An ekiben with 30 different ingredients!
Before this recent trip to Japan -- my first ever in the pandemic era -- I wondered if I should eat when on a train. This even though not doing so would deprive me of something I get quite a bit of pleasure out of: eating on a train while watching the world passing by through the train window; with the pleasure quotient exponentially increasing when one's got a delicious ekiben (station bento) to eat.
I didn't eat anything (besides a couple of gummy candies) on the Narita Express from Narita airport into Tokyo. But that train ride reminded me that the train compartments have about the same amount, if not fewer, people in them as a fairly small restaurant. So on the next train ride I took -- the first of a number that I'd take on a shinkansen on this trip -- I got an ekiben to eat on it from a specialty ekiben shop with quite the variety of options.
Speaking of variety: the ekiben I chose was one that trumpeted its having 30 different ingredients! The Japanese are taught to eat 30 different foods a day in order to have a thoroughly balanced diet. I'm not sure how many Japanese people actually do this (regularly) these days though. All in all, it seems quite the effort to do so -- and I'm meaning eat, never mind make, such meals! And to have a single meal be made up of 30 different ingredients seems pretty amazing to me; all the more so when I can confirm that the ekiben I had was actually pretty tasty as well as felt healthy too!
Among the ingredients that I could make out are the following: rice (of course); seaweed; shisho (perilla leaf); ume (pickled plum); egg; potato; corn; at least one kind of fish (cod?); fishcake (made of another kind of fish?); shrimp; carrot; radish; corn; chicken; konnyaku (devil's tongue); pumpkin; a number of varieties of green vegetables; and a number of different beans (including edamame, peas and chickpeas)! And flavour-wise, there were bits that were sweet; others salty; others sour; others umami; and something a little bitter by way of one of the green vegetables -- that was not a bad thing at all, actually!
All in all, a wonderful moveable feast. And for the bargain price of 1000 Yen -- which, at the current exchange rate, works out to just HK$52 or so. Would you be surprised to learn that I wish I could eat this regularly? And I bet I'd feel -- and be -- a lot healthier if I did so too! :)
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