Alexander's

About once a month I get a package full of Japanese food and I always enjoy it very much.[^1]

Apart from the distinctive flavour is the packing and presentation of Japanese food. I can never tell what is about to assault my taste buds just from looking at the package design. Since there are many things that might be a bit hard to stomach for an unaccustomed European,[^2] I devised a super simple rule:

Things that look scary are usually somewhere between eatable and very tasty, but totally innocent looking food can be really challenging.[^3]

This time my food parcel contained, amongst other things, two packs of カレー (karee) -- curry, who's originally Indian taste is just as modified to accommodate the intrinsics of Japanese culture as the word itself.

I'm not saying it's bad -- far from it! Japanese curry is actually really good. The taste just diverges from the things I've eaten in India -- home of the original curry.

This curry came in a bright yellow package, that reminded me of a hazardous waste bag. Definitely not something I'd expect to find in a care package -- unless you really want to take care of things.

Given the strong likeliness of the packaging to bags for radioactive waste, I was convinced it would taste excellent. And true to my rule it turned out to be one of the best japanese curries I've ever eaten.[^4] Just the presentation might be a tad hard to stomach for the average European.

[^1]: The fact that I continue to gain weight probably has to do with this, but my European friends keep telling me I look healthier now. So really it can't be as bad as my scale tells me it is. [^2]: Be especially weary of anything that is advertised as traditional food or you might end up eating 納豆 (natto) or 梅干 (umeboshi)! [^3]: The big exception here is 納豆 (natto) that not only tastes horrible, but also looks non appetizing and has a consistency of well chewed microwaved gum. [^4]: It was great even though I committed the atrocity of combining it with the bad European style Basmati rice.