Rising Son: Eat Like a Japanese

Eat Like a Japanese

Being half-Japanese, and raised by a Japanese mom, I ate a lot of Japanese food.

Growing up, my friends would come over for dinner every once in awhile and tell me that my mom is the best cook. "Oh really?" I would say. It's all the same stuff she would cook everyday. I couldn't tell if it was any good.

Then I started having dinner at my friend's house and having their mom cook. Oh, wow. Now I knew.

I remember living in Yokohama, when I was about 4 years old. I can still remember that far. My mom made chicken curry. Curry is a wildly popular dish in Japan, except they adapted it to their tastes from the original Indian curry. But this night, my mom made "spicy hot" curry.

I didn't want to eat it, and she got angry with me. I kept saying that it was too hot (both temperature-wise and spicy-wise). I simply wouldn't eat, and just kept delaying. Finally, she had enough and sent me outside. It was dark outside, and no one else was out there. Moreover, this was winter, and I saw snow falling. I was freezing out there, and I started crying.

My mom opened up the door, and asked me if I was ready to finish my curry. I said, "yes". And so I had to sit through the whole thing while my mouth caught fire.

I also remember another dish she'd make up a few times each week. She'd take a couple of raw eggs, and mix it with soy sauce, and stir it up, just like making omelette batter. Except she'd pour it over a bowl of steamed rice. She'd make this for breakfast mostly. I remember liking it, and eating it up. This was something she ate when she grew up. These days, I couldn't imagine eating that.

What Japanese people eat a lot of are pickles. Their favorite is actually a Korean specialty called "Kim Chi" or "Kim Chee". It's cabbage fermented in chili sauce, salt, and vinegar. I have to admit, it's really tasty. I like it. But it's really stinky. Japanese eat lots of pickles, but not American pickles. These are pickled with a variety of pickling juices and they pickle just about anything from cloves of garlic, to baby squids, to eggplant. If you can soak it in something for a month, they'll try it.

Japanese-style pickles are such a favorite in Japan, that each dinner or lunch is always accompanied by some pickles. They'll cut or shred them in small pieces, and then grab a piece and add it to a mouthful of whatever they're eating.

No Japanese dish can be authentic if not's accompanied with some steamed rice. You can't just steam any rice, it has to be a certain variety called, "Calrose". Calrose is the most common variety in the United States, but for a long time, it was rare in Asian countries. Nowdays, it's the staple variety in Japan. It's sticky and clumpy, which makes it easy to pick up with chopsticks. Rice is like bread in Japan. You never eat on its own, you eat it with something else, or you top with something. Most cases, you just pour some soy sauce over it, and eat it just like that.

Speaking of soy sauce, there's actually different varieties. There's a Japanese variety, and a Chinese variety. The Japanese has a slight brown tinge, where as the Chinese is more black. Kikkoman is the favored brand, but Yamasa is another old competitor.

You've all heard of ramen, right? Well the Cadillac of ramen is the "Sapporo-Ichiban" brand. Japanese don't eat any other brand but that. Top Ramen, forget it. Maruchan, forget it. Nissin, forget it. It's either Sapporo-Ichiban, or forget it.

Ok now, sushi. Take most of the sushi varieties you find at a US-based sushi bar, and throw them out. Japanese don't eat any of the shit like "Spider Rolls" or "Philadephia Rolls", or "Monkey Balls", or God forbid, "California Rolls". Instead, keep it very simple. Order "Maguro", which is blue-fin tuna, and get it just that in a roll of rice and nori (seaweed paper). That's what Japanese eat. They also do the same thing with pickled radish, just that, in a roll of rice and nori.

But if you want to talk about raw fish, Japanese prefer to eat sashimi. That's bite-sized slices of fish filet. They pick up a piece, dab it with some soy sauce, and slurp it down.

What about wasabi? I notice that when I eat sushi with my friends, they'll put in gobs of wasabi, and smaller amounts of soy sauce. They tell me, "I really love lots of wasabi". Japanese don't do that. It's the other way around, they take a saucer of soy sauce, and mix in a small amount of wasabi, just enough to add a bit of spiciness to the soy sauce.

Actually, what sushi bars offers as wasabi, isn't really wasabi. It's horseradish. Real wasabi is not horseradish. It's wasabi. It's has a distinct taste, similar to horseradish. Except wasabi is very difficult to grow. There's such a small supply of real wasabi, that very few restaurants offer it. If you're certain your favorite Japanese restaurant offers real wasabi, I'll challenge you on it.

Don't forget "sembe" (pronounced SEM-beh). It's flavored rice crackers. They're shaped into small pieces, usually colored brown from the soy sauce that got baked onto it. This is the Japanese version of popcorn when they watch television.

Here's another Japanese favorite. Get a bunch of spinach leaves, and steam them. Try not to boil them, just steam them until they're cooked. Then refrigerate the batch. When it's cold, place it on a dish, and pour some soy sauce over it. Mix it up a little, and sprinkle some sesame seeds. Then eat. It's quite good, and yes, it's what Japanese people eat.