Hey there! Right now I´m living in Chiba, Japan and I would like to know where you can buy whole grain products, brown rice, oatmeal and other healthy alternatives to the white rice and the types of noodles that are used for typical Japanese dishes. I have not found ANY shop yet where you can buy these products! I live exactly in Inage, Chiba, Japan, but if you know a shop in the center of Chiba or even in Tokyo, please tell me the name and how I can get there.

I hope this is the right place in the forum to ask such a think, if it is not, I´m sorry!

Best regards,

Tobi

The basements of stations will often have international supermarkets that will sell different flours and they will also have porridges. I don't know that they have whole wheat breads but you could make your own. I know that Chiba, Inage, and Funabashi all have international markets in the basements of their stations. The biggest is in Funabashi, but there is also one in Inage, though I don't know how good it is. The one in Chiba is actually in the basement of Perie out the east exit. I don't know about health food stores, but you should be able to find some stuff there.

Also, almost all supermarkets will have wheat (though I don't know that they're whole wheat) breads but they are usually seperate from the "regular" breads in a bit more of a "bakery" section. Ask the shop clerks and they will probably have at least one wheat bread.

Any big and well stocked supermarket in Japan would probably have brown rice (玄米 (げんまい)) and oatmeal (オートミール). If you don't spot it, just ask the staff, they will help you find it. And if the shop doesn’t stock any of them many shops will do a special order for you. When I was looking for sour cream I ended up being helped by three different shop staff, all telling me how sorry they where that there was no sour cream in the store If that fails rakuten have both 玄米 and oatmeal.

Getting whole grain products like bread and pasta is going to be a lot more difficult. I totally gave up on bread while living in Japan. Japanese bread is just too sweet and fluffy I think. But browsing the internet now, I found
this, http://www.lindtraud.com/, it is suppose to be a German bakery. But knowing the Japanese and how they usually do bread I wouldn't get my hopes up....

Even though this isn't what you’re asking for, if you really want to eat healthy, you should consider going native, and learn Japanese home-style cooking. Most of the time it consist of some rice, a little misosoup, a vegetable dish and a meat or fish dish. I think most dieticians would consider it quite healthy. Noodles are almost never used in home cooking; they are more a restaurant thing, since it can take up to ten hours to make a broth that is considered good. There are lots of cookbooks that explains how to make simple food at home in any Japanese bookstore. I was very happy with this one
http://www.amazon.co.jp/はじめて作る-人気の和食-別冊家...083&sr=8-4
If you are a bit of a health nut you could even go macrobiotic. It’s quite popular in Japan. And again there are lots of cookbooks available.

You will also save money cooking like the Japanese, it will be a lot less time consuming than trying to eat like back home, and when you get back to Germany you can satisfy any craving for Japanese food you get by cooking it yourself. Impress friends and family you will to.

Quick question for future reference: when you say "oatmeal," are you talking rolled oats, or steel-cut? I eat steel-cut (also called pinhead) oatmeal on a regular basis. The rice cooker does a wonderful job of it: use the porridge setting.

If I ever move to Japan, that is one concern I have-- getting steel-cut oats without having to special order them. Are those available as well, or is it just rolled oats only?

miipKatt Wrote:Noodles are almost never used in home cooking; they are more a restaurant thing, since it can take up to ten hours to make a broth that is considered good.

Soba and udon are quite popular noodle dishes eaten at home. Soba is made of buckwheat and udon is made of regular wheat, so I think the OP might enjoy them. Both are very simple to prepare and can be prepared in several different ways. Give it a try!

Spaghetti and ramen are also VERY commonly cooked at home. I also wonder what "broth" miipkatt is referring to as they sell めんつゆ in bottles and it is just a matter of diluting with water to the desired taste.

And, hmmm... In my four years and four prefectures in Japan I have never seen oatmeal in a regular grocery store. Though, rich_f, the international markets will usually (I believe) have both.

Ha, I think what mipkat meant by 'while living in Japan' was 'while living in an Ozu film', hehe.

I haven't heard anything about this lengthy broth making process in Japanese cooking. Most noodle broths in Japan are based on dashi stock, which even from scratch takes less than an hour to make. Other fish stocks take only slightly longer, chicken stock is about 4 hours, and beef/veal/lamb is close to the 10 hours. If you're making broth from veal stock, then yes 10 hours is correct if you don't already have stock made. Otherwise I can't think of a situation where you would need so much time.

Lots of good advice here already, but if you need another place to try in Tokyo, you might want to go to Okachimachi near Ueno. There is a good selection of ethnic food stalls where you should be able to find what you're after. It's not the easiest area to find your way around, though.

As far as buying things that you are going to get in western countries, all the advise above is gold.

If you want to go native and eat what Japanese people eat, but the healthy varieties of food, I can give you a couple of recommendations. (Not to rant, but at least compared to Americans and many Europeans, the Japanese appear to be much healthier. If we were just comparing the types of foods that many Japanese people eat with what a Western nutritionist would consider healthy, I think we would find many "problems" like too many calories. Yet, Japanese people seem to be much healthier than those countries where "healthy food" is readily available. Thoughts?)

Soba noodles. These are buckwheat. healthful. Just boil the noodles until soft, add instant soup stock. Golden. If you want you can add a fried shrimp to it, but that's probably not up your alley.

