Try the World - Japan Box

Today I tried some of the "Try the World" Japan box. Try the World is a subscription where you receive a box of items every 2 months in order to experience new cuisine from different cultures. I had thought that you just eat the things out of the box but apparently you have to do stuff with these items. I felt like this was more fun and adventurous (if you never had the cuisine before).

Most of the items of the Japan box were very predictable and easily accessibly to me so that was a bit disappointing. But that was to be expected since I love Japan and have gone before.

I was excited about the okonomiyaki kit though. Okonomiyaki is like a savory pancake where you can add whatever you want. I was excited to try this because I was too intimidated to try to order one when we were Japan so this will be my first okonomiyaki experience.

For today's meal, I went with okonomiyaki and soba. The left side is the items I used today and the right side is all the things I needed to buy.

First was the okonomiyaki. I ran to Mitsuwa, a Japanese grocery store, to search for this sauce. From Google Translate, it just translated Otafuku Your Favorite Sauce. Ok... what the heck does that mean?! I googled Otafuku and realized that this was just a brand name. Lol! Luckily, Mitsuwa did have this brand and I grabbed the one that said, "Okonomiyaki Sauce". So if you don't find this brand, look for anything that might be an okonomiyaki sauce!

I cut some cabbage and green onions and layered one side with bacon. Although I didn't have anything to compare this to, I thought it was pretty yummy!

I've had soba numerous times so this was no surprise. I also got the soba sauce at Mitsuwa.

End result: A bit predictable but it was really fun to experiment. It's easy for me to find Japanese items but I'm worried that it won't be so easy for me to find other cultural items. Hopefully the other boxes will not require such specific items.