ALL THE FOOD - Myles & Sarah

Japan is so well known for what was and is staple foods: sushi, udon, ramen. But there is also many different kinds of fusion and foreign influences in cooking styles and food variety.  Our focus this week was on the more traditional foods, as well as the numerous bakeries with foreign influence; notably French.

Some of the traditional foods that we've encountered during out time here have been the various types of noodle bowls.  Ramen joints are popular and abundant, and tiny fast-food style restaurants dot the streets offering quick bowls of noodles to salarymen and passersby.  Udon and soba are the common choices in these style restaurants, whereas ramen is generally served with variations in broth and toppings.

Myles's Thoughts

One of the best parts of being in Japan so far has been enjoying the local food. It’s cheap, it’s delicious, and it’s everywhere. One of my favourite Japanese foods so far has been chicken karaage. Chicken karaage is essentially small pieces of fried chicken, but it’s definitely not like your standard western fried chicken. My best guess is that it has something to do with the cut of meat, seasoning, and breading they use. It’s just so flavourful and the breading, when done well, is just amazing. I’ve had the opportunity to have it on may occasions so far, at a buffet, at our welcome party, on rice from the school cafeteria, and even in curry. Every time it seems to get more and more delicious.

Speaking of food on rice, another very popular dish here is donburi. Donburi is very broadly defined; it could essentially be considered any sort of food placed on top of rice in a bowl. It does, however, illustrate the importance of rice in Japan. Rice is usually considered to be the main part of the dish, with meat, vegetables, and anything else serving as an accompaniment or side dish to the rice. This runs contrary to Western ways of thinking, where the starch is usually considered the side to some sort of meat dish. Thus far, I’ve been able to try karaage don and ten don. No, ten don is not the nasty part of an animal no one wants to eat. The ten comes from the天 in 天ぷら (Romanised as tenpura). Both were delicious, and it was actually really nice to have a lot of plain, hearty rice to cut the richness of the fried foods on top.

(Karaage don)

Now we jump back to curry. Amazing, delicious Japanese curry. Japan has taken this dish, which finds its origins in India, and made it their own in a big way. It’s a staple of every household and every cafeteria in Japan, it’s just that good. Japanese curry is usually lighter on seasonings and spiciness than Indian curry, often includes some kind of pickled vegetable, and is usually served with rice and some other component to round out the dish. Let me tell you, everything tastes better with curry. Rice, vegetables, meat, fried things, everything. If I could eat curry every day for every meal for the rest of my life I just might. I’ve had curry on several occasions so far. In fact, the first breakfast I had here was hamburger steak breakfast curry from the school cafeteria. Since then, I’ve had chicken curry, katsu curry, croquette curry, curry, curry, and more curry. I actually had the best curry thus far just yesterday. It was at a little hole in the wall joint where everyone just sat around the bar-type-thing and told the single obaa-san running the restaurant from the center what they wanted. I got the mix curry, which came with karaage, meatballs, and a hard boiled egg. It was one of the best meals I’ve had yet by far. It was creamy, just the right amount of spicy, and the meat accompaniments went very well with the sauce. The place also had amazing service. The cook even brought me tissues when she noticed I was sniffling from the heat of the curry. If I could remember the name of the place, I would definitely recommend it.

(Mix curry)

Lastly, I’ll talk about one of the dishes that Japan is most famous for, sushi. I didn’t actually have sushi for quite sometime after I got to Japan. Then I had a lot of it, all at once. I usually feel sick at just the thought of sushi if I eat it too often, but that hasn’t been the case here. I guess that’s a testament to just how good Japanese sushi is. I think I went to kaitenzushi three times just last week. Kaitenzushi is a type of sushi restaurant where you order sushi on an electronic menu and it’s brought to you on a conveyor belt. The variety of sushi there was awesome. Salmon, unagi (barbequed eel), ebi (shrimp), the list goes on. Unagi is still my favourite by far. It’s light, tender, moist and delicious. One of my new top picks though is maguro (bluefin tuna) sushi. It has such a rich, meaty taste, about as close as you can get to having steak in the fish world. Then there’s all the crazy sushi I’ve had at kaitenzushi. I went once with my host family, at which time the dad just kept telling me to try a piece and take the challenge, and I just kept saying yes. This resulted in me trying uni, kanimiso, and shirako sushi. Uni is also known as sea urchin. I’ve heard it’s supposed to have a rich, buttery taste but that was not the experience I had. It tasted very alkaline and unpleasant, though maybe that was from the leaf in between the sushi and the rice? Kanimiso is basically crab guts. It wasn’t actually that bad, fairly creamy but that taste wasn’t super great and I probably wouldn’t try it again. The last and the weirdest was shirako. I had no idea what it was until I Googled it immediately after eating it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so surprised after eating something and everyone at the table got a good laugh out of it. Shirako is translated to English as “soft roe”. This translation is completely misleading. For the uninformed, shirako is the organ used by male fish to spray their sperm in species who reproduce by dispersing their gametes in the water. The ponzu jelly it was served with was sour, alkaline, and completely disgusting. I couldn’t even taste the shirako itself. I could, however, feel it. I don’t even know how to describe the texture, but it wasn’t pleasant. I’m told that high quality shirako has a very creamy taste and texture, but I won’t be trying it any time soon. Anyways, I could yammer on and on about Japanese food, it’s one of the things I’m going to desperately miss when I’m gone. But, for now, I’ll end it here. Moral of the story, eat Japanese food, and never stop eating it.

