Eating, Japan!

I have finally decided to deal with this little beast of a subject. Before I totally forget how completely different eating in Japan is (foods, food habits, how the habits relate to the culture etc) compared to that in the UK/ west in general.
I have already become completed accustomed to much of it now, so I have had to train my mind to bring English food and habits into the forefront of my brain for this post.

Seeing as I`m at school I`ll start with the school lunch. The big difference number 1, comparing a typical Japanese workplace, with a typical English one, is that many more workers will bring in a homemade packed lunch (bento) from home. There also is the option to buy the school lunch bento box which you can order in the morning and is then delivered to the teachers room (or office) at lunchtime (12 o`clock in Japan. Some schools lunchtimes even run from 11.30 to 12.30. I was curious about this earlier standard lunchtime compared to England. My supervisor said it`s because in Japan, it is not standard to have a mid-morning coffee/ snack break at 11 ish as in the UK).

An endearing feature of the Japanese workers and their homemade bentos is the fact they bring them into work wrapped up in a teatowel (always wrapped on the diagonal with a neat little knot at the top – unless the bento box they bought came with it`s own little cloth bag to be carried in – in which case the teatowel is unnecessary). It is very sweet. I think I am going to start doing it. I clattered around with my noisy plastic bags to prevent leaking. It`s just not so neat. But these days I just mainly buy rice balls for lunch in any case.

The bento box itself is an interesting thing. It is typically divided into two separate boxes. One box to put your rice, and the other to put your morsels of vegetables/ meat/ fish/ pickles. This is necessary because the Japanese don`t like to have their perfect rice being touched by any other food. The non-rice box is also likely to contain dividers so that you can put each different type of small vegetable/ meat/ fish/ pickle in a different section, so that these foods don`t have to touch each other either. This definitely reflects the slightly anal, small, little, controlled culture of Japan. (or perhaps it just reflects the fact they are all just in love with Japanese rice SO MUCH). Rice comprises half of the lunch. Most Japanese will eat rice as their carbohydrate for each meal of the day. They have a big lunch, I suppose, compared to the typical English lunch of a sandwich, yoghurt, fruit, chocolate. In Japan, they just have a lot of rice. After this kind of lunch Japanese (and me) aren`t hungry for fruit etc. (Japanese don`t eat very much fruit really). This rice heavy lunch also accounts for why they don`t snack much in the afternoon either like westerners will do much more.

The compartmentalized bento lunch (shop bought and made at home) is reflected in the experience of going out for a Japanese meal. So it is clearly traditionally how the Japanese like to eat. You will sit down, not to one plate, but typically to about 6 small plates. You might have one slightly more major dish, but still each person will have a several other mini-plates with morsels of this or that. (To take a recent example of the last meal I had in a Japanese restaurant. I had a big bowl of tempura (deep fried vegetables and seafood) on top of rice (actually, unusual in this case that the rice wasn`t separate – curious – normally ALWAYS is), then also there was a small plate of sushi, a plate of pickles, a plate of seaweed, a bean cake, a miso soup. And this was a cheap 5 quid meal! As was evident, the Japanese do eat big meals. This is something I have noticed in Japan. Japanese people do eat big portions (particularly of rice). I often always finish my food in Japanese restaurants too. In fact it is the chubby westerners who often complain they can`t finish. Slightly ironic – because the Japanese are so tiny in comparison. (But the difference must be in the snacking, Japanese people don`t have big snacks – see later on).

This style of a tray of plates/ succession of new dishes being presented to you as you eat is very common in Japanese restaurants as well as the more down-grade “family restaurant” – (which is great food also, certainly not to be likened to their UK equivalent which would be the chain restaurant).

Another common way of eating out Japanese style is the ordering of lots of little dishes and everybody has their own plate in which they pick and choose from the central selection. This is the way you eat when you go to an Izakaya. This is a type of Japanese pub. In these places you will go with a group of people and order dishes to share. This style is also mirrored in a nabe or sukiyaki or shabu-shabu meal in which the cooking is done on the table in an electric pot. The host (or others) add raw vegetables and meat periodically and pick them out to their own little individual bowl when they`re done after a few minutes cooking in the broth. Delicious – that winter style food.

