what's in your salad today?

This is a picture of a salad I prepared as a side dish to lunch. It has the following ingredients: lettuce, steamed broccoli, silken tofu, corn, tomato, flying fish eggs (orange), and white radish sprouts...a.k.a. 'kaiware' in Japanese.

The Japanese use various interesting toppings for salads. Unlike the American croutons, cheese, bacon bits, nuts, and heavy Ranch dressing...they use things like wakame seaweed, sea chicken (tuna), potato salad, tofu, shredded boiled chicken, hard-boiled egg, soft-boiled egg, nori seaweed, finely shredded daikon radish...and the list goes on!

OH, and the 'Japanese' dressing you eat at Japanese restaurants back home...that is almost unheard of here. I have never had that tangy ginger, orange, onion dressing in Japan. Well the one exception being the time I made it from a recipe on the internet. My boyfriend was surprised by the taste...apparently Japanese dressing back home is not as authentic as we thought!

I terrified a student by telling her sometimes we put strawberries or dried cranberries into our salads. The look of disgust on her face was akin to telling her we put dog pee in our salad dressing. Hee hee. I guess it is just not done here. Back home many people like sweet and sour chicken...with bits of pineapple, right? Many Japanese people do not like fruits in some stir-fry dishes...why this is, I have no idea. Maybe some of my Japanese readers can explain about it in more detail?