Hara Donuts, Shin Yurigaoka

Keep it obsessive, that’s what I always say. I wasn’t sure where my lunch was coming from today, and I was a bit peckish after getting up at 5 as usual, so I picked up a donut in the station complex.

Not just any donut, a Hara donut. It’s a funny by-and-for-girls sort of concept, and so Japanese. Girls in uniforms frying donuts…it works on your mind, doesn’t it?

The level of packaging in Japan works on you too. It gets you spoiled. You expect not only to have your donut wrapped in an attractive paper-and-plastic bag, but you think it should have a nice label hand-applied to keep it closed, and you think that whole thing should go in a plastic bag just so you can carry it downstairs to eat while you wait for the train. (Which is not at all the done thing in Japan; it’s only OK for foreigners.) It’s a meditation on packaging.

And this is a meditation on the donut, contemplating the whole before stuffing it in your pie-hole. I suppose it’s more accurate to say I was contemplating the hole, since the donut was no longer whole at this point.

These are light, a little crisp on the outside, fluffy inside, and more oily than I’d like. The flavors are all made to appeal to girls, and this Earl Gray donut would fit that bill. I liked how it was packed with tea flavor; nothing subtle here. The American in me needs that.

And the American in me has expanded almost to the perimeter of me.
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