Bitty eating is how the Japanese like to eat. I ate like that at home too – so suits me fine!

It is a very different way of eating, when you compare it to a western meal of just one plate of food. The components all touching. The active method of cooking the food on the table doesn`t exist in England. But it is so common in Japan. Not only is there the winter warming foods like nabe, sukiyaki, and shabu-shabu (so named because the meat makes a sound like shabu-shabu when it is bubbling in the boiling broth), but also there is the Japanese BBQ where you melt some lard and fry your meat and veggies on your table, gengis kahn (a similar idea), okonomiyake (where you mix vegetables, seafood, meat, mochi – whatever!) in a bowl with pancake batter and an egg, then turn the whole mixture out on the frying plate in the centre of your table and let it cook into some kind of filled pancake.

All of this is traditional Japanese – at first I was surprised that it was – because it so unlike the delicate sushi and sashimi, the stereotype. But, thinking about it, this is very Japanese. Everybody sharing the same, together the same, it relates back to the communal, community culture of everybody wanting to be the same.

This way of eating many different types of food altogether though, means that Japanese restaurants and people do provide interesting experiences of western food. I went to a party in which western food was served like Japanese. All the dishes were presented on the table. There, set out on the low table was a shepherd’s pie, a quiche, a cheese fondue, a plate of vegetable and meats to dip in it (is all I can remember now). Everyone had their plate, and they picked a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. It was totally bizarre! But kind of fun!

Western restaurants are another interesting experience. Because the Japanese like to order several dishes to share, portions are rather smaller – to account for this. I didn`t realize this initially. So once, in an Italian restaurant with some other foreigners, I ordered a seafood pizza. The others who had been living in Japan longer than me ordered about 3 dishes each. I thought they were just being really greedy westerners, but when the food came my pizza was quite diminished in size! I ended up having a spag Bolognese as well! So now I know to order several things in this particular chain! Not all Italian places are like this one, though. In most, ordering a starter and a pasta will be sufficiant.
But I prefer this portion size. When I finish a spaghetti meal in English restaurants I often feel so full because the portion sizes are vast. But, pastas in Japan, being slightly smaller, are much better sized.

Bar rice, portion sizes in Japan are smaller. This then accounts for the smaller sized population. The Japanese abroad exclaim just as much about the giagantic bottles of milk you can buy, as we gaijin exclaim about the bite-sized packets of cheese you can get here. Packets of snacks and sweet treats are smaller. I suppose that one of the things that should shock me, but does not anymore, is the total lack of chocolate bars. What you buy is packets of tiny individually wrapped chocolates about the size of after eights.

Teachers may snack on a couple of these mid-afternoon, or a little bean cake, or a tiny sweet (Japanese people love sweets), or a rice cake, or an individually wrapped little biscuit that arrived on their desk because some teacher went away.

They will of course do this covertly. It`s not really the done thing, to be seen eating in Japan (I guess it looks like you`re not working). That will also be why Japanese people eat their lunch so damn fast! In about 5 minutes! So they can be back working. I find it extreme again (like much of Japanese society) to think about the speed at which they eat at work. And then the long and drawn-out eating process of going out for a Japanese meal. People will eat very slowly. Picking the food from the central dish. Or waiting as more food is brought out – you never know how much is coming!) Funny Japanese.

Japanese tastes, as well as Japanese eating habits are also very different to the west. While they traditionally use very little oil or butter in their cooking, their food will often be very salty or sugary (which goes really well with the big portion of rice). The Japanese love pickles with their food (the bright yellow pickled giant radish – the daikon, the pickled plums – umeboshi). There is a big pickle section in the supermarket, aswell as a lot of tofu, (which I now like!), natto (not yet…!). The taste in meat is different too. Japanese love very fatty meat. Thinly sliced very fatty meat will often be much more expensive than an ordinary beef steak. As you would expect the fish is so fresh in Japanese supermarkets – it make me want to eat it raw it looks so good.

So, this has overviewed Japanese food. It`s a lot to cover. I LOVE Japanese food. To the extent that I now go out for meals much mre frequently than I ever did in England, and buy ready meals (sushi and Japanese sweet omlette) that I`ve kind of forgotton how to cook! I`m going to miss it so much when I`m in England.