Food Can Open a Door to a Culture
It can close it, too
Long before I’d even thought about going to Japan, Japanese cuisine was familiar because my husband had studied Japanese cooking and taught me some.
When I arrived here in 1975, I could already make a decent onigiri (rice ball) and knew to first toast the nori I wrapped it in.
I was aware umeboshi (salted pickled plums) are a digestive aid, and that nimono should be covered with otoshibuta (drop lid) to cook properly.
Still, since I’ve never taken a Japanese cooking class and have been cooking Japanese food for over 50 years, I wing it a lot and make up all sorts of dishes.
When I make ozoni, the traditional soup eaten at oshogatsu, New Years, I tell my family: “This is how they eat it in Tottori prefecture,” or, “This is the way it’s eaten in the Hokuriku region,” and there is no one to contradict me.
And I can stand my ground since Ōtani-san, who was our next door neighbor when we lived in the farming village, had my ozoni and told me he liked it better than his mother’s.
When my husband, who was then just my friend, introduced me to sashimi and sushi in San Francisco’s Japantown in 1967, it didn’t make much of an impression.
But by the time we arrived in Japan sushi was at the top of my list of favorite foods. And long ago I realized that the best answer to the question “Can you eat raw fish?” is an unhurried, “Oh, I don’t know. If you invite me to a sushi shop I’ll give it a try.”
My only experience eating eel had been in Denmark, where they smoke it. The first time I tasted the sweet-salty, sticky kabayaki I thought the Japanese had gotten it all wrong.
I not only adapted, grilled eel soon became another favorite, and our local unagiya “Yako” my favorite place to eat it. There, the master stood fanning and turning eel over glowing charcoal on a grill that opened to the street.
The aroma, wafting down the street, was irresistible. And it, along with the master’s welcoming smile, were always an invitation to enjoy the most delicious unagi to be had anywhere.
I admit it took me a long time, a full year in fact, to even try konnyaku. This root, pounded with ash, has different names in English, but I’ve stuck with the one I first learned, Devil’s Tongue jelly.
I can’t say konnyaku is an acquired taste because it has practically no taste. Gray and gelatinous, the texture is not like anything else I know. An essential ingredient in oden, a stew featuring fish cakes and daikon that I make regularly, I couldn’t imagine making it without konnyaku.
Some Japanese do not like natto (fermented soy beans) themselves, but a foreigner may be tested on their acceptance of Japanese food by whether or not they can eat it. I have to say putting the smelly slimy beans in my mouth the first time was almost an act of bravery.
Now, I’ve not only come to like natto but appreciate that these high-protein high-nutrient beans quickly satisfy hunger. My children, born in Japan, have always loved natto, and made it their go-to after-school oyatsu (snack).
And then there’s shiokara. I wish readers could see how my friend Keiko goes into raptures when she talks about fresh shiokara. I’ve eaten it, but somehow I just don’t find anything especially tantalizing or mouth-watering about raw salted squid innards.
But by far my biggest food-related culture shock has got to be the first time I bit into bread that had anko (sweet bean paste) in the middle. No can do. Not then. Not now. Ditto “melon cream sandwich”.
A British friend, a longtime resident of Yokohama, has told me that the only reason I like rice is because I’ve been “brainwashed”.
While he sings the glories of potatoes and will not suffer them to be maligned (he suffers little as his wife Noriko is an excellent cook of French cuisine), he says he cannot see the “point” of eating rice.
Rice was a staple in my home growing up, so when I came to Japan I could only laugh when I was told “Americans don’t eat rice”.
My father, a native of the Delta region of Mississippi, made many rice dishes, and his black-eyed peas and rice, gumbo, and rice pudding were simply the best.
Some years ago, 1994 to be precise, there was what was recognized as a rice shortage in Japan. Around that time, I had the following conversation with the women in my dance class:
“Karen-san, how are you handling the rice shortage?”
“I don’t think it’s such a big problem.”
“But it’s impossible to buy rice now.”
“I bought some yesterday.”
“Japanese rice?”
“It’s American rice, from California. It’s quite good, you know.”
“You think so?”
Yes, I do. And Master Chef Shizuo Tsuji, writing in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, says it’s “excellent”.
These women wanted to know if California rice really goes with Japanese food. As I agree not all varieties of foreign-grown rice accompany Japanese dishes well, I told them that the short-grain California rice seemed to complement it best.
While short-grain high quality rice imported from the United States may be mostly coming from California, among other states producing rice are Arkansas, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Texas, and yes, Mississippi.
It seems that, after all, the Japanese don’t call America Beikoku 米国 (literally “Rice Country”) for nothing.
Karen Hill Anton is the author of the award-winning memoir The View From Breast Pocket Mountain, and the novel A Thousand Graces. A resident of Shizuoka, Japan, more about the author and her writing can be found at https://www.karenhillanton.com
