Monday, September 06, 2010

Japanese sandwiches

I don't usually buy Japanese sandwiches, but this morning I went to the dentist (a whole post about that coming soon...) and wanted something a little softer than my deliciously chewy, hard crusted artisan bread for lunch. So, I caved in and bought some sandwiches and was yet again left feeling a little cheated! For anyone who has tried to buy a "real" sandwich in Japan I'm sure you will understand my frustrations. Number one - brown bread is only available in one shop out of a thousand (and then I'm sure it is just coloured with food colouring). Number two - you can not find sandwiches with the crusts on them - therefore you come away feeling hungry no matter how many you eat. Finally .... the fillings look really delicious from the outside, but when you open them up you discover that the filling is only crammed into the front of the sandwich (ie the bit you can actually see from the packet) and the back half is nothing but plain white bread.
Interestingly enough the Japanese people I have mentioned this to seem to have no problem with it. In fact my husband once told me that the reason they do it is not to rip us off, but to make it easier for us to eat them - how kind of Japanese sandwich makers!

4 comments:

  1. I agree, I feel like I've been robbed.

    My husband only thinks of them as a snack, an alternative to a chocolate bar andwould never eat them for lunch. The first time he saw my homemade sandwich he quickly understood how it could be a meal rather than just a snack, and when we visited a sandwich shop in Sydney he was blown away!

    I hope your mouth heals quickly so you can get back to some real sandwiches!!

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  2. OH you poor poor thing. Really, I greatly pity anyone who has the misfortune of having to rely on a combini sandwich for sustenance. Vile, awful, horrible things, they should all be burnt. (seriously, they are much better with a wedge of cheese inside and cooked in the toaster over for a few minutes)

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  3. My other peeve is that you don't always know what you're getting in the middle. The filling looks delish but then you come across something unexpected like a big chunk of potato coated in mayo! Yuck!

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  4. Good morning, I agree as well. There's a ham and cheese sandwich I buy from time to time at 7-11 when I am running from school to swim school usually. Usually only if I skipped lunch, I'll pick it up. Exactly what you said, the front part of the sandwich, which is what we see, looks like this thick filling sandwich but the back is usually just bread or very very thin in comparison to the front of the sandwich. Definitely more of a snack then a full fledged lunch. : (

    Can't compare to a regular normal sandwich, that's for sure. : (

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