This trip was about equal parts McDonald's and MOS Burger. Oh, sure, I ate my share of teriyaki burgers and deep-fried pies. I also tried my first "Ebi Filet-o", the shrimp sandwich I mentioned in my earlier report that McDonald's was heavily promoting at that time. It was okay, though nothing special - didn't taste much different than a Filet-o-Fish. This year, McDonalds' new sandwich is called, funnily enough, the "McPork".

I didn't try one, but my guess is it's just a teriyaki burger without the teriyaki. Probably pretty good, actually, depending on what other sauce they're using. The poster next to it above is for another new sandwich that's a hamburger topped with fried egg and bacon. Talk about a heart attack on a bun, that's a quadruple bypass right there! (Speaking of which, McD's in Japan has gotten a lot of press lately for the "Mega Mac" burger - a giant hamburger even by US standards. Well, like Pepsi Ice Cucumber, it's gone. So you can quit talking about it. It was a limited time thing.)
By the way, even Japan has its share of weirdos that take half an hour to order at McDonald's, even though the menu's exactly the same at every single one (in Japan that means prices and all). This guy was right behind us in line and he literally wasn't done ordering until we were done eating:

I love McDonald's in Japan, but this was the trip when I discovered the "Spicy MOS Burger". This is basically just a MOS Burger - a freshly-made burger topped with chili sauce - stuffed with jalapeños. And I mean spicy jalapeños! The Japanese don't do anything half-assed; if they say it's spicy, they mean it. The first one I had was like when you drink your first bottle of Vodka... by the end, you swear you're never going to do it again. Then the next time you're around one, you can't resist. Here is a Spicy MOS Burger in its native habitat:
The habitat itself:
Not all MOS Burger signs say that. In fact, not all MOS Burgers have English signs at all. Here's how to find a MOS Burger outside the city, where they care less about attracting western tourists:

I also wanted to finally try some Japanese pizza on this trip. I railed a bit about Japanese pizza on my post about random stuff last time around, and I've had it homemade at a Japanese friend's house in New York City. But I've never had Japanese pizza in Japan. I was actually a little disappointed to find that Japanese pizza is now getting a lot more authentic. Even Dominos, which used to have soba noodle pizza and lots of pizzas with hard boiled eggs and other weirdness as toppings, is now pretty standard. They even have an "American Special"!
It's actually possible now to get real Neapolitan-style pizza in Tokyo, which it didn't used to be. That's actually a theme now - a lot of ethnic food that used to be either terrible or just unavailable is now common in Tokyo, and with good quality. It's become a lot more of a "world city" even in the eight years I've been visiting. Still, I wanted to try some damn Japanese pizza. We ended up picking a place that looked not too terrible but not all that authentic, either (on purpose) - it's a chain called "Miami Garden" that, for some reason, specializes in Italian food. (Or a Japanese interpretation of it, anyway, which is what we wanted.)
Here's a totally different sort of fast food - this is called an "Akiba-can":
Lastly, Japan's got its fast food desserts too:
Anyway, I can honestly say that this place has the best store-bought donuts I've ever had, bar none. They're really like home-made; they have that dense, doughy flavor that you only get with fresh, hand-made donuts. I like Mister Donut too, but this place is on another level. And come on, you have got to give props to a donut shop that advertises Twin Peaks DVD's on its web site.
Of course, nobody can forget Japan's favorite fast-food dessert, the crepe:
The "egg" burger is the Autumn "Tsukimi" special... Mari-chan wrote a few articles mentioning this for her English-language blog...
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