フライドチキン - Fried Chicken: A Serious Review

Whilst I know this is not the highest thing on people's lists when they think of Japan and its cuisine, it is something which surprised me in its popularity when I came here.  Fried chicken, generally a fillet, is cheap (generally about 165 yen per piece, roughly £1.35) and plentiful in Japan, and all of the different konbinis (Japanese for convenience store, they sell almost everything you need under one roof, albeit in small quantities, sort of like a petrol-station mini-mart thing, but better) have a selection of yummy, hot, fried food by the check-out.  They have hot dogs and chips and chicken nuggets and all that, but the only thing worth getting is the fried chicken; it's SO good.

My standard fried chicken-eating face

In light of the popularity of this delicacy amongst both Japanese people and foreigners, as well as the competition between konbinis, I thought I would save anyone in Japan reading this the tremendous struggle of sampling each konbini's offerings, by reviewing the chicken of the five konbinis local to me and then giving you a recommendation; how generous am I?!  For comparison, I give KFC 8/10.

5th Place: Lawson 

Quite simply because they're the only konbini I know of that don't sell it!  I'm sorry Lawson, I know I do most of my weekly food & ingredient shop at you, but pull your finger out and sell some fried chicken for 105 yen a piece, like everything else in your shop costs. 0/10

4th Place: Familymart

The only konbini I've been to which sells it on the bone.  It's good to be different, but not when your chicken's dry and bland. 3/10

3rd Place: Mini-Stop

It was a nice twist to see some chicken with a squeeze of lemon on it.  It was a little dry, but the seasoning was alright (maybe a little too much lemon on). 6/10

2nd Place: 7-Eleven

Absolutely gorgeous. Nice sized portions, very juicy chicken, and always piping hot. The seasoning was nice, too. 9/10

1st Place: Sunkus

My definite favourite.  Pretty similar to the 7-Eleven chicken, with all of its positive points.  The deal-breaker is the slightly nicer seasoning, plus the inclusion of a little sachet of extra seasoning, in case you like it a bit more seasoned. They call it consumer choice; I call it an extra point. 10/10

Another thing in Sunkus' favour is the fact that it is on my route home from the train station, and it certainly does the trick after a sozzled evening out in Tokyo, with it being open 24/7.

So next time you're in a Sunkus (or a 7-Eleven), whisper the magic words to the cashier:  "フライドチキンを一つお願いします", Furaido chikin o hitotsu onegaishimasu; you'll like the result.  Just have 165 yen to hand.

James

Photo of the Day

Not the nicest place to put a drinking-water fountain, ICU

ICU Japanese Language Placement Test

Today I had the placement test at ICU, the results of which decide which level of Japanese class I'll be put in for the term.  On our timetable for the week, it was due to be from 9:00 until 12:30, which I was absolutely horrified at the thought of!  But it turned out to be from 9:10 until about 11:40, with 10 minute breaks in between the sections, which I was okay with.

The first and longest part was the comprehension, where you had to decide on an appropriate response, choose a particle to fit a sentence, and all that sort of thing.  The second part was reading, writing and vocabulary, and the last part was the aural, or listening.  The entire test was multiple choice (quite how a writing test can be multiple choice, I don't know).  

As it was a placement test, many of the questions were more difficult than I would be expected to be able to do, so I wasn't too worried when I couldn't do half of them!  As it was multiple choice, it was tempting to guess some of the answers I didn't know, but that wouldn't have been a good idea as, if I had by chance got a lot of guessed ones right, I would have likely been put in a level that was too high for me and struggled.  For the first two parts, I could answer a good deal of questions, which I was happy about, but the listening bit was absolutely hellish.  Let's hope I did well enough in the other parts to compensate!  We'll find out which classes we've been put in tomorrow.

After the test it was lunch time, and Charlie and I cycled to a nearby ramen restaurant and ate there.  Then, when we were outside a konbini (convenience store), Charlie found the contents of someone's wallet, including some credit cards, their ID card, and the like.  He took it to the adjacent police box, where after 15 minutes of form filling he came out and told me that he'd been offered 6,000 yen (£48) as a reward for finding it, but had refused.  I bet he regrets that one!

In the afternoon we had some talks about course registration, and an introduction to the IT facilities, before I came back home and fell asleep by accident!  I've done that a few times since I got to Japan.  I'll just be lying on my bed, waiting for a video to load on the internet or something, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up an hour later.  I guess it's these busy days where I'm experiencing a lot; they just tire me out!

Tomorrow we have some more introductory talks, before finding out which level of Japanese class we've been put in; I'm looking forward!

James