Jankufūdo

Getting nutritious, wholesome food isn't a problem here in Japan. Good vegetables and meat (forget Kobe beef - the professors swear by Nagasaki and Sasebo - and I'm inclined to agree). And the seafood! I'd like to imagine that there is a ministry bureaucrat out there who cares deeply, maniacally about the catch, and would weep and be anguished by shame if the freshness in the shelves go below a very fine threshold.

What I haven't had luck with is finding good junk food. And by that I mean bad junk food. Because hey, what good is existence without some little self-destructive tendencies? I buy a bag of local potato chips, and they have low sodium, and the spuds are from some organic farm in Hokkaido. It says right there in the package - and there are pictures of the honest, noble farmers that grew them. I go for the rice crackers, and they have no MSG and they have all sorts of nuts and vegetables baked in. 

So imagine my happiness when I got a "care package" full of my favorite junk food from the Philippines (Thanks, Remir and Farrah!). Salty, oily, high-carbohydrate snacks made in a factory. For now, things are as they should be.