japan

Real beef

maki — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:56:36 +0200

As opposed to the previous post, this is about real meat.

First, I got an email from one Tony McNicol, a Tokyo based photographer and journalist (he’s originally from the UK). On his site, he has several fascinating photo essays depicting some off-the-beaten-track slices of Japanese life. One of them is about Kobe beef, which is a very special (and expensive) kind of beef.

[Kobe Beef, June 2009 - Images by Tony McNicol. Used with permission.]

Kobe beef is (as Tony says) not just wagyuu, and it doesn’t mean beef from the city of Kobe. It is beef from a particular kind of cow, in a particular place, in a special way. Only about 2000 of these specially raised cows are slaughtered every year, and it it sold at retail (if you can get a hold of it) for $500 a kilo.

Now, it is quite obvious that Kobe beef is not some kind of happy accident of nature. It is a manmade product in all senses of the word. The cows were bred to be a certain way, and they are raised with plenty of human intervention. It is really agriculture - which is, after all, the process of growing food for human consumption - taken to its extreme.

This reminded me of another manmade meat product, which for various reasons has been the center of controversy, especially in the U.S., for a few years: fois gras. A few people object to the method of producing a duck or goose with a fatty liver, called gavage, which involved force feeding food into the bird’s gullet with a tube. These few people have been very vocal, and in some places successful. The anti-gavage movement has even spread in a small way to Europe, though most people here (from my very unscientific observations and conversations - though some EU countries have started the procedure to ban gavage) shake their heads at the very notion of the government trying to ban its consumption.

The best observations on the fois gras conflict in the U.S. that I have read is in from Incanto, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco (via Elise’s Twitter). Note that I think it’s the best partly because I wholly agree with the opinions expressed there. (It’s also quite well written, as are their past newsletters, which you can also read on their site. It’s the first time the quality of writing on their web site or newsletter has made me want to visit a restaurant!)

The point made there that I agree with the most is this: I think there is far too much preaching and pushing of ones opinion on other people going on in the food world. It is one thing to decide for yourself, and possibly for your family, how and what you eat. It’s quite another to try to force others to do so, particularly through government legislation. I tend to be sort of left of center when it comes to politics, but some of the tactics used by people and organizations who have a particular food agenda makes me want to shy away from them - even if I actually share their particular stance on a food issue.

As humans, we have to eat to survive, and except for a very few people, we rely on other people to grow or make the food for us. It is good to keep a vigilant eye on the process by which food reaches our tables, but “your way” is not always the “right way” for everyone. We all have to make our own decisions, and hopefully we can continue to do so.

Poverty, rice, and Air Yakiniku

maki — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:42:44 +0200

I know I am very late in talking about Air Yakiniku (エア焼肉), which is already over the hill as far as fads go, but here’s my take on it anyway. Unless you don’t know what Air Yakiniku is, it’s a Japanese virtual game that simulates the making eating of yakiniku (table-grilled meat, usually though not always referring to Korean style table-top ‘barbeque’). Here’s the mock-serious how-to video:

Basically, you play the game by making ready a real bowl of rice and a saucer of yakiniku sauce (which is in the same family of sauces as Bulldog/tonkatsu/okonomiyaki sauce in case you’re wondering). The video instructs you to pre-mix some of that sauce into the rice before you start. You then pretend to grill juicy pieces of meat until they’re done on-screen. When your virtual meat piece is done, you pretend to pop it in your mouth, then rapidly put some of that sauce/rice mix into your (real) mouth and close your eyes. It promises to give you the feeling of eating real yakiniku, without the expense!

Yes I know, those wacky Japanese eh. And it is stupid and funny. (And possibly some kind of viral ad campaign - more about that later.) It is humor with a good dose of sarcasm and a tinge of tragedy to it though. In Japan, there’s a long tradition of depicting a meal of penury as being a plain bowl of rice, and nothing else. It’s the equivalent of bread and water in European culture. If you are lucky, you might be able to afford some soy sauce or something to flavor your rice with (if you’re really lucky you can afford to mix in a raw egg). But if you can only afford a plain, unflavored bowl of rice, you can pretend that you have more food by looking at a picture or some delicious food or something sour and saliva-inducing like umeboshi, or even just imagining it in your mind. The Hans Christien Andersen story The Little Match Girl is probably the most popular one of his fairytales in Japan.

So Air Yakiniku is a continuation of this kind of satiric humor. It’s published by a company called Recruit, who operate, among many other things, major job search portal sites, a job-search/employment magazine, and more. The Japanese economy has been just as hard as other economies, which has resulted in many people who are Recruit’s audience, especially temp/contract workers (haken shain 派遣社員), who are mostly in their 40s and younger, losing their jobs. Many temp agencies have gone out of business in recent months, some leaving their contractors unpaid. It’s a pretty dire time, especially since Japan never really shook off the malaise of the bubble economy of the late ’80s. So, while Air Yakiniku is weird and funny, it’s also quite cruel. But I guess you could say that about the most memorable comedy, and may account for its popularity, especially in Japan where that mix of wacked out humor and deep pathos is part of the national psyche.

