At Last

People who have visited me know that while I love Japan, I miss some of the wonderous foods that I grew accustomed to at home. While a list of what I miss eating would fill a copy of War and Peace, one of the top items is certainly Pizza.

Now let me clear up any misunderstanding. Pizza is alive and well in Japan, in fact it is an import success story. Pizza is a fixture on menu's here and there are several home grown delivery chains. But all of that obscures that sad fact that Japanese pizza is atrocious.

The reason for its success is Pizza's simple adaptability, and here, rather than those sweet little grease cups called Pepperoni you are just as likely to find squid, shrimp, corn, mayo, mochi, or any number of other odd ingredients. Even Dominoes has fallen to the dark side.. or so I had thought.

Yesterday Nate and I were in a very lazy frame of mind, and decided that rather than cook, we would order Pizza. But in Japan that does offer up a great many issues, chief of which is who is going to call and actually talk, in Japanese, on the the PHONE. Oh the horror. But before all was lost I remembered that Dominos gives a discount for carryout, so we walked on down. And there, on the menu was salvation. The American Special, tomato sasu, peporoni, and onion (katakana style). Well drop the onion (who east onion on pizza anyway?) and we had a standard, every day, honest to god.. Pepperoni Pizza. Even thinking about it now, I want to cry tears of greasy joy.

Needless to say, that wonderous large pizza and two bottles of coke and we had a fantasticlly American dinner. At last!