Brendan in Japan: Food

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Food

Food...

"As every traveller knows, Japan's cuisine is one of its main attractions".

So says Lonely Planet.

Oh how wrong they are.

All meat is small chopstick size and fatty and gross and small. Ciaran reportedly spotted a lean steak last Tuesday, but he was hot and dehydrated so it was most likely an hallucination.

The Japanese call their breakfast, lunch and dinner asagohan, hirugohan, and bangohan or morning rice, midday rice and evening rice. So it may not come as a surprise that everything includes rice. Sticky rice. Japan's protected agricultural business means it's not cheap to buy either. But don't get me onto that (Each Japanese cows gets about $4 a day in government subsidies - when 1/6 of the world's pop live on less than $1 a day). They even put rice in their beer. Anyway I've had so much rice I'm going mad. Had dreams about rice. Dreams about going into MacDonalds, opening up my cheeseburger to take the gerkin out and only for an explosion of maggot like rice creatures crawl up my arm and into my lungs through my nose.
Japanese cuisine

You're meant to have five portions of fruit a day. I think I've eaten about 7 portions since I've got here. Bean sprouts. I had some of them a couple of weeks ago. And orange juice, they sell that.

We have finally found some foods, such as "ramen" and "denbori" which are not only edible but actually quite tasty. Then during a induction at a local gym (which some of us are thinking of joining) the instructor informs us that ramen and denbori are about 88 times worse than hamburgers.

I'm hoping that things will go better. In the mean time, a bakery in a nearby shopping centre sells Custard Danishes. I might well end up living on them. I might, as rainforest tribes do, reorganise my whole life around custard danishes my only source of sustanance in this barbarous environment. Danish custard snacks, danish custard soup, whiskey and even little whittled canoes made from the buggers.

You may detect an element of insanity in this email, but then we're all starting to go a little crazy.

1 comment:

cfg said...: Bren - if you want to stop spam comments turn on comment validation in settings...
BTW.. love the pics etc, but what are you actually getting up to?
Did you get the book from mum yet?; 8:14 am

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The story

I arrived here in Japan in 2005 on a scholarship. I was gleefully ignorant about the country, ill-prepared and basically only came because I wouldn't have to pay a thing and well... it seemed cool.

At first I hated much of it: the food, the accommodation, and the prospect of being blown away by an approaching Typhoon. But now, two years later, I love it.

I have spent my time learning Japanese (fascinating in numerous ways), frivilled away too much time in the time-warp capsules of Japanese style internet cafes, camped it up with some barbershop, and been to lots of festivals - some beautiful, some with lots of fire, and some with lots of fire where I got drunk and joined in.

There's been the odd bit of travelling around Asia too, with trips to China, the Bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand, Korea and the homeless snows of Northern Japan.

During my time I've had some surprises: professors that find it de rigeur to start a scholarship with an organized boozing session; a nation of women that are enchanted by the western male; or a the cultural-muddle that is a Japanese Christmas. (Especially hearing about how - in a particularly inspired feat of confusion - a department store once presented a Chrismas scene with Santa nailed to a cross.)

I 've also been baffled by the odd gadget, impressed by the odd bit of Japanese design (confused by others) and been delighted by the warped incorporation of English into Japanese.

Started as a "day job" my teaching position at a local primary school has turned into my daily pleasure. Though part of the Tsuzuki Gakuen (a kind of Microsoft of Japanese education), which means even regular school events like Sports Day are a bit odd, children are simply the most fascinating and amusing category of human being alive. (See above.)

Two years since arriving, I now enjoy reflecting in words or pictures more generally on Japan: Everything from Japan's sex industry, its unique approach to religion, to its vending-machine fetish.

In April 2008, I finished teaching and moved to Tokyo, where I am currently interning for a Japanese MP, deep in the heart of the Japanese political system. Which is another way of saying I clean cups and answer the phone.

All Over

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Food

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Brendan at School

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