Notes

The 4 choices of meat on offer in Air Yakiniku are kalbi (beef short rib, served on or off the bone, popular in Korean barbeque); tan (tongue), horumon (offal - see this post for more about horumon), and “Wow what a load of beef! a big beef steak. (So this New York Times blog post is pretty much wrong.)
Beef, even if it’s not wagyuu, is very expensive in Japan, especially the good cuts, so yakiniku is considered to be a real treat.
Even sadder than a plain bowl of rice is no rice at all. During World War II (which is still called The Great Pacific War by some older people) there was a huge rice shortage. Imported rice, which most often was not the type Japanese people were familiar with (see Looking at Rice) was reviled and called gaimai (foreign rice). Other grains like barley, wheat and millet were mixed with rice, and those also became associated with poverty. “Good” Japanese rice was sold on the black market. Nowadays of course those alternate grains are touted about being healthy alternatives to white rice, and people eat non-Japanese style rice with Indian or Thai food, but there is still that lingering stigma attached to those ‘inferior’ grains.

Until fairly recently, rice prices were strictly regulated in Japan by the government to protect farmers, so it was rather expensive compared to other carbohydrate foods. My stepfather, who’s in his early ’60s, remembers his mother resorting to flour based carbs like udon noodles and suiton (Japanese gnocchi) when money got tight. He still dislikes udon for that reason.)
What makes the fact that Recruit is behind Air Yakiniku even more ironic is the fact that the company was involved (eh, allegedly) in the biggest post-war insider trading and bribing scandal in Japan in 1988, just about the time the economy was also going down the toilet.

Traditional Japanese strategies for combatting natsubate, or the dog days of summer

maki — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:28:09 +0200

A cat of our acquaintance’s natsubate strategy: All-day naps in the shade.

August is particularly bad in the Tokyo area where I’m from, as it is in most parts of Japan except for the northern parts of Hokkaido. It gets really hot, and the high humidity makes everything and everyone moist, sticky and generally nasty. There’s a bit of relief in the form of a brief evening thunderstorm (夕立　ゆうだち　yuudachi) most days, but the respite is temporary. Getting a decent night’s sleep without air conditioning is pretty much impossible.

The term to describe the stage of lethargy and fatigue brought on by this hot, humid weather is 夏バテ　(なつばて　natsubabe; literally ‘summer fatigue’). Japanese people have devised various ways of combatting it. Some are food related, and some aren’t, but here are some of my favorites.

Eat and drink very cold things

An obvious strategy perhaps! It does mean that there are lots of delicious cool drinks and snacks in Japan. My favorite cool summer drink is mugicha or roasted barley tea.

Other quintessentially Japanese summer drinks include ramune, a lemony drink that traditionally came in a glass bottle stoppered with a marble (the word ramune is derived from the English ‘lemonade’); iced coffee, which can be served black, with sugar, or with milk and sugar, and is a popular vending machine item; and Calpis, a fermented, sweet milk-based drink (more about Calpis in another post!) Ice cold beer and sake are very popular too. Surprisingly perhaps, iced green tea is a fairly recent invention, promoted by bottled drink manufacturers.

To digress: Ice cube culture!

In Japan, cold drinks are usually served with lots of ice, either cubes or crushed. The same goes for the U.S. But here in Europe, cold drinks are often served with no ice cubes at all. Even places like McDonalds (which are all over France, especially in this area) only include 2 to 3 measly ice cubes in their drinks. When I ask people here about this I get two explanations: Ice cubes dilute the drink; or ice cubes are bad for your digestive system. (But if ice cold things are so bad for the tummy, why all the ice cream?) I love to crunch down on ice cubes when it’s hot, so I feel deprived!

Anyway, back to the subject…

A traditional ice cold snack is of course kakigouri (かき氷　かきごうり) or shaved ice, topped with sticky-sweet fruit flavored syrup. Here’s a Hawaiian version that I had in November…

Ice cream is popular too, though not exactly traditional. Nowadays rich, creamy brands like Häagen-Dazs (ハーゲンダッツ in Japan) are all the rage, but the ice cream I remember eating growing up was thinner and lighter, more like ice milk. It either came in little paper tubs, or as monaka, in a waffle-shaped wafer covering. (Yuki daifuku,　an ice cream filled dumpling, is a fairly recent invention from the 1980s or so.)

Other cool snacks include mitsumame (みつ豆), a sort of fruit cocktail with cubes of kanten (agar-agar) and cooked azuki beans; anmitsu (あんみつ), soft rice dumplings (called shiratama) with sweet azuki beans (an) and fruit; and kureemu anmitsu (クリームあんみつ), animitsu with vanilla ice cream. Here’s my very derivative version of kureemu anmitsu, using strawberries in balsamic vinegar instead of sugar-syrup. Below is a more traditional kureemu anmitsu by yumiko tanaka.

