What is the most important thing in your life?
Friends?
Money?
Love?
Family?.....
Yes, we need all of them! In addition, the important thing we cannot forget is FOOD!!
Food reflects our health and culture. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French politician and layer and famous as a gastronome, said "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
When I went to United States, only thing that I couldn’t get used to was American food. I usually took a lot of carbohydrate such as sandwichs, hamburgers and pastas. I ate many snacks like chips, cookies, and chocolates. Then I gained 6kg for about 4 month!! I was tired of American food, so I tried to find some Asian restaurants and Japanese food especially rice! Then I found sushi finally, but the rice was really hard, and there was cheese inside of sushi roll. I was really shocked! This is not the sushi! (I really liked this type of sushi at the end though…My tongue got used to that taste, I guess.)
I found many Japanese restaurants as well. Those were named Tokyo pot, Nagoya, and Nori Japan. Those sounded like Japanese restaurants, but the owners of the restaurants were Chinese and Philippine instead of Japanese. Food looks like more Chinese rather than Japanese as well. I was really disappointed and worried that if people in the United States perceived them as real Japanese food…it was similar, but different!
From this experience, I am wondering what is real Japanese food. If Japanese people said this is not Japanese food, then it would be not Japanese food!? If American describe and sell as Japanese food, then it could be Japanese food whether it is true or not!?
There are a lot of misunderstandings about culture. If we believe things as true, that could be true. Those misunderstandings turn to be stereotype. I think culture can be made from our belief and stereotype.
When food from one culture moves to another culture, it often becomes localized (or glocalizied) to match the local tastes. This is certainly true of Japanese food in general and sushi in particular. We talk about this a lot in the Globalization class. Is this glocalized food still authentic and "Japanese?" What is "Japanese food" anyway? There is much variation of food in japan as illustrated by all the food shows on Japanese TV.
ReplyDeleteYes, many food become glocalized. I thought those kind of glocalized food were not real Japanese becasue of different tastes. Those were mixed up with Chinese food and Korean food, I think.
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