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FOOD - Many of you have asked me questions about food and eating. As my former second graders know, my chopstick maneuvering skills were lacking. Fortunately, they improved quickly as forks and knives were not always readily available. Almost every Japanese meal (breakfast, lunch and supper) was eaten with chopsticks. Actually, it seemed as though many of the same types of food were served at every Japanese meal. I had rice, fish and pickled vegetables at breakfast, lunch and supper. There are many choices available in Japan, especially in the cities. For instance, for breakfast, I usually ate in a restaurant in my hotel which offered a buffet with traditional Japanese foods or "western-style foods" or Japanese or "western" breakfasts which were served to me. Japanese breakfasts sometimes consisted of miso soup, slightly cooked salmon, sweet eggs, pickled cabbage, rice and a few things I could not identify. Lunch generally consisted of strips of seaweed, rice, raw fish, pickled cabbage and other veggies and maybe a slice or two of melon and some local cherries. Dinner was usually either tempora (battered, fried fish, shrimp, or veggies-like eggplant. However, one could choose to eat at an Italian restaurant, a McDonald's, a Korean restaurant or a variety of other restaurants. The best food I ate was at the home of my host family. Mrs. Kawakura made an awesome miso soup. She told me that her secret is that she uses fish from the market to make her broth where many restaurants use a powder mix-in to make their broths. I also came to love sushi (vinegared rice with raw fish on top), sashimi (sliced raw fish) and sweet eggs. My least favorite items are nato (soybeans in some type of stringy bacteria - many Japanese people love this - one must have to acquire the taste for it)and salmon eggs. In most restaurants we ate sitting on pillows on the floor. Sometimes we sat on chairs. There is one Japanese habit in particular that I may appreciated. Restuarants provide a warm wet cloth to customers at the beginning of every meal to wash one's hands.
One Japanese tradition is to serve others at your table when they need food or drink.
Name:
Anne O'Brien