Chinese restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and
around the world offer pork buns. Pork and other
ingredients are cooked, stuffed inside a bun, and steamed.
You can find pork buns ranging from fast food buns at
little stands on the street to the ecstasy of exquisite dim
sum restaurants like Yank Sing in San Francisco.
When I am in San Francisco, walking down Market Street or
people-watching on Union Square, I will buy a soft pretzel
to eat. In Japan, I will stop my car at a convenience
store, probably one of Japan's approximately 12,000
Seven-Elevens, and buy a bun. Like at a drive-in, most
people eat in the car. Convenience stores rarely very
provide benches.
Japan has adopted and adapted this style of bun. When you
are hungry, biting into a hot bun on a cold winter day is
one of the small pleasures in life. While such buns are
available at street stands and in restaurants, and frozen
in supermarkets, many people get their buns at convenience
stores such as Seven-Eleven, Lawson, Family Mart, Save On,
Circle K Sunkus and Ministop. Some ingredients look
familiar and some do not. The most unfamiliar ingredient to
Americans may be an, which is a sweet bean paste known by a
variety of names. We looked at convenience store websites
to see their bun menus.
While Lawson and Save On do sell many buns, their websites
fail to clearly present the kinds of buns they sell. So, I
would just like to comment on a Save On pork bun that we
did find. Shaped like a pig with a snout sticking out, two
floppy ears, and two dark eyes, the fast food art embraced
the Japanese concepts of cute and food presentation.
After seeing the piggy pork bun, I no longer went to
Seven-Eleven. I started stopping at Save On. Some Save Ons
sold the piggy pork bun to silent purchasers. Shiori, age
eight or nine, and her grandmother, who was over 60, were
two of the more vocal purchasers. Shiori, spoke first,
"That pig is just so cute!" They talked at length about the
cute floppy ears, the cute snout, and the cute pig shape.
Returning to bun offerings, the smallest menu on the web,
at Ministop, shows seven different buns: Two varieties of
pork buns; two varieties of an buns; a spicy seafood bun
made from shark fin, shrimp, and an flavored with oyster
sauce and other ingredients; a shrimp and pork bun flavored
with salt; and for dessert, a Belgian chocolate bun.
Family Mart shows 11 different options including pizza,
curry, and a variety of pork and an buns. One of the pork
buns is a spicy bun, including kimchi while another uses
the same kind of pork slices as you can find in bowls of
steaming hot ramen. The completely new variety Family Mart
offers is a yakisoba bun. Yakisoba is a fried noodle dish
in Japan that is somewhat like chow mein. The bun is simply
stuffed with fried noodles. Lastly, for desert, you can buy
a pudding bun.
I have never tried the desert versions of the buns, nor
have I heard people speak of them. I remember the ice cream
trucks of the suburban phase of my childhood, hearing them
from far away, worrying that getting money from my mother
and getting back would take too long, but inevitably making
it back on time for a piece of cold childhood delight.
Americans talk of the ice cream trucks and they live on in
our memories. Japanese speak of the sweet potato trucks
that sell baked sweet potatoes. While sweet desert buns are
sold almost everywhere in Japan, they are not yet fond
childhood memories or the stuff of popular culture. Maybe
they will be some day.
The Seven Eleven menu presents 13 different buns including
many varieties of pork and an buns as well as two pizza
buns, one featuring melted cheese. A pizza bun usually
refers to just the red pizza sauce without any cheese.
Seven Eleven also offers two pink desert buns called Sakura
Buns which include an and other ingredients. The buns are
named after cherry blossoms; sakura is Japanese for cherry.
For a different desert, Seven Eleven offers three small
buns together, one white, one yellow, and one brown for
about the price of a regular bun. Each bun is a different
flavor: salty caramel, maple syrup, and chocolate.
The Circle K Sunkus menu lists 14 different buns including
a variety of pork buns and curry buns. The curry buns
include a chicken and cheese curry bun and a cheese curry
bun. Like Seven Eleven, Circle K Sunkus has mini buns too.
In most of Japan, you are never far from a convenience
store. Steaming hot buns await in winter, but very few
convenience stores offer the full menus. The cases used to
heat the buns may just not be big enough.
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For translation and more, a primarily Japanese client base
goes to Aaron Language Services at
http://www.aaronlanguage.com on the Web.
If you don't read Japanese, click on the menu where it says
personnel.
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