Yesterday I went to Lawson Station (you'll see pictures of that later) across
the street to buy food that would be easy to make during my hour lunch breaks.
Here's
what I picked out (I had no idea what it was, but it seemed as though one would
only need to add hot water to make it).
Here's a side view of the nifty
styrofoam bowl that it comes in.
With the help of my handy dandy Japanese word processor on my laptop (and some help
from my MTU Japanese instructor), I was able to
look up the 2 white kanji symbols on the top of the bowl. As far as I understand it,
here's what all the big white characters say (Japanese is read top to bottom and right
to left when characters are written vertically):
mi so ni komi u do n
"miso" is bean paste, "nikomi" means "cook/boil completely", and "udon" means
Japanese noodles.
So, a translation would be "Japanese noodles with ingredients which have been cooked
completely (to extract flavor and create soup)."
According to my MTU Japanese instructor, on the top of the bowl the three black symbols
say "Nagoya", and to the right of them the phrase (in a dialect from Nagoya)
"very delicious, you know!"
When I opened the container, I found
all these packages inside. From left to right,
the packages are: some sort of powder, some sort of brown goop, the Japanese noodles,
"kayaku" (translated as "extra ingredients" -- the packet contained freeze dried things like onions
and rice noodles), and a packet of spicy powder.
I boiled some water, guessed at the amount to pour in, mixed all the packets together
and presto! Instant lunch. It tasted good,
too!
