakfast be, such that people don’t like them at all? The problem though, is that I couldn’t find any information on what is included in Japanese breakfast. So in this article I took some photos of the breakfast set (WARNING: some people may find the photos to be disturbing! =P )

So here you go.

*. The photos resolutions are not that big, since I used the mobile phone's camera.

 

 

Although all of them looks very similar, these photos was taken from different hotel. So I guess there was some “standard” on how they served the breakfast menu.

I think it was quite ok, but if you really just want to eat Continental one… you can probably only get bread, egg, and sausages.

Everyday they always have fish served, sometimes they switch between salmon and other fish, which I didn’t know the name of, but still, it is very tasty. They also have rice, dried and seasoned seaweed, sweetened egg, and varieties of salad.

One very strange item is this (looks to be) fermented soybeans. All the hotels I’ve been to, they always serve this though, so I just couldn’t hold myself from not trying it. At first, it looks and smells a bit disgusting though. But if you mixed the seasoning, which consists of vegetable oil and mustard (I think!), they are actually quite yummy. It has quite a strong flavor though, similar to wasabi, but less intense.

Back in Indonesia, we have something similar to this, called Tempe, but we usually fried them first. Many years ago, I have heard some claims from food scientists back in Indonesia that Japanese have actually improved “Tempe” through significant research efforts. However, judging from the taste and how it is served, I couldn’t really be certain if they were of the same origin. Regardless, they are a quite delicate food that you should definitely try. I tried them twice in two different hotels (with different packaging), and they taste the same too!