There’s even a savory cool snack, called tokoroten(ところてん）, thick noodles made from a seaweed called isinglass, with a vinegar-soy sauce sauce, topped with hot mustard and other things. Tokoroten is almost no-calorie if you use the eastern Japan style vinegar sauce. (In western Japan a sweet sauce is used instead.) The slippery texture may take some getting used to though. Heres a photo by CookieM.

Other cooling foods, from chilled salads to watery vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants (aubergines) are consumed to cool down the body. A popular easy to eat meal is cold noodles - soba (buckwheat noodles), so-men (very thin wheat noodles), hiyashi chuuka, udon and so on.

Give ‘em sutamina (stamina)!

Another way to combat natsubate seems diametrically opposed to the cool, cold food and drink strategy is to eat rich, oily foods, to give the lethargic body sutanmina or stamina, or seiryoku (精力 seiryoku), which can mean energy in general or sexual energy. A quintessential stamina-giving oil rich food is eel (unagi), in the form of unajuu （うな重うなじゅう), a bed of plain rice covered with filets of unagi in a savory-sweet sauce. Here’s a photo from HisashiToday:

Some assert that sutamina can be gained by eating organ meats. There are little restaurants that specialize in grilled organ meats, called horumon yaki (ホルモン焼き　ほるもんやき), literally translated as ‘grilled hormone’! Typical horumon yaki ingredients include things like hatsu (heart), motsu (kidney or stomach), hatsu (heart), tripe, and other innards from pigs (and boars), cows, and poultry.

Other sutamina giving foods include garlic, ginger and spicy foods (especially curry).

An umeboshi a day…

I have fond memories of going to stay at my grandparents’ during summer vacation. After playing out in the hot sun all day, my grandmother would always insist on my cousins and me having a salty umeboshi each. Umeboshi went a bit out of fashion for a while, due to concerns about high sodium, but they seem to be coming back in style now, since they are supposed to quite good for you, despite the salt.

Wear a yukata

A yukata （浴衣　ゆかた） is a casual summer kimono. Usually made of cotton or a cotton-linen blend tht is cool on the skin (formal kimonos are often made of silk, wool or similar synthetics), it’s most often worn in the evenings after taking a cool shower or bath. (Yukata literally means ‘bathing clothes’). A yukata is worn both outside and as sleepwear. (Photo by ori2uru.)

Traditionally, new yukata are made for each member of the family every summer. In my mother’s day, girls would often have to make a yukata as part of their summer vacation homework, by hand. (Yep in Japan they issue homework for the holidays!) In my day this had changed to making anything crafty (I remember making a raffia bag one year, a skirt another); I wish I had learned how to sew a yukata instead. There is a terrific short-story manga by my favorite manga author, Moto Hagio, called “The Yukata That Sayo Sews” (小夜の縫うゆかた), a sweet story about how 14-year old Sayo trying to decide whether or not to use the rather childish dragonfly-print fabric that her mother had bought the year before to make her homework yukata. Her mother had passed away before she had been able to sew that fabric into a yukata for Sayo…

A wind bell (fuurin)

Finally, one of my favorite non-food ways of keeping cool is to hang a　fuurin （風鈴　ふうりん) outside the window. A fuurin (literally ‘wind bell’) is a small metal, ceramic or glass bell, with a little paper tag hanging from the ringer part. When the wind blows, the bell make a small, high pitched sound. This sound is supposed to evoke coolness. Great care is given to choosing a bell with just the right chime. (Photo by r.g+.)

In principle a fuurin is related to those big, clunky wind chimes, but far more delicate. (Incidentally, one of the most jarring moments for me in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, which is riddled with cultural inaccuracies, was when a fuurin was seen hanging outside in the dead of winter and used as a doorbell. Wrong, so wrong!)

What are you favorite ways of keeping cool?

A followup report on being vegan in Japan

maki — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:42:23 +0200

Asha, the reader who sent me the question that inspired me to write Japan: A Survival Guide for Vegans has sent in a great follow-up comment. I’ve posted it here so you won’t miss it. She found it a lot easier to follow her vegan regime in Tokyo than in Nagasaki, where she has been living. That makes sense I thin: any major metropolitan area these days is likely to have many people who are vegan or at least interested in a vegan way of eating, while the same might not hold true for more regional towns (Nagasaki has a long history of being a very international city, but is much smaller than Tokyo of course.)

What follows are Asha’s words.

I recently spent about four days in Tokyo and will admit that was the EASIEST time as a vegan out of the entire six and a half months I’ve been here. There are vegan restaurants EVERYWHERE. I ate with a fork for the first time since leaving America. I drank coffee at a cafe that wasn’t Starbucks. I indulged on things I haven’t had since leaving my home country and thoroughly enjoyed everything. It was incredible.

