Japanese Pizza: The Horror, The Horror

~On Saturday the staff of my school held a going-away party for my coworker Chris, who is returning to merry old England. The party was also to celebrate the arrival of a new teacher. Rather than going out to a restaurant like we usually do, we decided on something different this time: a pizza party at the school!

^ We closed the school after all the children had gone and ordered from "PIZZA-LA", a popular pizza-delivery chain. That, combined with snacks and copious amounts of alcohol, would make a tasty mix...or so I thought.

^ Like most other food in Japan, the pizza is very different compared to what you can get in America. To start with, there's the sheer size of the pizza...or should I say, the lack of size. The pizza boxes in the above picture are the largest that "PIZZA-LA" sells. I can't help but compare them to the gigantic 16-slice Sicilian-style pizzas that my family likes to get from "Paradise Pizza" back in Cary.

^ Then there's the bizzaro toppings. The pizza above has been generously decked out with cheese, corn, chicken teriyaki, and the crowning touch: seaweed (that's the green stuff). In an effort to broaden by cultural knowledge and widen my culinary horizons, I did try this pizza. Some mysteries, it would seem, were not meant to be explored.

Now, perhaps you're one of those people that like "gomi pizza" (garbage pizza); y'know, the kind with everything on it. I am not one of those people. Like Kevin McCallister, all I want is a lovely cheese pizza, with dough, tomato sauce, and cheese. Unfortunately for me, this option does not exist in Japan, and I can't fathom why. The PIZZA-LA menu includes dozens of increasingly strange pizzas, but lacks what I would consider normal pizza. It's as if there's no base to work off of, no template from which to form new creations. The philosophical implications alone boggle the mind.

^ Rather than the pizza, I think my favorite consumable item that night was the canned saké. Together now...

~Oyasumi!