A taste of Japan

I believe you can learn a lot about a culture by looking at the things the people eat and how they eat them. Before I came to Japan all I knew about Japanese food was sushi rolls filled with avocado and tuna, so when I came here, and since I like fish and rice very much, I thought it would be pretty easy to adapt to the food. Many surprises awaited me.

When I first entered a Japanese supermarket I was astonished at how different it was from the supermarkets in Mexico. While in my country you could buy cheese and ham by kilos choosing from a wide variety of them in special areas designated only for this purpose, in Japan you could only get them already packaged and in small amounts. I remember in one of my first visits to the supermarket, there were some sausages for sampling, so I tried one and to my surprise it was strawberry flavor!  Also, I knew that Japanese people ate seaweed, but what I did not know was that they had so many different kinds of it and that it could be used not only for wrapping rice in the form of temaki sushi but also in salads, soups and even tea (wakame cha). Visiting the supermarket was an adventure, finding thngs I didn't know what they were made of or what they were used for.

My first home style Japanese food was in New Year’s Eve. My husband and I went to a home stay in Yamanashi- ken, at a cozy house in the country side were all the family members, the grandparents, the daughters, their husbands and the grandchildren spent these special days together. This reminded me of our Christmas tradition in Mexico, with all the families gathering together, sitting around the table and sharing the traditional dinner with turkey, salad and cod. For the Japanese New Year's Eve we sat around the kotatsu and instead of turkey we ate all kinds of Japanese dishes, from datemaki and kurikinton to ozooni and natto. Many of the New Year’s food, as I was explained, had a symbolic meaning: soba for longevity, kurikinton for happiness, kuromame for health, and so on.

As I started to realize, in Japan, food is involved in very different aspects of life and most of the times has a special meaning, in New Year people eat osechi food, in hinamatsuri green, white and pink rice cakes are eaten, in setsubun beans are thrown outside the house, during hanami parties people eat and drink under the cherry trees, etc. Through food, different moments of life are celebrated and values and traditions are preserved, passing from one generation to the next one.

One day, a Japanese friend invited me to her house to learn how to make miso paste. By then I already knew how to make miso soup so I found it interesting to see how the miso paste was made. Boiling the soy beans, smashing them and then mixing them with salt and the rest of the ingredients to make the paste seemed like a long and tiring process, but when my friend told me that I would need to wait 8 months before I could even open the container then I thought that I would definitely not try to do it again. After all, isn’t it easier to buy it ready to use at the supermarket? Then I came to understand an enormous difference between Japan and many western cultures where things that once were made at home are now readily available at the stores and for this reason the younger generations do not even bother to learn how to make them by themselves.

In a world where globalization is present in every aspect of life Japan is striving to keep its own traditions and culture. I remember one visit we made in late January to an elementary school to participate in the rice cake- making festival. The children received us early on a Saturday morning and before making any rice cakes, they took us on a tour hopping from classroom to classroom explaining us how to make an ikebana flower arrangement, letting us to try playing the koto, showing us how to paint suibokuga, and so on. And after taking all this tour through Japanese culture, we went outside where we had our chance to hit the mochi and finally eat the rice cakes. This nine- year old kids not only had knowledge of their culture but were also very enthusiastic in showing it to others.

As I have seen many times now, the Japanese are very proud of their own culture and are not easily charmed by traditions and costumes imported from the west, at least when it comes to food. They may eat hamburgers but in their own version with seaweed and rice instead of bread, as you may find them in Moss Burguer. They may eat curry, but prepared Japanese style.

The Japanese people also give health an important place, especially when it comes to food. At schools children are taught that sugar is bad for their teeth and are encouraged not to eat sugary things. One of my Japanese friends, who has a 2- year old kid, always brings a bag of sembe and karinto with her in case her son wants a snack. She explained to me that she would give her son only healthy food to eat. I was pretty much impressed by this, since in Mexico most children eat sweets all the time, from a very early age. Also, in many cases it is becoming more and more common for their mothers to fill their school lunch boxes with junk food, because it is easier and faster to prepare. Fortunately globalization has not brought this tendency to Japan yet.

Sometimes I believe that, even though Japan re-opened contact with the outside world nearly 150 years ago they still have managed to keep western influences outside. In Japan there is a sense of harmony and equilibrium, of cleanness and perfection that can be found not only in the beautiful calligraphy works or in the ikebana arrangements but also in the way food is arranged, in the way the sushi is shaped and placed on the plate and in the way the shiso leaves wrap the Japanese sweets. There are very few things more perfect than an　いちご　大福　sliced in two.

Living in Japan has taught me that there is more than one way to do things, and for many instances in Japan the way of doing something is not exactly the one that I would expect. It is all a matter of perspectives, for example, in Mexico we have many typical dishes made from kabocha flowers, something that would probably seem strange for a Japanese, and by the same token, in Japan there are many typical dishes made from seaweed, something that would be strange for a Mexican who has never had contact with Japanese food before. The same happens with beans, in Mexico the only way of preparing beans is salty while in Japan is sweet.

Besides our gastronomic differences, there are other cultural differences that I have come to appreciate, from my very first day in Japan. I remember I was given a paper that explained in detail how I should separate the gomi, the colors of the bags where it should be disposed and the days of disposal. When I first saw it I thought it was some kind of joke, I had heard before about separating the garbage into organic and inorganic items but never into more than two groups. I found the whole thing annoying, since I had to separate the paper labels from the cans, the plastic labels from the PET bottles, wash the paper containers and so forth. This looked like a lot of trouble, especially because I knew that in my country things were much easier, just throw away everything in one bag and that’s it, end of story. However, if I were to go back to my country right now, I would feel strange throwing everything away in the same bag. The reason is not just because I got used to separate things, but because I have come to understand the reason why this is done. The purpose of separating the garbage is in order to recycle it, to have a cleaner environment and make a better future for us and the generations to come.

Coming from a western society where individuals are mostly concerned about their own needs, I found impressive this level of social consciousness that is not limited only to garbage recycling. I recall reading on　the signboard of a school classroom: のど　が　いたい　とき　せき　が　でる　とき　は　マスク　を　しょう。I even took a picture of this. I found it interesting since in my country, if the child is sick neither the parents nor the teachers tell him to wear a mask. In contrast, in Japan, school children learn the importance of caring for and respecting others. This may be way their society is so peaceful.

I believe food has an influence in the peacefulness of Japanese people. According to some yoga books, there are three kinds of foods: rajasik, tamasik and sattvik. In Mexico, the cooking methods and ingredients of many dishes would be like that of the rajasik type, which is mainly frying and using spices and chilies. Therefore, the character of the people is spicy just like the food they eat, impatient, exalted and sometimes effervescent. In Japan on the other hand, people tend to eat foods more like the sattvik type, which are supposed to be good foods not only for the body but also for the spirit; not to sweet, not to greasy, cooked with the minimum amount of spices or seasonings, with all its ingredients as natural as possible, in other words just healthy. Could this be the reason why the Japanese people are so kind and so calm? I do not know for sure, but what I do know is that one can find these characteristics in the Japanese people.


Going back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, it is possible to learn things about a culture depending on what they eat and how they eat it. I came to learn a lot about Japanese culture by just taking an interest in their food and everything that surrounds it. I know I still have a long way to go and many new things to discover. I know some of them will be very pleasant like a bowl of oden in winter time and others will be not as nice, like a bowl of rice with natto. However, this will certainly change and enrich the way I see Japan, my own culture and finally, the world.