Day 30: I promise that despite being about ice cream this is interesting

I realised (Thanks to someone mentioning) that I never explained why I'm leaving Japan. I could do that now...or I could tell you about the ice cream! Lets go with the ice cream first.

So, there I was, last night, in my local convenience store looking for a second dinner. My first dinner of sushi was at 6 and it was now 9, I needed more food! I went to their food aisle. In the UK you will find that your local corner shop has all kinds of food for a quick eat, usually quite the variety. Japan is a little less about the variety of kinds of foods, more about variety within the same genre. So your options are a small variety of microwavable meals, onigiri (I explained the "rice balls "in a previous post)  and ramen, basically pot noodles. but oh boy do they have every kind of pot noodle you could ask for!

"Hungry sir? We can help you with that, we have ramen, or ramen oh and over here more ramen"

I really wasn't in the mood for instant ramen, despite how every Japanese person ever tells me they can taste just like the real thing i just cannot get it out of my head that it's pot noodle. That was until Kelsey noticed this very special one:

How could you not choose this one, so much colour!

That is, of course, instant ramen from the same restaurant chain that I did my month of ramen with. If I believed in fate I would think it was fated that I would eat this ramen on the night that I resurrected my blog about ramen. However, I don't, so it is pure coincidence, a nice one, but nothing more.

Some of you may remember the kanji 旨辛麺 or remember the fact that the red one is spicy, this meant that I would have to buy something to cool down my mouth after I finished. This is where the mysterious ice cream comes in. I saw it, thought "What the bloody hell is that? Who would buy an ice cream of that flavour?" and I immediately decided to buy it.

It was either a small pot, or i have very large hands. You decide

Thats right, that is tomato flavour ice cream, but don't worry its also cherry flavour. Sorry, I mean "cherry flavour" because believe me it didn't even have a hint of cherry about it. It wasn't disgusting but I wouldn't advise anyone to eat it for any reason other than "Hey, try this weird as hell ice cream!"

This is how I feel the decision to make this went down at the Japanese Hagen-Dazs HQ between the Head of Flavours  (Is that a real thing) and his Deputy Head of Flavours (or that?):

"We need something new and exciting, what fruits haven't we tried yet?"

"None sir we have had a flavour for every fruit there is"

"Are you sure, what about Tomato? Isn't that a fruit?"

"Well, yes sir, it is.. technically"

"Good enough for me, make it so"

"But.."

"Make. it. so."

Well with that clearly explained and no further explanation needed let us proceed..... actually no, there was also one other flavour that I saw. I haven't tried it yet, but you just try to think what weird thing could they possibly think would go well with orange flavour ice cream. You keep guessing and I'll let you know tomorrow.

I was going to explain why I'm leaving, then I realised that it's a little more than an be tagged onto the end of a post so I will have to make you wait one more day to understand. But if we are honest with ourselves the ramen and ice cream was far more interesting. WAIT, I mean, the next post will be unbelievably interesting too, maybe there will be lions and dragons and kittens....maybe there won't. Only one way to find out.