Food and Cooking
Food is always an important topic no matter where you go. Japanese food is nothing new to me and it shouldn’t be to any of my fellow Californians. California is lucky to have such a diversity of ethnic food to choose from and an abundant amount of Japanese restaurants. Before I came to Japan, when I thought of Japanese food, the first things that came to my mind were sushi, raw fish (sashimi), and teriyaki chicken or beef. To me, those comprised the essentials of Japanese cuisine. However, once I started living in Japan, it opened my eyes to the wide spectrum and the variety of food Japan has to offer.
There are tons of Japanese restaurants in Tokyo and I’m sure there’s a fair amount of people that eat out. However, I learned that Japanese families tend to eat in a lot. I know this is definitely true for countryside families such as my town because on weekdays and even on weekends, the restaurants in Ogawa are rather empty. It still amazes me how these restaurants stay in business! Many families eat in because one, it is very expensive to eat out, like everything else in Japan = expensive, and two, I think that many Japanese families still maintain the tradition of eating together at home to a nice home cooked meals. In some ways, cooking is part of the Japanese culture, maybe even an art form to some degree. They enjoy cooking, they take their time to cook, and they seek the highest quality and freshness of food. I learned that the Japanese people practically go food shopping at the supermarket everyday. I even notice myself making several trips to the market every week. Maybe its because I’m always very last minute about what I should cook for dinner, or the fact that I have a small fridge but if I try to shop for a week, I tend not to use up everything and something is bound to go bad real quick even if it’s in the fridge.
I miss fruits! Why don’t I buy some? Because they’re SUPER DUPER expensive!! Ok, I do buy fruits but it always breaks my heart how much I have to pay for them. During the summer time, I wanted to buy watermelon so badly because that is my favorite food. I tell people I can make a whole meal just eating watermelon. Well, a watermelon that would cost maybe 5 bucks in the Sates, it cost 15-20 bucks in Japan, OUCH! I finally broke down and sometimes I would buy quarter slices of watermelon for 3 to 4 bucks each. Now that it’s fall, there are kiwis from New Zealand and they’re about 60 cents each, kind of expensive I think, what do you think? Apples are about a dollar something each, and a cluster of grapes cost like 7 to 8 bucks. I practically don’t eat oranges because they’re always expensive so I stick to vitamin C tablets I brought from the states. The only fruit that is cheap is banana and I don’t know why. It’s only about a dollar something for five or 6 bananas.
So what do I cook or eat? At my apartment, my goal is to cook enough so I can be full. Tasting good is just a bonus! I try not to spend over 20 mins. cooking because frankly I’m not good at it but with practice I’m getting better. I’m not even good at slicing vegetables or know in what ways I should slice them in. I do have Japanese friends that are teaching me how to prepare Japanese dishes or to cook in general. The easiest thing I can make and I’ll be sure to get full on is “spaghetti.” It’s great that you can buy all these pre-made flavored sauces and all you have to do is heat it up in hot water. It’s easy and delicious! Ok, I’m not a total cooking retard, I need to eat and survive and it’ll force it out of me sometimes. Just look at the dish I made below. It looks pretty right? One thing about my cooking, it looks prettier than it taste for the most part. Ittadakimasu!! (something you say before you eat, like bon appetite in French.) There’s really no direct English translation for that word, it’s just a cultural thing. Go figure!
Tags: Travel
Tony
November 5th, 2004 at 2:09 pm
The food looks good to me!