Grilled sweet potato truck
20 Dec
One of the charming things about Tokyo is that you always see the traditional right next to the ultra-modern and urbane.
A few nights ago, I was strolling back from the metro station to my apartment when I heard the sing-song voice of a yaki-imo (grilled sweet potato) seller hawking his wares. All he crooned was, “Yaki-imooooooooo…..yaki-imoooooooo….”, while crawling along in his grilled sweet potato truck that looks like this…
Two giggly young OLs (office ladies) waved him down and he jumped out of his truck to serve them two steaming baked potatoes wrapped in paper.
That evening was very chilly and I thought I could also tuck into some, but I didn’t because I had dinner waiting at home. Though I also wanted to snap a photo of this adorable scene that was happening on the ever-busy Aoyama-dori, that moment was over before my icy fingers fumbled out my digital camera.
I used to dislike root vegetables like pumpkin, potato, and sweet potato, but since I moved to such a temperate clime, my taste buds have changed their tropical tune. For as long as I can remember, I always viewed such food as stodgy and pasty, almost dry and chalky, but now I love me a pumpkin soup or grilled sweet potatoes when the weather cools.
In fact, I just had a large spinach salad with some grilled sweet potato on the side for lunch on this cold wintry afternoon.
I thought I would toss in a photo of sweet-potato-flavoured Kit Kat. Did you know that Japanese Kit Kats have every flavour imaginable? Even miso and shoyu. Weird, eh?
Photo credit: here, here & here
No related posts.
Yum, love sweet potatoes… We get the yaki imo guy here too, Sunday afternoon/evenings!
Wow – he comes by at a fixed time…I guess he has a certain route he sticks to…
i wonder what miso and shoyu and sweet potato kit kat tastes like…my friend is on a quest to try all the flavours and he recently got cheese flavour from his friend…i must ask him about these flavours here…
I love sweet potato! I don’t care for pumpkin though.
Japan has really interesting flavors of KitKats and I’ve tried some of them–but they were flavors that you associate with desserts. I didn’t know that there was shoyu and miso! Did you try it?
@kat: I haven’t tasted those funky flavours….not so much a kit kat fan but found this on a blog called bijin blair
@ambien: yeah these japanese limited edition kit kats are all the rage…
I want to try the sweet potatoes but I’m the same, whenever I see the man I am either about to eat or have just eaten. One day…
I should def try grilled sweet potato from the yak imo truck dude one day…
Hi there. Came across your blog while searching for japanese related blogs. I just arrive in Japan 2 weeks ago and still trying to get use to living here for the next few months. Must agree with you. Somehow I’ve starting liking a nice bowl of pumpkin soup the past 2 weeks (even though the weather is very much like in M’sia) and I’m one of those that don’t ever want to eat pumpkins back home.