I am vegan, and though I’ve been pretty much unable to eat out at all here in Nagasaki, I don’t mind cooking my own meals. I spend a little more money than the other students from America but that’s because they are living off of incredibly unhealthy prepackaged foods. I really love experimenting with all the new and exciting vegetables and other things here. I recently found a small store called “vegetarian” [that actually sells meat…hah] and found 玄米もち [genmai mochi - brown rice mochi]！ I was so excited. I can’t wait to try it.

I really like making the Chinese savory version of 粥 kayu [rice porridge] with my own personal twist, usually using some miso, a package of natto.. various veggies.. sometimes tofu.. and of course seaweeds. It’s a great meal for any time of the day. I like to stir fry, make curries out of kabocha squash, cauliflower and red lentils [that my lovely boyo brought me from America- thank goodness for lentils!!!] and pretty much steaming or broiling [i have no oven] any vegetable I can find.

At first I ate the same boring mix of bean sprouts and carrots but thankfully have branched way, way out. Don’t forget to try all the different kinds of mushrooms and greens!! Renkon 蓮根 [lotus root], yamaimo 山芋 [mountain yam], satoimo 里芋 [taro root] and of course satsumaimo 薩摩芋 [sweet potato] are all delicious and usually quite cheap. I could live off kabocha squash- it’s THAT good.

I recently found pure organic soy milk and there’s organic tofu here that is super, super cheap. I like unsweetened ankou [azuki bean paste] on brown rice cakes and soy milk with fruit and brown rice flakes found in the organic section of one of the supermarkets I visit.

I’m rambling now, but I hope you get the gist of this entirely too long comment of me slowly adjusting to what’s available here. I think my visit to Tokyo [and enjoying things like sakura muffins and vegan tempeh sandwiches] will hold me over until August.

Thank you Maki for the awesome sites and post. I love all of your sites- especially Hungry for Words! Keep up the great work [and thanks for the email back about the bread!]

Thank you, Asha, for the very detailed comment! I thin it will be very helpful to other vegans venturing out to Japan.

Japan: A Survival Guide For Vegans

maki — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:12:27 +0100

At the moment I’m sitting in a cottage in France (recovering from a cold, but that’s another story), a land notorious for not being so vegan friendly except in the larger cities. The native cuisine is generally not vegan - even vegetable dishes often use things like dairy products or animal fats or stock in the cooking process, which can make things difficult. But if you are a vegan you probably know about this, and come prepared accordingly. (I think it’s a lot easier for lacto-ovo vegetarians in France; you could live on the delicious bread and cheese.)

If you are going to Japan, you might think that being vegan would be a lot easier. Japanese cuisine has a reputation for using lots of vegetables, seaweed and other vegan-friendly products. There is even a particular kind of cuisine in Japan called sho-jin ryouri (精進料理）, a mostly vegan temple cuisine, with a long and highly regarded tradition.

But as a reader who emailed me recently found out, being vegan in Japan is just as hard as it is in Europe.

There aren’t many vegans or vegetarians in Japan

I don’t have any numbers in front of me, but I am guessing that there are far more vegans or vegetarians in North America and the UK than there are in Japan as a percentage of the general population. According to this article in the Japan Times, most Japanese people, even those that frequent vegan/vegetarian restaurants, do so for health reasons rather than ethical or religious reasons (and most aren’t veggie 100% of the time). Generally speaking, the Japanese diet is based on fish, sometimes poultry and eggs, rice, legumes (pulses, beans) and vegetables, with meat and dairy being a later addition.

Traditional Japanese cuisine and dashi

Traditional Japanese cuisine, or washoku, is very healthy (the only thing you should watch out for really is the high salt content in some dishes). It uses lots of vegetables, seaweed, legumes and so on, with a relatively small amount of protein from fish or meat. However, one thing that makes it almost impossible to be a vegan in a traditional Japanese restaurant is the fact that dashi is used in practically everything. Here is my recipe for basic dashi; as you can see, it contains dried bonito (fish) flakes, or katsuobushi. All regular dashi recipes specify the use of katsuobushi or niboshi (dried fish). Even dashi granules, unless specified otherwise, contain bonito extract. There are dashi granules made from seaweed sources only, but these are not usually used in restaurants.

Dashi is not only used in the obvious places like soups and stews. It’s used in just about every savory dish. It’s used in dressings and sauces for vegetable dishes, as a cooking liquid for sushi rice, in dipping sauces, as a ‘hidden flavor’ (kakushi aji 隠し味) and so on. Just about the only things that are fairly sure to be dashi-free are plain rice and homemade pickles. Even things like umeboshi (pickled plums) often have some dashi added to them.

