My favourite lunch...

These are the ingredients of my favourite lunch, ochatsuke (which I call "Tea Rice"). I have this maybe 3 or 4 times a week, because it is so damn delicious. Because I am pretending that I am healthy, and it is so easy to do here, I have my tea rice with sashimi, which you can see here. The ingredients are:

• 1 packet of sashimi, your choice
• 1 onigiri (rolled rice packet), your choice
• 1 packet of ochatsuke tea, suited to the onigiri

I always buy pickled plum onigiri. Onigiri is a ball of rice with some kind of flavouring in it, often wrapped in nori seaweed. My favourite has a sour pickled plum ("umeboshi") in the middle, and nori on the outside. I tear off the nori, break the rice ball into a bowl, and then rip the nori into strips and chuck it on top. Then I boil some water to make the tea mixture, pour it on, and eat as fast as I can.

The tea mixture contains various flavourings besides tea, for example mustard seeds, powdered plum or wasabi, various dried herbs, and often strips of seaweed. It is absolutely delicious. 6-10 packs will set you back $1. The onigiri costs maybe $1, and the sashimi (you can see if you look closely in the picture) about $3-4. The sashimi pictured here is, I think, Tai (Snapper). The whole meal, for $6, ends up looking like this:









Yum!!!!