(Kaitenzushi)

Sarah's Thoughts

Despite being a very technologically advanced country, Japan still retains a lot of its older traditional foods, which can be found in their breakfast foods, or in the amount of attention and devotion that goes into their food preparation and cooking.  100-yen breakfasts are very cheap, very filling, and often accompanied by miso soup - an old standby for breakfast foods.  The foods range from curry, to broiled fish in a mirin-miso sauce, to sandwiches.

Breakfast aside, there are a million different places to eat lunch or supper at.  Quick-serving noodle joints, ramen restaurants, curry shops, as well as other country-featured foods like Indian or Italian can be found all nestled along the same street.  The noodles are cooked just right, drowning in a bowl of delicious broth: tonkatsu (pork-bone broth) is a staple, as is shio (salt) and shoyu (soy sauce) based broths.  Chasiu (pork meat), nori (seaweed) and some green vegetable garnish the noodles, and some places often offer other toppings, such as bamboo shoot, onions, or extras of chasiu or seaweed.

Definitely one thing that I've noticed is that when serving food, there is lots of smaller side-dishes that make up the overall meal.  At the homestay, two of the meals consisted of smaller dishes - pickles, salad, rice, and meat and vegetables.  And although they are all presented on different plates, there is a cohesion to the flavours.  Everything is fresh too, from the fish to the vegetables, which adds to the Japanese tendency to not over-flavour their cuisine.

One of the last things I've noticed about food in Japan is the abundance of French bakeries, and the variety of bread and baking available in konbini and grocery stores.  Whatever the reason, French baking and pastries have become commonplace in Japan; there's all kinds of shops selling croissants and rolls, or the crepe stands that litter the sidestreets in Harajuku.  The kinds of breads that are sold - like melon pan (bread) or the cream-filled buns - have distinct Japanese touches, like matcha flavouring or lack of sweetener or sugar.  Overall, despite being projected as one of the most expensive places in the world, the food is relatively cheap, extremely delicious, and well worth the experience. 

Kimono and Cultural Appropriation - Gabriela & Taylor

This is Taylor and Gabriela, here to discuss Kimono; its history, different styles of kimono, and whether or not foreigners should wear kimono. 

Before the Heian Period, Kimono was simply a word to describe clothing and only those of high status wore anything ornate. During the Heian period, straight cut kimonos became commonplace as it made work on kimonos easier for the makers. With this style of cut the maker need not take in the wear's proportions to make the kimono. This way everyone could wear a kimono and at a decent price. Kimono then became commonplace to wear around town. 

There are a variety of Kimono types and styles and the list is much too long to possibly name them all. That being said there are a few more interesting ones to point out.
Komon - this kimono has a simple pattern and is considered everyday wear. 
Yukata - worn for summer festivals and not much else. 
Furisode - worn by unmarried women as shown by the long sleeves to mark marital status. 

We visited two kimono shops within the last week, one was rather fancy and up-scale, the other was humble and small (cute). Taylor felt rather uncomfortable going into the expensive shop as she felt she was being judged for just standing there. In the smaller one we felt much more comfortable walking around and looking through the merchandise. The yukatas we saw were mostly of the furisode style with the long sleeves to indicate that the women wearing them would be unmarried. 

Cultural Appropriation is when a specific part of a culture is taken by someone not of that culture and worn or used in the likeness of a costume. When it comes to kimono, the safe thing to do would be to wait and be invited to wear it by the people of Japan, otherwise you get people who wear the kimono as a bathrobe, and disregard the cultural significance of the item. Cultural Appropriation has become a big discussion as of recent times as we see more and more culturally significant items and practices being taken and warped to suit others needs. 

Cute.