Ironically the only vegan umami flavor additive is probably pure MSG (the most common Japanese product name is Ajinomoto), which is made from soy beans. But the better a restaurant is, the less likely they are to be using straight MSG in their cooking. A better establishment would make their own dashi, and a cheaper one would most likely use dashi granules.

The use of dashi takes nothing away from the fact that traditional washoku is very healthy. For omnivores, I can’t think of many other cuisines that are better for you. But of course if you can’t eat fish in any form for whatever reason, the omnipresence of dashi can pose a problem.

Some regional cuisines like Okinawan cuisine use a dashi made of fish and pork or chicken. (Okinawan cuisine relies a lot on pork.)

So can’t I just dine on sho-jin ryouri all the time?

Sure, you could. You would need a very generous budget though. Sho-jin ryouri is Japanese haute cuisine, and a typical meal at a sho-jin ryouri restaurant can set you back 10,000-20,000 yen per person or more. (You might have luck finding less expensive places in the Kyoto/Nara area or from some temples open to the public.)

Non-traditional Japanese cuisine

So what if you were to avoid washoku altogether in Japan, and stick to ‘western’ style food? That can be a problem too. The reader who sent in the question was having a very hard time finding any vegan bread. In Japan, mainstream bread usually uses white flour, butter, and/or eggs. You can find things like baguettes and hard rolls that are probably butter-free, but you would have to ask. Whole grain breads are slowly gaining in popularity, but usually a ‘whole wheat’ bread in Japan means something with 10% or so of whole wheat flour, with the rest being white flour.

Japanese-style western cuisine or yohshoku is largely based on traditional French cooking techniques. So, the better yohshoku restaurants rely heavily on the use of properly made beef stock and demi-glace. (A pot of carefully prepared demi-glace is a badge of honor for a good yohshoku restaurant or cafe.) Besides the fact that most yohshoku dishes are meat or egg based anyway (beef stews, curries, omurice, etc.) this is not a good choice for a vegan or even a vegetarian.

So what’s a vegan to do in Japan?

For eating out, there is the Japan Vegan Restaurant Pocketguide in English - they say the new issue is due out in March. You can also try looking for macrobiotic restaurants (マクロビ　or マクロビオティック). The aforementioned page on The Japan Times site also has a small list (though it’s from 2007, so check before you go.) And treat yourself to an authentic sho-jin ryouri restaurant at least once!

But if your stay in Japan is more long term, as in many countries your best bet is to cook for yourself. You can even cook washoku for yourself, using vegan dashi. Use my vegan dashi recipe, or find konbu seaweed based dashi granules. There are all kinds of interesting vegetables in Japan for you to try, as well as different kinds of beans an legumes (dry or canned). And of course, there are the many varieties of tofu. If you can, get tofu from a tofu-ya (tofu store) that makes their own. Freshly made tofu is just amazing.

Try to eat brown rice instead of white rice. You can find all kinds of brown rice in Japan, some of which can be cooked exactly like white rice with no extra soaking time and so on. In fact, as a vegan in Japan you’ll want to base your diet around brown rice and zakkokumai rather than whole grain baked products, if only for the fact that rice is much easier to find. You can even buy things like microwaveable brown rice or brown rice porridge; even a tourist can take advantage of these handy products.

If you can’t find things like whole wheat bread at your local supermarket or konbini (convenience store), try the food halls of department stores, or look for natural food stores.

Lawson, the konbini chain, has a new ‘concept’ store chain called Natural Lawson. While they are not necessarily vegan or vegetarian, they purport to carry things like organic, low calorie and ‘natural’ products. List of stores (in Japanese); so far only in the Tokyo/Kanto area.

If you are in Japan long term, investigate joining a farming coop (農協）in your area, or just signing up for a national one that ships their products. Ask your neighbors, or look in magazines like Kurowassan (クロワッサン (Croissant)) which often has special issues on macrobiotic or vegetarian/vegan cooking, natural healing and such. There’s also a quarterly magazine called Veggy STEADY GO! that you can look for.

Incidentally, you can rest assured that any Japanese or not-Japanese recipe categorized as vegan on Just Hungry or Just Bento will really be vegan! For Japanese recipes, I always make sure to use vegan dashi.

Wagashi are not some sort of magic Japanese diet food

maki — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:42:56 +0200

Someone alerted me to this entry on the Health.com blog which quotes me. (Health.com is a Time Inc. property.) I just wanted to set some things straight, because a couple of the statements there are just not right.

The Time Inc. reporter contacted me with some questions, based on her premise that wagashi or Japanese sweets were healthier for you because they were low fat (or at least no added fat; there is some fat content in the beans used). She wanted to know if this was a reason why Japanese people were generally thin.

What I basically said to the reporter was this: no, I don’t think the lack of butter and cream in wagashi have anything to do with the general thinness of Japanese people. As I am quoted as saying, things like smaller portions, more movement and societal pressure are the main causes. I also said that a traditional Japanese meal does not include a dessert course.

