Hey you misunderstand about Japan! < 2 >

<2> Do you like spicy food?

After you tell how much you like Sushi and where your favorite Sushi place in your city is, your next question could be this. If I like spicy food or not. This is an easy question for me. My answer is, yes I like hot spices. They add colorful taste on your dishes and can promote our health. How great!!

But wait… we are talking about Japanese food, aren’t we…?

It’s time to realize that you really don’t know about Japanese food. Because you mixed all Asian cuisine together. Thanks to global trade and the close distance between Asian countries which has very hot cuisine, we can enjoy a variety of hot taste in Japan. However, basic Japanese taste is not spicy. We have sugar, salt, vinegar, soy sauce and miso for the basic Japanese taste. Also, dashi, which is soup from fish or seaweed, is an important part of Japanese taste. The taste of dashi is identified as the fifth taste, “umami” together with sweetness, saltiness, sourness and bitterness. So, as you read Japanese taste is not so spicy.

Of course we also have spicy taste. 山椒 [sansyo] is known as Japanese pepper. One of the common kinds of chilli pepper in Japan is 鷹の爪 [taka no tsume] which means a falcon’s nail. Cool, right? I guess you would like to cook Japanese food with the falcon’s nail. Don’t worry you will not have fire in your mouth. You don’t need a lot of them to cook Japanese cuisine. A small piece of Japanese spices can add pungency on your tongue and your life.