Yudofu. Tofu, japanese cabbage, 長ネギ, konbu (seaweed), spinach or another leafy ingredient. Boil all these together in a pot. Eat with rice (white or brown) and dip the veggies in some ぽんず sauce. Heaven.

Traditional meal. Your favorite fish, a bowl of white rice, miso soup (tofu, miso, wakame, (+ any veg you want to add, if you want to add something)) a pickled vegetable (漬物）a piece of seasonal fruit (mikan are the shit)

Vegetable stir fry. Pick your favorite vegies, cut them up. Put them in a pan. Add some soy sauce, cooking wine, miso, and pepper to taste. Eat with white rice for tastiest result (brown rice is better, but not as tasty, and it's still a crappy carb if we really have to get into it).

Any 鍋 type; usually a big pot filled with daikon, japanese cabbage, onion, hard boiled eggs. The differences occur when you decide what "main" ingredients you want. チャンコ、キムチ、seafood, etc etc. The possiblities are endless and there are even packages fill with broth so you just have to add the stuf and then put it to boil. Of course, eat with a big steaming bowl of rice.

I guess the best advice I can give is this. Forget about the carbs in Japan and focus on eating lots and lots of veg. You just need to accept the fact that in Japan people eat crappy carbs, BUT they make up for it by having lots and lots of opportunities to eat a large variety of vegetables. In the end, heart disease isn't a problem here because fatty foods like meats and whatever isn't consumed at the same level as it is in western countries. (although that might be changing right?)

quincy Wrote:I haven't heard anything about this lengthy broth making process in Japanese cooking.

Every ramen chef brags about the length of time their stock takes. Two days seems fairly normal for tonkotsu ramen. Obviously if you want double or triple stock you're going to need three stock pots going for a long time... No-one in their right mind is going to be doing that at home.

start_three Wrote:

quincy Wrote:I haven't heard anything about this lengthy broth making process in Japanese cooking.

Every ramen chef brags about the length of time their stock takes. Two days seems fairly normal for tonkotsu ramen. Obviously if you want double or triple stock you're going to need three stock pots going for a long time... No-one in their right mind is going to be doing that at home.

You can just get readymade ramen if you're preparing food at home; making stock at home isn't really necessary or difficult (re: dashi), given the stuff you can just buy and cook at home with your noodles, which I imagine is what home-cooking Japanese most commonly do.

I'm not a big ramen person, I mostly cook with somen, udon, and soba, with granules + water/etc. or bottles when using stock.

As for bread, I want one of those　ゴパン machines.

Wheat content means nothing to me, I just make sure there's no HFCS.

Making ANY kind of stock that tastes good takes time, if you've ever bothered to make it.

Browning bones, simmering them for 8-10 hours, then reducing it, it takes me 12 hours to make good beef stock, which is why I only make it 2-3 times a year, then freeze most of it into ice cubes. Pain in the ass, but worth it.

brown rice > most supermarkets
brown pasta > the supermarket in kemigawa station has brown pasta
bread I've pretty much given up on except bagels from the basement of Sogo near Chiba station.

There is a good international food shop in Funabashi in the shopping center near the keisei line with cereals, rye bread and stuff.

rich_f Wrote:Making ANY kind of stock that tastes good takes time, if you've ever bothered to make it.

Browning bones, simmering them for 8-10 hours, then reducing it, it takes me 12 hours to make good beef stock, which is why I only make it 2-3 times a year, then freeze most of it into ice cubes. Pain in the ass, but worth it.

Not really: http://www.justhungry.com/2003/11/japanese_basics.html

Dashi is quick to make, and dishes that is mostly bases on it, like misosoup, is also quick and easy to make. Soba can be pretty quick. But my experience is that soba is a treat, something to celebrate with. Not something you eat once or twice a week as a staple. Making proper ramen is an involved and long process. This is what Maki at Just Hungry has said about it:
http://www.justhungry.com/maybe-some-day...ckle-ramen

I admit being a bit pawned by the pasta comment though I guess it’s true that you see a lot of pasta recipes in modern home cooking whichever country you are in. It is also true that you get lots of instant stuff for noodles in the shops. But I have a feeling that this wasn't what OP was interested in, since he asked for alternatives to noodles

These are some of the Japanese cooking resources available one the internet:
http://www.kyounoryouri.jp/
http://recipe.gourmet.yahoo.co.jp/
http://oisiso.com/index.html
I think they show a good spread of recipes. Both the easy and the advanced. They have good search functions and they probably can give some idea about what Japanese people at least want to cook at home.

One of my reasons for going native was that what is considered proper bread where I’m from should consist of 50% or more wholegrain flour. It’s such a prevailing opinion that some years back the department of health made an actual requirement for this. But it was really painful finding anything comparable in Japan.

miipKatt Wrote:But my experience is that soba is a treat, something to celebrate with. Not something you eat once or twice a week as a staple.

I think soba (esp. zaru soba) is a popular seasonal dish in the summer, and it's not uncommon for families to eat it once or twice a week during that season.

miipKatt Wrote:These are some of the Japanese cooking resources available one the internet:
http://www.kyounoryouri.jp/
http://recipe.gourmet.yahoo.co.jp/
http://oisiso.com/index.html

Adding to the list, I recommend cookpad. It's the most popular recipe website in Japan, and definitely worth giving a look.

Thanks for the cookpad link, I always forget about it, despite having some recipes on there bookmarked. I needed reminding :)