I have been living in Japan for almost 6 years now. Over this time, I've gone down about 2 dress sizes, mostly due to change of lifestyle. I'd like to use this diary to compare some of the eating habits of the Japanese to the ones I was taught back home in the good ol' US of A.
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This is my first WHEE diary attempt, so bear with me folks. First of all, here's the list for the rest of the week as far as I know - please volunteer! I'm a newb but enjoyed writing this one :)
October 27
Tues AM - bonsai superstar
Tues PM - Clio2 (Kessler, Ch. 18)
October 28
Weds AM - ???
Weds PM - Edward Spurlock
October 29
Thurs AM - A DC Wonk
Thurs PM - ???
October 30
Fri AM - Ed G
Fri PM sychoticI
October 31
Sat AM - ???
Sat PM - Edward Spurlock (Kessler, Ch. 19)
November 1
Sun AM - kismet -- the calorie value of everyday tasks
Sun PM - ???
November 2
Mon AM- NC Dem- Muscle of the Month-Deltoids
Mon PM- ???
The image in the west of the Japanese diet seems to be some sort of mystical, "Asian" idea, usually pretty inaccurate. Those Benihana-style steakhouses back home do not exist, and confuse the hell out of Japanese friends I try to explain them to (I usually have to use the phrase "Like Tom Cruise in that movie, but with steak"). The only teriyaki thing I regularly see on menus here is the "Teriyaki McBurger" at McDonald's. Sure, there are some very healthy foods here, but Japanese people can eat crap too, and often do. The traditional 'vegetable' side to Japanese standards like tonkatsu (breaded/fried pork cutlet) is a mountain of shredded raw cabbage - yes, just cabbage. On the carb front, a popular kids' lunchtime snack is "yakisoba pan," literally a hot dog bun full of fried yakisoba noodles, enough to strike an Atkins devotee dead just looking at it. Most westerners who come here are surprised at the amount of unhealthy food they discover.
So why have I never seen a sumo-size housewife ride a scooter through the Osaka streets? Sure, there are fat people, but not AMERICAN-size fat people. Even the real sumo guys, when I see them on the subways, don't compare to some of the regular folks I saw on layover in Detroit. Why?
The main thing, I feel, is our food cultures are so different. The biggest evidence of this, to me, is our respective "traditional" breakfast menus. Literally, Japan's idea of breakfast is our idea of dinner, and our idea of breakfast is their idea of dessert.
If you stay at a Japanese-style "ryokan" inn, the complimentary breakfast is likely to be not the western-style toast & coffee many hurried salarymen scarf down these days, but a traditional Japanese-style breakfast. Grilled fish, white rice, miso soup, perhaps some natto. If there's an egg, it's probably raw, to be either mixed with the natto or dumped onto the rice. No coffee - only green tea. I have gone hungry many a business trip because my American body simply refuses to eat a meal like this before 1pm at the very earliest. American friends of mine have concurred - fish, rice and miso soup screams "dinner" to our bodies raised on American food.
On the other hand, American breakfast classics such as waffles and pancakes, cinnamon toast, donuts, etc, are standards on any family restaurant dessert menu. The only time I have ever seen cornflakes eaten here is inside of an ice cream parfait (I can only imagine what they'd think of my beloved Cookie Crisp). Pancakes are called "hotcake" here and apparently the 'cake' part of it is taken quite literally for the most part.
I believe that just looking at the difference between these sheds a lot of
light on the differences between us. There are plenty of things I feel the Japanese get wrong (suggesting brown rice is better than white is fightin' words), but if there's lessons to be learned, these are the ones I've learned from my time here:
1. Green tea is awesome.
This is not just a breakfast thing (I NEED my coffee!). We have both Coke & Pepsi here (heck, we even have canned alcoholic cola!), and plenty of other sugary, terrifying drinks(the new Azuki-flavor pepsi is sitting on my coffee table right now). But by far, the most common beverage in vending machines and convenience stores is tea. Green tea is the most common, with many different blends and styles, but there is also oolong, barley (FABULOUS for hot days), black bean (great for appetite supression as it's filling), and various other herbs and grasses I've never heard of. They are tasty, often filled with minerals and antioxidants, and they are all SUGAR-FREE. Other than black tea, putting sugar in tea is pretty much unheard of to the Japanese. These are not "health nut" drinks, everyone enjoys them from childhood to old age, daily, hot or cold. Even when eating Japanese-style fast food like takoyaki (octopus dumplings), cold green tea is the drink of choice. Thanks to the lack of sugar, these drinks are calorie-free. Compared to the amount of calories many Americans drink every day, whether cola, juice, or oversweetened coffee/tea, that is a huge difference. If you can get used to it, these can be great for those times when water just doesn't feel flavorful enough. You can brew your own (remember, green doesn't need to steep like black tea does), or if you live near an Asian grocery you may be able to find 500mL or 1.5L bottles of popular blends.
2. Variety is important.
This isn't just for breakfast. Your average Japanese family's meals usually consist of a variety of dishes. In Japan, rice is traditionally considered "the main" part of a meal, which is why breakfast/lunch/dinner are said as "morning rice," "afternoon rice," "evening rice." Everything else is a bunch of side dishes, technically. Perhaps because we already have the rice, most of the rest of the meal is veggies and protein of some sort - meat, fish, tofu - sometmes all 3. There are, of course, exceptions to this, and for a working person this can be hard to have the energy for, but compared to the variety/balance of the average meals my family often had for dinner, I think there's a lot to be said for that. Even now, living as a working single, it can be hard for me to get in all the different nutrients I need - I'm usually tired or strapped for time and rarely eat more than 1 or 2 different things each meal, sometimes leaving me to realize "Crap! I had like 1 vegetable today!" I try to make up for that with lots of dishes like soups or curry or nabe, but I was definitely better-fed when I lived with the Kataokas back in college.
3. Fruit is underrated.
Have you ever played the game Katamari Damacy? On the levels where you have to roll up expensive things, did you ever wonder why things like melons and other fruit were so expensive? In Japan, fruit is considerably more pricey than the states, and often given as gifts because of this - I honestly have never seen a watermelon for less than $10. Perhaps because of that, fruit is sometimes considered a luxury here, often an after-dinner snack. My host family, which was in no way hurting for money, would often bring out a big fuji apple or a white peach and split it between the 3 of us for dessert. Wintertime isn't the same here without a bowl of clementine oranges on the living room table to snack on in the evenings. I guess in a way, we're back to breakfast being dessert. :)
4. If you're gonna cheat, go all-out!
Again, there is a lot of healthy food & eating habits to be had here, but when the Japanese want to eat for pleasure and pleasure alone, they don't piddle around. Rarely will you see "Low-fat" on labels at the grocery store. I've never seen "lean" beef, but I have seen cooking lard flying off the shelves. People are more concerned with the taste quality of the meat (screw Kobe beef, it's all about Matsuzaka) than calorie counting. On the TV eating shows (remember Iron Chef? take out everything but the celebrity judges panel and that's a good third of Japanese television), a steak isn't a steak unless it's more white with marbled fat than it is meat. Images of oozing grease (called "meat juice" by the announcers) make the audience drool, while the foreigners watching gag and wonder why no one is dabbing at it with a napkin. The bakeries here are top-class, and French food and its influence are all around.
Sure, everyone wants to be thin, and fad diets roll through every few months (I couldn't buy bananas for months because they were sold out due to one recent fad diet), but if you're going to splurge every now and then (emphasis on the "every now and then" of course), eat something you can really ENJOY - something made out of actual food.
Anyway, that's all for now. I will try and keep up with the comments as much as I can, but I'll be gone for about a day and a half thanks to yet another bizarre gig at work. I hope that this was at least interesting to some of y'all, I tend to ramble and I have tragically little editing time today, so apologies for that. :) Anyone else who's lived abroad and observed huge differences in the way people eat, I'd love to hear your thoughts!