So I was not misquoted as such. But the rest of the article goes on to say some rather misleading things, which I am rather surprised by since I gave the writer plenty of information which would have, I thought, logically lead her away from her preconception that wagashi are some magical diet snack.

First and most inaccurate: “The Japanese are not fond of cream, chocolate, butter, or the fattening ingredients that comprise the typical Western dessert.” - As anyone who has spent any time in Japan knows, this is absolutely not true. Japanese people love cakes and gateaus and puddings chocolates and choux buns. Beard Papa, anyone? Pocky? Purin? Cute Sanrio characters named after sweet sticky buns? I would venture to say that Tokyo may have more French-style patisseries per capita than almost any other city except for Paris and Vienna. Those skinny Japanese women love love love Western style pastries. Those pastries may not necessarily be eaten as part of a main meal as dessert, but are eaten between meals for sure.

The article also goes onto recommend giving wagashi a try. Of course, why not? You may like them, you may not. (I’ve noticed that non-Asian people have very mixed reactions to Asian sweets in general.) However if anyone thinks that wagashi will aid your weight loss efforts, please think again. They are loaded with highly refined white sugar and often use white rice or wheat flour. They are in that sense about on par with those infamous low-fat cookies, Snackwells. Surely we are beyond the point of thinking that eating low fat but high sugar snacks leads to weight loss?

A point in favor of wagashi is that many are partly made with some kind of bean - though almost always hulled beans, so with a lot less fiber than say, your average baked beans. Also, most wagashi are made in tiny little portions which, because they are so sweet, you can only eat slowly, usually with a cup of green tea. Finally, they may make you feel full simply because you’re not used to the texture and taste. But all this is simply speculation. I for one could probably eat more taiyaki or ichigo daifuku than I could a dense chocolate cake in one sitting.

Comparing apples to oranges, or rather wagashi to Western pastries

Here are some calories for some typical Japanese sweets. The source is the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the standard reference for all dieticians and health professionals in Japan. Numbers are rounded off for simplicity.

1 daifuku (mochi (beaten white rice) dumpling filled with sweet azuki beans): 160 calories
1 piece of yohkan (a block of azuki bean paste): about 100 calories for a piece approx. 1 cm (less than half an inch) thick
1 dorayaki (two little pancakes with a mound of sweet azuki beans in the middle): 240 calories, most of which comes from refined sugar and white flour

Now here are the calories for single portion sizes of Western style sweets as they are typically sold, and eaten, in Japan:

1 individual serving of purin (caramel custard): 110 calories
1 small choux pastry filled with custard: 150 calories
1 piece strawberry ‘shortcake’ (actually a spongecake filled and frosted with whipped cream, with strawberries in the middle and on top): 350 calories

Not such a huge difference is there? Yes, those typical Japanese cake and pudding portions are quite small. The piece of strawberry shortcake for example is just about the size of the palm of my hand. A choux bun is about 3 inches in diameter.

So we come to same old boring conclusion

Anyway, why are Japanese women generally thin? I’ve addressed this subject in depth a little while ago, but to put it in a nutshell:

They eat less. Portions are much smaller.
They move more.
There’s a lot of societal pressure to remain skinny

Not very novel or cute answers I’m afraid. There is no magic pill, or little sweet.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist or health professional. But I would challenge anyone to get a Japanese health professional to come up with the conclusion that eating wagashi in lieu of Western style sweets can help people lose weight.)

Of cherry blossoms, ohanami and Japanese culture

maki — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:27:23 +0200

It may surprise you to read this, but I do not actually miss living in Japan that much generally, except for my family and the food. My home territory there is the greater Tokyo area, and while Tokyo is a great metropolis, it’s also unbearably congested and you are living on top of other people all the time. To borrow a term used for another place in the world, generally speaking it’s a nice place to visit, but I’m not sure (given a choice) that I’d want to live there. But there are certain times of the year when I do wish I were there, and right now is one of them. It’s cherry blossom time.

Cherry blossom trees are so ubiquitous all throughout Japan, that they are used as an official measure of the changing of seasons. There is something called the sakura zensen (桜前線） or the cherry blossom front, which tracks the blossoming time of cherry trees throughout the country. (It’s so official that it even appears in elementary school geography books along with other weather maps.)

One thing that Japanese people repeat all the time is that Japan is unique because it has four distinct seasons. The implication is that no other place on earth does! This isn’t quite true of course, but I do think that the Japanese culture has a deep appreciation for the changes of the seasons. One of these appreciative rituals is o-hanami or hanami (お花見）. Groups of people congregate on mats under the most picturesque clumps of cherry blossom trees with bento lunches and have a good old party. A lot of sake is usually involved. Since certain places in Tokyo are so popular for o-hanami gatherings, it is traditionally the job of the lowliest grunt in the office to go out early in the morning to the place where his bosses want to party later on that evening with a mat and stake out a choice spot under the trees. He’d then have to sit there all day.

