McDonalds

I've given in a few times and eaten at McDonald's (I know, I'm naughty). It isn't the food I miss - it's just the convenience and the familiarity of it. It's just nice to go in and understand exactly what questions they're asking, not because I know the language, but because they're always the same questions. I just thought I'd dispel some of the myths (I'm looking at you Josh!) and point out some interesting differences of McDonald's in Japan.

1) Hamburgers do NOT have eggs on them. They have the regular McMuffin style breakest things with eggs. There is, however, another popular burger place called Lotteria/Straight Burger that does have eggs on most of their burgers.

2) For some reason, most burgers seem to have pepper on them.

3) Their "large" is our "medium". They don't have anything as big as our large, let alone "supersized".

4) No Ketchup :( Sometimes they give you this little tiny side of ketchup (kind of like the little packets of sauce for chicken nuggets), but it sucks

5) They have a shrimp burger with some weird sauce on it - no clue what it tastes like

6) There's a MegaMac, which I think is the same thing as our Double Big Mac, or at least close

7) They have this 100 yen menu which includes a lot of the kid's stuff, and the popular McPork

8) Their uniforms look like their from the 80's, they're great! They even have to wear those old paper hat things.

9) This is universal to all stores in Japan, but I thought it worth mention. In Japan you don't give your money to the cashier, or put it on the table. Instead they have these little silver trays they hold out which you put the money in. They then hand you back your change. I can't really figure out the purpose of the silver tray thing. If it was a hygiene thing, they wouldn't hand you the change back... Somebody told me they thought it had something to do with making the transaction seem more voluntary, as if you're offering them money as opposed to them asking for it, but I don't really know.