Everything in this country is smaller...

Being a resource and land constrained nation, it makes sense really. The cars are smaller (this is my favorite). The capsule hotel is unique to Japan. And you see lots of people with little dogs. It makes even more sense when you cram 36 million people into an area the size of Tokyo/Yokohama (with a density of around 4,750 people per square kilometer depending on how you calculate it).

And there is probably a corollary to this post as well… everything in Japan (for the most part, so far at least) is well-designed and works. You can see that thought and logic have gone into the design of most things. For example, Jenn noted this weekend that public restrooms are always clean, no matter where you go. And they all have hooks to hang your bag, purse, etc., showing that some thought was put into it.

So it struck me as odd the first time that I bought bread, a staple item by all means. This was not fancy, bakery bread. But pre-packaged, pick it up at the store on the way home, bread. The package was about a third or quarter of a loaf back in the states (8 slices I believe), but otherwise the same idea. Please see the picture below:




This bread is ENORMOUS. I mean, it takes almost two pieces of cheese to adequately cover a piece of Japanese white bread. (The cheese seems to be of normal size to me.) It is my recollection that a piece of cheese back home nicely covers a piece of American bread – providing tasty cheesiness to each bite of your sandwich. But here, you have to sacrifice almost two pieces of cheese to avoid a cheese-free perimeter of your sandwich. And then you are left with a cheese scrap you have to deal with. This clearly does not work.

Why isn’t the bread smaller or the cheese larger? Even we (Americans) figured out to make the hot dog long enough to fit the bun. But this seems to have escaped the Japanese eye for detail and design.

And not only does this bread have a larger cross-section, it is also sliced thicker. Perhaps someone could measure a slice of bread for us, but I estimate that these slices (in the 8 slice package) are probably 25% thicker than the average piece of US bread (about like Texas Toast I would say). You’re gonna want that cheese to cover the whole piece.

But there’s more… I made the mistake of not looking closely at the bread package before tossing it into the basket one time. They make it even thicker – you can buy that same 8-slice loaf sliced into only 6 pieces! It’s at least twice as thick as what we are used to in the states. If you’re making a sandwich from this stuff, you better triple meat it and double cheese it (4 pieces!) or all you’re gonna be tasting is refined white flour.

And for all the fans of whole wheat products (like myself, because they taste better and don’t make you fat), good luck with all that. I saw wheat bread for the first time this weekend. It too was freakishly large and thick. I'm not sure we'll ever get used to this.