Food in Japan
National cuisine attitude to food by Michiru Nagatsu
The Japanese people’s attitude toward food can be summarised as enthusiastic and eclectic: it is enthusiastic because they always look for something new, and it is eclectic because they often modify new foreign cuisines consciously or unconsciously. The results are apparently chaotic menus, from green tea ice cream to rice hamburger. But if you look closer, you will find several general categories of cuisines according to their origins. Wa-shoku or Japanese food, typically composed of rice, miso-soup and a variety of side dishes, is the least problematic case and is consumed at home as a daily meal. Yo-shoku or western food includes some Japanised western foods such as omu-rice (ketchup-seasoned rice wrapped with omelet), croquette and curry-rice (it is categorized as a western food because it came to Japan via Britain more than 100 years ago). Chu-ka or Chinese food is also popular in Japan, but not as ubiquitous as Ra-men, a heavily domesticated Chinese noodle, which seems to have established itself as one category.
Another thing to note about the people’s attitude to food is that they are extremely sensitive about freshness. This is probably partly because of their hygienic consciousness in general, but also because of their method of cooking, namely, uncooking. Not to mention fish, some stupendous examples they eat raw include egg, chicken, beef, horsemeat and wild boar, although the frequency varies among them. Though these dishes are prepared with studious care in restaurants, food poisoning is common in humid, hot summer in Japan and it is recommended to be conscious of freshness of foods, especially when you cook for yourself.
Finally, reflecting its clearly distinguished four seasons, Japanese have a rich sense of the season for food. Among all, kaba-yaki eel (split, broiled and basted with a sweet sauce) in summer and nabe (varieties of food cooked in a pot at the table) in winter are unmissable.
Specialities
Japanese food has a staple diet of rice. It is served with almost all the dishes and consumed twice as much as wheat. Different types of noodle are also eaten alternatively, both cold and hot, usually served with soup. These include soba (buckwheat noodle), udon (wheat noodle), and ra-men (Chinese wheat and egg noodle)
Since the country is surrounded by the sea, its traditional specialties naturally include seafood. This is obvious from some materials of sushi or tempura, but it goes much deeper: most of the Japanese food’s soup stock (dashi) are prepared from dried kelp and bonito/small sardines. Each contains the same type of amino acid as onion (glutamic acid) and shin of beef (inosinic acid) in bouillon or broth, which create a taste-enhancing effect when combined together. Dashi, together with other seasonings and sugar, determines the taste of a Japanese dish.
Soybeans are another basis of the Japanese cuisine. They are used to produce different products from fermented seasonings such as sho-yu (soy sauce) and miso paste, protein sources such as tofu (soybean curd), to nattō (fermented, smelly soybeans), for which even a self-proclaimed Japanophile would not have a liking. These are all indispensable materials for Japanese food still. Typical example is miso soup: miso paste is dissolved into dashi soup, and its most common ingredient is tofu.
Eating out
People eat out a lot in Japan, and there are numerous choices, depending on your budget. Apart from fast food chain stores which you can find all over the world, there are several cuisines that are common in Japan, such as: Chinese, Korean, Italian, French, Indian, Thai and Vietnamese, most of which are Japanised somehow as I mentioned earlier. For example, Korean and Thai foods in Japan are less spicy than original ones, and people eat dishes like cod roe spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, etc.
There are many restaurants which offer a good deal, especially for those who eat out alone (typically students and businessmen). A McDonald’s or Subway meal set costs 500 yen (2.5 pounds), a cheap beef bowl less than 400 yen (2 pounds), a bowl of noodle (either soba or udon or ra-men) no more than 600 yen (3 pounds), and a Japanese lunch or dinner set (one or two dishes with rice and miso-soup) 800-1600 (4-8 pounds). A conveyor belt sushi bar can satisfy you with only 1200 yen (6 pound). You can, of course, spend as much money as you want for a luxurious table of real French or Chinese, or an elegant Japanese meal served in delicate courses (from 10000 yen (50 pounds)).
Etiquette
The most important etiquette is to finish a plate. Of course you can leave it if you didn’t like it, but generally speaking, Japanese, especially those who belong to older generations, feel reluctant to leave food on their plates, and it may well be the case that they have similar concern when you do so. Other important thing to remember is the usage of chopsticks (hashi). It is OK to use them badly, but there are several (20 or so!) taboos. Most of them belong to a common sense (don’t call a waiter by beating a table with chopsticks, etc.), but two are avoided because these reminds one of a Buddhist funeral. One is making chopsticks stand up in a rice bowl, the other is handing food over to the other person using chopsticks, which people only do with bones of the dead, wishing the person can reach the other shore.
Useful Links:
Japan restaurant association
Tokyo food page
Eat-japan.com
Japan-guide.com
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