Foodculture!
Why food in Japan is better
I like food. Not only because I am a chubby girl and when I am bored, but as part of cultural experience, as a social tool with a function, and as pure enjoyment. In Germany and, as I have learned recently, in the UK as well, eating is meant for nutrition purposes only. At a certain time you have breakfast, a couple of hours later it’s lunch, then dinner. You sit down, eat, and go off to do whatever it is you do. And oh, the looks you get when food in your family means something else. From my childhood I remember families that were not allowed to talk during the meal and families in which everybody had to simply eat what mother made, to the very last bit. As a child, seeing this always shocked me.
In my family meals were always a social gathering: Once a day, mostly in the evenings, everybody sat down around our little table in the kitchen, there was good food, healthy food, almost always with friends, grown ups or kids, talking, forking up the cold leftovers, a glass of wine for the adults. Us children were treated if not as equals then at least as human beings with our own opinions and tastes, picking up new words and different world views as art, religion, music, and life were discussed. We also always knew where the food we ate came from. Even growing up in a big city, no child of my mother’s ever thought strawberries grew on trees or milk simply came from the supermarket. The cottage in the countryside that we spent our weekends in did not only make a TV set obsolete (we never had one) but also taught us how delicious warm milk, almost straight from the cow, tastes and how and when salads and potatoes grow.
In my opinion, looking at food only as a source of physical nutrition is almost tragic. Maybe a McD Happy Meal deserves this (if you are willing to call them a “meal”) but certainly not yummy veggies that took a long time to grow and a real meal that has been prepared from those with love. To me, every part of any given meal should be adored and enjoyed. That starts with the shopping and goes twice for meat because that was once a living animal and thus deserves extra espect. I wish I had the time, possibilities, and the money to go buy all my food straight from a farmer who grew, slaughtered, and made everything himself. That is my dream shopping experience.
But in Germany, and even more so in Britain, I don’t see this love for food. Instead people just put anything in their mouths, chew, and swallow, as long as it fills the stomach. People buy what’s cheap (nothing wrong with that, I have to, too) or they buy stuff with an organic seal. Generalizing, I think that the first is bought without looking at the quality and the second is bought for image reasons.
In Japan it is hard to find organic seals. I saw some shops, rather small, but most of those often offer mainly babyfood and cosmetics. Why is that? Don’t the Japanese care about their food?
Quite the opposite! Often food around here is pretty much organic, only lacking an official seal. And locally sourced, too. Everywhere, even in a megacity such as Tokyo, you can see vegetable patches or small plantations growing apples, pears, grapes. Often the vegetables are sold on the side of the roads in little, unmanned stalls where you just leave a coin or two and take a bag of veggies grown by your neighbors. In almost every frontyard there is some kind of fruitbearing tree, pomgranates, oranges, I´ve seen it all. Most veggies that you can buy in japanese supermarkets are in season and most likely grow somewhere in the country.
„In season“ is a good cue: very popular around here. The seasons are not just there to endure, no, you celebrate and adore them. Spring is coming, let’s go and look at all the pretty blossoms. In fall? Look at the falling leaves with their beautiful colors. And we are not taking about a small group of nature-lovers doing this, we are talking about the whole country going crazy because cherry blossoms started to bloom. This makes the news! And with a new season there comes new food. And if you’re serious, wealthy enough, and lucky enough to have the storage room, you even get to use the seasonal china with distinct patterns for each season. In spring, every shop has something sakura (cherryblossom) flavoured, in fall it’s chestnuts that rule. And roasted sweet potatoes. When it gets cold you are offered „Oden“ everywhere, a soup full of mysterious looking things that are mostly made of fish. And „nabemono“, thick soups and hot pots full of thin strips of yummy meat, potatoes and other veggies. Nothing for those that count their calories, but so nice, warm, and social as they are usually eaten in groups while chatting away and drinking a couple of beers. Doesn‘t that already sound gloriously wintery and yummy?
And every single ingredient is tasted and enjoyed seperately by the eaters. Often the list of ingredients is short, seldom containing actual spices apart from the inevitable soy sauce, and the taste is not very strong but rather subtle and refined. Much more subtle than a german Mehlschwitze or a thick gravy (which I also happen to like). In Japan you’re all happy to stand in line for 45 minutes to get a bowl of rice with fresh salmon and salmon roe, seasoned only with a tiny shot of soy sauce. That almost sounds boring as we are used to a wide array of spices, sauces and ingredients, but it is delicious in its simplicity because you can fully taste the salmon that almost melts on your tongue and you can let the little roe bubbles burst in your mouth.
The Japanese enjoy their food. In a very different way than Europeans do. Having grown up in a city close to the ocean where people take pride in being called „fishheads“ and claim to eat a lot of fish, I swear I have never seen as many different fish as I have strolling over the Tukiji Fishmarket in Tokyo on a sunday morning. And almost every part of the fish is eaten or used here. The flippers for example are dried and enjoyed with a glass of beer as a snack in bars. I applaud this.
