Sorry for the break in updates. I just got back from Chicago a few days ago, and had to prepare to go out to Northern California tomorrow.

I’m taking a break from language today. Today, we’re going to talk about food.

I’m a sucker for cultures that love and care about food. As a species, eating is a necessity, and every culture on the planet has created dishes with unique flavor and character. Some cultures, however, have turned food into an art. In some places, eating is more than something you do to prevent death. Mealtime is a ritual, and cooking is serious business. I was pleased to discover that Japan is one of these places.

Chopsticks (箸, hashi, in Japanese) usually come to mind when Westerners think of Japanese food. I hear a lot of Westerners claim that they know how to use chopsticks. I thought I knew how to use chopsticks, too. Here are some things that I did not know:

• It’s most polite to hold your chopsticks in your right hand, even if you’re left handed.
• It’s possible to cut food with chopsticks by putting both ends into the foot and pull outward. Most Japanese food found in the US is in small pieces, so cutting isn’t really necessary, but a lot of real Japanese food needs to be cut, and you won’t be offered knives.
• Chopsticks are different in different cultures. Chinese chopsticks are longer, and have a square section to hold onto. Japanese chopsticks are round, and taper to a pointed end, making it easier to eat whole, bony fish.
• Sticking chopsticks into your rice vertically symbolizes death, and will earn you some concerned looks.

In the West, food comes in courses. You’re given one dish at a time, and the meal ends with desert. In Japan, you sit down to more food than you can comprehend:

You sit on the floor and approach every dish one at a time until you’re completely stuffed. Then you finish the meal off with miso, then rice to settle your palette. (By the way, that’s a yukata that I’m wearing. Yes, it made me feel silly the first few times, but they’re actually quite comfortable. Besides, nothing made me feel as silly as not wearing it when everyone else was.)

As far as actual dishes go, most Japanese food isn’t found in American-Japanese restaurants (I only had sushi once or twice during my entire stay, despite its fame in the US). Here are some dishes I enjoyed:

Ikezukuri. A live fish. At the restaurant, they’ll have a pond of fish, and when someone orders one, they’ll take it out of the pond, wash it, and serve it. The fish is actually dead when you’re eating it, but, because its nervous system is so simple, it continues to fidget around (No pain, though! It’s brain dead). Here’s a video of my experience:

The style of restaurant above is called izakaya.

Engawa. The fin of a flounder, prepared in a special way. It’s a delicacy.

Enormous oysters. This was the biggest oyster I’ve ever seen in my life. It was also the most delicious.

Onigiri. Rice balls are filling, and very portable. They come in a variety of flavors.

The one on the left is packed with seaweed, and the one on the right is packed with ikura (salmon’s eggs.) In the back is melon bread.

Milk and fruit. Until I went to Japan, I was convinced that milk tasted like milk and fruit tasted like fruit. Midori brought over some milk in a food mart and insisted that I try it, claiming that I had never tasted milk like Japanese milk. I was skeptical, but I tried it, assuming that there would be some subtle difference that my Western palette would be unable to detect.

I’ll never be able to describe exactly what Japanese milk tastes like, and why it’s so good. It would be like describing the color red to a blind person. You take a sip, and it tastes like normal milk in every way for the first split-second. Then, a split-second later, you taste something completely new. It’s not strange or weird, just incredible. Fruit is the same way. Apples taste just like apples, but better. Peaches taste just like peaches, but to an extent that I never could have imagined.

Teuchi soba. Handmade buckwheat noodles. We stepped into a shop in Shirakawagou, an historic village that’s remained perfectly untouched since the Tokugawa shogunate.



I always hate to come to the end of something, but I’ll never taste teuchi soba quite as good as these:



And the rice there had shirasu, which are baby eels or sardines. Their eyes fall out easily, and they flavor the rice:


(Above three pictures are by Adam Rothman.)

Candy! Candy is delicious! Especially in Japan!

I also highly recommend ochazuke, or tea-soaked rice. It’s exactly what it sounds like: you take a bowl of rice and pour a nice cup of tea all over it until it’s completely saturated. It’s heavy, but it’s very relaxing after a meal.

I’m in Northern California from the first to the third, after which I’ll be making a few posts about culture and tradition in Japan. That should just about wrap it up for Japan before I leave for the Isle of Man on the 7th. I’ll see you all then.