Fast Food in Hokkaido

In the US, the only two fast food chain restaurants that I really frequented were Qdoba and Subway. I don’t think I’ve seen any kind of Mexican food restaurants in Hokkaido, let alone Qdoba, although Taco Rice (sort of like Mexican food) is a common dish in Okinawa. I recently found a Subway sandwich shop in Sapporo and have purchased a sandwich there a few times.  It doesn’t have quite as many choices as in the US and some of the choices here, like shrimp and avocado, I hadn’t seen in the US (although that may have changed in the year and a half since I’ve been gone).  Each day of the week there is a sandwich of the day special for 320 yen.  Saturday is tamago (egg).

One thing I really like at Subway here (besides the sandwiches) is that the menu choices are written out in katakana version of the English name, not just kanji of the Japanese name, so I can read what I am ordering.  (Plus, there are pictures if I can’t figure out the katakana.)

There are quite a few McDonald’s in Hokkaido, but I haven’t eaten at one yet.  I remember being in Madrid years ago and the coffee was very strong everywhere I ate. I saw a McDonald’s and thought I could get a cup of regular coffee.  I ordered a fish sandwich and a cup of coffee.  The fish sandwich was exactly like the fish sandwiches at the American McDonald’s, but unfortunately the coffee was still the strong Spanish coffee.  Recently I read an item in one of the online Japanese news sites (in English) about a summer kick off that McDonald’s was having – any size soda for 100 yen.  The story was commenting on how specials like this will soon make Japanese people as fat as Americans.

One of our Japanese friends told us that sushi is really just fast food.  People used to eat rice and sashimi (raw fish) separately, then someone many years ago put them together and called it sushi. Kaiten sushi places (sushi on a conveyor belt) are very popular. It’s a good place to eat if you don’t speak Japanese because you can just pick what you want as it goes by. We go for Sushi Date Night and the restaurant workers there always remember us. (Sometimes I get words mixed up, like kowai-kawaii, sakura-sakana.  One time I said Taihen instead of Kaiten, so now we say Taihen Sushi all the time, even though we like it.) In case you are wondering, I never ate raw fish before coming to Hokkaido and to tell the truth, didn’t think I would like it.  I was wrong, sushi is one of my favorite things to eat here.