Families go out for o-hanami too, sans the sake usually, though there might be a small bottle or two (or beer) for Dad. Mom would wake up early to make lots and lots of onigiri, and the whole family sets off in their car or on the train to appreciate the blossoms.

(The illustration is by Melbourne artist and designer Andrea Innocent. Her web site is called Otoshimono and it’s filled with Japanophilia. See the original full size illustration on CalorieLab.)

Eating cherry blossoms and leaves

The trees that produce those beautiful pink flowers are different from the ones that produce cherries, but in Japan parts of the flowering tree are still eaten. The leaves are salted and wrapped around a mochi that is dyed a pale pink filled with an; this sweet is called sakuramochi. This is one of my favorite wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) because the subtle salty-sourness of the pickled cherry leaves counteracts the sweetness of the an nicely. The flowers themselves are eaten too, salted and pickled in shiroume-su, the clear vinegar produced when making umeboshi that hasn’t been colored by red shiso leaves. Floating one or two of these preserved blossoms in a bowl of clear soup or tea is really nice, adding that little salty-sourness again.

Around here it’s still rather cold, but in a couple of weeks the apple trees in our village should be blooming. I wonder what the neighbors, human and bovine, will think if we had a o-hanami party in the fields…

The cherry blossom front lost in translation

Speaking of the cherry blossom front (sakura zensen) brought back memories of an odd experience I had many years ago.

In the late ’80s to early ’90s there was a revival boom of tanka, a traditional form of Japanese poetry that predates the haiku form by centuries. The instigator for this boom was an author and poet called Machi Tawara, whose book of modern tanka called Sarada Kinenbi (Salad Anniversary, サラダ記念日), became a runaway bestseller. (There’s a good analysis of her work and impact on her official English web site.)

One day, Ms. Tawara was engaged to speak at the Japan Club in New York, together with another author whose name I don’t remember anymore. My mother was a big fan of Sarada kinenbi, and so she dragged me there to hear this bestselling author who wrote such beautiful poems talk about her work. The audience there was almost all Japanese.

I don’t remember most of what Ms. Tawara talked about that day, except for one thing. She was describing how she had given a similar talk on Denmark, to a Danish audience. She said that she had described the sakura zensen, and how Japanese people tracked the arrival of spring with it as the front creeped up day by day from south to north. She said her Danish audience laughed at this, and said it sounded stupid, and that she realized that it was a very Japanese way of thinking that was not understandable by gaijin-san (foreigners).

Now I ask you, if you are a non-Japanese person reading this, do you have a hard time understanding the sakura-zensen? Does it sound stupid to you? I’m guessing it doesn’t at all. Every culture around the world appreciates the changing of the seasons, and have different traditions that mark them. I highly doubt that Danish people are any different. And I really doubt that that Danish audience said it was stupid. There must have been a severe breakdown in communication there somewhere - either a bad interpreter, or just that Ms. Tawara totally got it wrong. But the thing is she chose to interpret the situation the way she did.

I wasn’t a fan of hers when I heard this (I hadn’t read Sarada kinenbi yet), but my mother the big fan felt stunned at the shiya no semasa (the narrow view). It changed her opinion of the author so much that she stopped being a fan. Before that, she used to quote the tanka in Sarada kinenbi to anyone who would listen all the time. (A number of the New York-residing Japanese people who were there agreed with her, and the reviews in the local expat papers were pretty scathing, if I recall correctly.)

Anyway, the point of telling this story is that oddly enough, I think it was one of the defining moments in my life. It made me realize that one of the things I wanted to do was to give a real, living and informed (as much as possible) ‘translation’ of Japanese culture to people who weren’t Japanese, and vice versa. It’s one of the many motivations behind this blog and the others I run. For nihonjin (Japanese person), living solely in Japan (or in any single place) is like being in a protected, comfortable cocoon to a great extent, even in this internet age. Living outside of it is like being dunked in freezing cold water. It gives you a shock, but also opens your eyes to both sides of the divide.

Food related shopping places in Japan you should visit

maki — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:05:32 +0100

Please limit your suggestions to stores and places that are food-related: edibles, supplies, equipment, etc.

Precce Premium - Tokyo

Comments: “In a city where food presentation is elevated into an artform, this store peddles food pornography of the most sordid and explicit kind. I’m surprised the wheels of my chair didn’t go rusty from the dribble trailing from my open mouth. From the displays of unbearably beautifully fruit to the softly cascading clouds of dry ice that caressed impeccably fresh fish in dream-like soft-focus, this store is nothing but a delectable series of temptations.” -(Loretta) Link, Map.

All the 100 yen shops you could ever want to visit

…are all listed on this Guide to 100 yen shops by region (Japanese only unfortunately, but it’s a start!)