One hint towards this special relationship with food is how everybody queues for restaurants without complaining. One could interpret that as an amazing ability to just do as you’re told or as bizarre group behavior, but I for my part believe that if the Japanese know a restaurant or a certain dish therein is good, it will be worth the wait. In Germany, people see a crowded restaurant and just move to the next one where they’ll be seated immediately because their stomachs are going to be filled just as good.
A difference in the way food is treated can be seen in the lunches that children and workers take with them, too. While there has been ongoing fights to make better quality food available in schools in Britain, German kids get a Butterbrot (pretty much a boring sandwich) and maybe an apple or a banana if the parents care for being healthy, sometimes some yoghurt. In Japan, making take-away lunch, bento, is an artform. Whole books are dedicated to this and scholars write articles about it. A husband will seldom get the same lunch as his daughter; he’ll get a simple, bigger box in adult, “manly” colors such as blue, green, or black, filled with something healthy, balanced and stomach filling. A child will get something colorful and balanced, something pretty as well as healthy, if it’s still small and the mother has the time, it will have a cute box and funny faces made from the food. A bento is always well balanced, both in color choices and nutrition. Always in pretty bento boxes that are available everywhere and at all prices and often wrapped in a pretty and seasonally themed furoshiki cloth to keep everything together. This has nothing to do with japanese mothers loving their family more than german or british mothers, it is simply a question of how to treat and deal with food and of how important it is that meals are asthetically pleasing, tasty, and well balanced.
Food to-go is hard to find in Japan. Even if you are not sitting down and eating it where it is sold it is most often taken back home or to the office or wherever else people go to have food. Seeing people with coffee cups from one notorious global chain or the other has increased, but it is still a rather rare sight in Tokyo. In fact, serving food is still quite the understated show in Japan. I remember my grandmother’s good china that came out on special occasions only. If the meal was special there had to be special china.
In Japan that is the norm. Cups and bowls, glasses and plates are picked with care, often not „matching“ to honor the Wabi Sabi thought, but almost always so beautiful. In the best case, as mentioned above, with seasonal patterns. Never forget your four seasons! And the meal is not put on one single plate in front of you. No, everything has it’s own piece of tableware. In a good restaurant (and even in those that are not particularly high class) the menu is arranged with care and thought, from the colors to the tastes to the little bowls. Often the waiter explains how to combine what or in what order it would be best to eat what he puts in front of you so to allow it to unfold its best taste.
Let’s remember how Sushi is eaten, even abroad. You get fish on rice, soysauce, grated wasabi, and pickled ginger. To have it taste its best you are supposed to gently dip the sushi roll fishside down into the soysauce that, if you like that, is mixed with some of the hot wasabi. Mmmh, enjoy. Soysauce and wasabi will bring out the delicate flavor of the fish perfectly. Then you eat some of the pickled ginger to refresh your tastebuds, to get the taste of the sushi you just ate out of your mouth to make room for the next. That is such a refined system! Simple but smart. Who can name a german or british or american dish that employs such cleverness, a dish that has been thought out so elaborately?
In my six months of living in Tokyo I have not once eaten anything that was not good. And I did not frequent high class restaurants only, quite the opposite.
The importance of a balanced meal can be seen in the fact that in most restaurants, even the cheapest ones, you get a salad or pickled vegetables and a miso soup with your main dish, along with free water or green tea. It is very rare that you only get the main course you ordered and if that is the case it is most likely because that in itself is already perfectly balanced.
Another thing that comes to mind when we’re talking about the importance of food for the Japanese is something that foreigners often notice: they talk about it. All. The. Time. Food is not only a part of life that you endure to survive, no, it is celebrated and it is an event. If somebody has cooked or eaten something nice they will report to their friends about it. There are countless magazines dedicated to cooking and food and restaurants, there are books, movies, television series, that revolve around this topic and hardly any TV show, morning shows, talkshows, you name it, will not sooner or later talk about or show food.
„What did you eat this weekend?“ is an acceptble question on mondays in Japan and not strange at all.
I will not start talking about traditional kaiseki ryori, that is a whole different story. That is like Zen in bowls. Only very tasty.
And just so that I am being understood here: I do like german food. I am getting used to the british version of food. I like all sorts of foods, I love them, in fact. I am happy to have hashbrowns and roasts and gulash and my grandmother’s Knödel and buttery sauces and thick gravy as much as the next guy. I do not think that Japan is flawless and the land of milk and honey. But the difference in how food is treated just stands out. I am guessing this is also the case if you look at food culture in France or Italy and compare it to that in northern Europe. The way we treat food just feels… a bit loveless. And since I am a little bit obsessed with food and cooking, japanese food culture with its deep love for food and all the talk about it and the care for preparation and ingredients that borders on obsession is just so very relatable to me. And I feel we do need a little bit of that here in the north, too.