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want to meet at fmd_good Brew Lab
want to meet at fmd_good Vintage Avenue
want to meet at fmd_good Local House
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Expats living in Tokyo, are you happy?
3 yrs in setagaya here, honestly yeah im happy but its a weird kind of happy. the things that make it great (safety, cleanliness, everything just works) are also the things that make it feel a bit flat after a while, like ur living in a well run hotel. what keeps me here is the friends ive made & honestly the food, i cant go back to paying 15 bucks for a sad sandwich. dont see it as forever tho, more like a long chapter
been here 6 yrs, nakameguro area. happy enough but the shine wears off around year 3 tbh, thats when u stop being a tourist and start dealing with ward office paperwork & the 30% expat tax on everything. i stay because my salary is way better than what id get back home & the trains actually run on time, not because i love it. probably a 5 more years thing then maybe bangkok or back to europe, tokyo is great but its not somewhere u retire unless u speak fluent japanese
Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.
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