Bread is still a novelty in Japan. Bread for breakfast is a Sunday morning treat; most days its rice porridge and miso soup. Sandwiches -- right up there with the wheel as greatest invention of all time -- are a rather wimpy convenience store snack. Most restaurants don't even bother to wrap their grease drenched hanbagu stekis in a bun. Nothing but the plain, fatty truth for Japanese hamburger lovers.

Bakeries hardly qualify. The breads they produce are based on Amerikan pan, a.k.a. Wonderbread. Whole wheat is nearly impossible to find. Don't even bother looking for whole grain. There is no such thing as pumpernickle or sourdough. Bagles are a rare commodity. The healthiest option is a walnut bread available at most supermarkets (but at nearly $1 a slice who can afford it?).

What Japanese bread lacks in usable calories, it makes up for with creativity. Willy Wonka would be jealous. Most interesting is the beef curry donut, exactly as it sounds. A close second is choco meron pan, a mouth watering mound of Wonderbread wrapped in a cantaloupe flavoured sugar crust and topped with chocolate chips. Sweet potato finds its way into more than it should. Cakes, pies, donuts and French toast all suffer from its starchy sweetness. Meanwhile, if it looks like whipped cream or cheese, its mayonnaise: egg and mayonnaise donuts, corn and mayonnaise pizza, mayonnaise and fish egg French bread. The possibilities are endless.

Luckily for the Japanese, theirs is the best rice in the world. Where else can you have just rice for lunch? Who needs sandwiches when you have onigiri? What's a hamburger compared to sushi? Green tea and rice is especially nice. Mushroom boiled brown rice, beans and rice, seaweed topped rice, fried rice, the list goes on.

Given the sorry state of bread in this country, I've even been contemplating rice for breakfast. That's a fairly big jump. There's only so much Wonderbread a guy can take.