I’m Sorry, Japanese Food
I watched intently as the aunty sitting across the table spooned a fat dollop of wasabi onto her sauce dish. “Don’t reach for the soy sauce,” I silently begged. But it was futile. If you have ever eaten at a Japanese restaurant in these parts of Southeast Asia, you know that the next thing she did was to drown the poor wasabi in a Dead Sea of soy sauce. As if that wasn’t cruel enough, she poked and prodded at the green horseradish corpse until it finally surrendered and dissolved into brown mush. The wasabi and soy sauce were now one, to the chagrin of all Japanese chefs in the world. I shook my head, then picked up my nigiri and dipped it into my own murky wasabi-soy sauce mixture. I too, am guilty of that crime.
It’s the way we have eaten sushi around here for as long as I remember. My mum does it. My friends do it. My fellow diners do it. Could it be our Malaysian tastebuds — desensitised by the intensity of deeply flavoured food? Even if they know that a fresh slice of fish can taste subtly sweet, when wasabi is applied gently and directly with just a dab of soy to seal in the flavour, like me, they choose to ignore it. Sushi is just tastier drenched in nose-clearing sauce.
Unfortunately, that soy sauce trick is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the other abysmal things we are guilty of, things that probably violate all the rules in Japanese dining etiquette. Here are a few more.
Biting Habits
We were taught since we were young children to take small bites of our food because, “later you choke then you know.” Growing up with that in our heads, we inadvertently brought it right into unsuspecting sushi restaurants. Experts say that Japanese food, from presentation right down to consumption, is meant to resemble exquisite art. Speaking from experience, biting a slice of raw fish into bite-sized pieces is certainly not pretty, and having grains of rice falling off the corners of one’s mouth is really unbecoming — trust me, I learnt that the hard way. It actually takes sushi chefs as long as 17 years to master their craft — that includes making that piece of sushi you’re gnawing to death in a perfect one-bite size. Sadly, it takes us just about three seconds to ruin it by spitting a piece of half-mauled fish back on the plate. One bite only, please.
The Chopstick Combat
In the earlier days, franchised sushi joints like Sushi King were the only connection mid-income KL folks had to Japanese food. A significant part of the dining ritual included wooden chopsticks, which are different from our disposable takeaway chopsticks — those were cheap trinkets in an equally cheap, flimsy plastic. These, on the other hand, are refined and tediously enveloped in a crisp, white paper. The first order of business at the table was always to pass chopsticks around, much like a rite of passage that enters you into eating Japanese. After unsheathing it like a battle sword from its scabbard, we break the sticks apart with the full intensity of cracking a knuckle, listening out for that same satisfying ‘pop’.
Then comes the real crime. We begin to rub the chopsticks together — often out of habit than necessity, as we were told that it helps to rid the chopsticks of wooden splinters. Seriously? When have we ever heard of anyone getting a splinter while eating Japanese food? The problem with this seemingly harmless pre-meal activity is that it suggests that we think the utensils are cheap, and that is actually a grave insult to the restaurant. So of all the rules we break when having Japanese food, I’m convinced that this is the mother lode. In fact, rubbing chopsticks together are considered so intolerable that most restaurants now use melamine chopsticks in place of wooden ones. Coincidence? I think not.
Our erroneous ways of eating Japanese food may continue to be the bane of chefs and restaurants for now, but we’ll get there, one slice at a time. Start slow and know that while eating it the right way may feel a little peculiar at first, it’s also not so hard to do. Next time, resist the temptation to dunk that fish into the Dead Sea, to torture your chopsticks, or to butcher your lovingly made sushi, and you might just find yourself enjoying the Japanese experience a little more. Lastly, take comfort in knowing that we Malaysians have actually been doing one thing right — we finish every bit of our food just like the Japanese do! That’s gotta be the most important part anyway, right?