My take on why Japanese people in Japan don't get that fat

maki — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:33:44 +0100

The majority of the comments posted for this Guardian Word Of Mouth blog entry about obesity rates and fast food places are about Japan, and how few people there are overweight. It seems that people latched on to this paragraph in particular:

There would appear to be more at play here than sheer wealth. Japan, which isn’t exactly poor, boasts over 3,000 McDonald’s restaurants, second in number only to the US, and is also home to many other fast food outlets to boot. Yet Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world.

Eating and snacking in Japan is very convenient. In urban areas there are so many fast food places, food stalls, kombini or convenience stores stocked with all sorts of tempting and often fattening readymade food, and the world’s most advanced food and beverage vending machine industry. The snack food industry is fiercely competitive. And, unlike statements made by English press sources like this one which implies that the fast food/junk food trend is some recent phenomenon, this state of affairs has been there for decades.

So at least in Japan the premise of the survey cited doesn’t hold true.

That’s not to say that there aren’t overweight or even obese people in Japan. Japanese people, especially women, are as obsessed with diets as their counterparts in the U.S. or the U.K. Every day there’s a new ‘miracle diet’ popping up. Go to Japanese food sites and every other ad there is for some sort of weight loss scheme. There are increasing concerns about the unhealthiness of fast foods and convenience foods.

Still, I think that at least for a while, people in Japan will continue to stay relatively slim. Here are a couple of reasons:

Peer pressure. Japanese society is largely based on how one fits comfortably and unabrasively into society, way more so than most Western societies. There is a huge amount of peer pressure to conform, and the pressure on women in particular to stay slim is tremendous.
More unplanned movement. Usually people who live in Japan, especially the urban and suburban areas, just have to move a lot more. Cars aren’t practical at all except for longer trips, so almost everyone commutes by public transportation. That’s not to say there aren’t any gyms and such (there are, tons of them) but people just naturally get more exercise than in a typical American city.
Despite recent supersizing trends, generally portions are way smaller. There are Mega-Burgers and Extreme Meals and all of that, but the average portion sizes are still quite a bit smaller than in the U.S.

But once you move out of the country, things change

A common complaint amongst Japanese people who go to live in another country, especially the U.S., is that a pretty substantial weight gain is almost inevitable. I haven’t been able to find any formal studies of this, but time and again I hear about people gaining around 15 to 20 pounds within a year or so after moving away from Japan. It’s not the Freshman 15, it’s the kaigai seikatsu (overseas living) 15. The author of Japanese Women Don’t Get Old Or Fat (my review here) starts off with a personal anecdote about how she gained 25 pounds after moving to the U.S. One of the bestselling diet books in Japan, Tatakawanai daietto: waka musume wa kooshite yaseta! (The Fight-free (struggle-free) diet: My daughter lost weight this way!) is based around the theme of a food and health journalist helping his daughter who came back “with a fat body” after a year of study in Arizona. (She’d gained about 10 kg, or 22 lb.)

This weight gained happened to me too. I wasn’t overweight at all until my family moved back to the U.S. when I was 17. Within the span of a year or so I went from around 50 kg to about 70kg. (I’m not actually sure what my starting weight was, since weight was not even an issue for me until I started to not fit in my clothes anymore!) I did lose a lot of it, but have since gained it back and more, hence my current efforts to get rid of the excess weight again!

Why did I gain 20 kg so easily? It comes down to fairly simple reasons: lack of unplanned exercise, lack of peer pressure, and the huge portions. Whenever my new school stressed me out (I hated that high school to be honest) I’d comfort myself with a bag of potato chips - the family size. We usually ate out as a family at local diners, where the club sandwiches could be stacked up about 15 inches high, and we started expecting home meal portions to be as big.

Living large around the world

I think it is just tremendously hard to stay slim in the U.S. compared to other places I’ve lived, which is why the obesity rate is so high there. Public transportation is not that available except in a few cities, and people just don’t walk much anymore in the suburbs. So one has to make a special effort and set aside a specific time to get any exercise. Busy people aren’t always willing or able to do that. Portion sizes at restaurants and such are large, and I’m fairly sure many people will complain if they were drastically reduced.

And, despite the attention paid to ‘size zero’ celebrities and such, I just don’t believe there is that much peer or societal pressure to keep yourself slim. When the people around you are mostly neither slim nor fit, why bother?

I haven’t lived in the U.K. since I was a child, but whenever I’ve visited there in recent years I gotten the feeling that it was becoming more and more Americanized in lifestyle - more reliance on cars, bigger portions and so on. Add that to the fact that traditional British food can be quite high calorie (pies, fish and chips, and well, curries) it’s not too surprising to see obesity rates there soar.

As for Switzerland, it has some factors that help keep people slim, such as great public transportation, a natural tendency for people to get a little exercise, and reasonably sized portions. Also, people don’t really eat out as much here, or rely on takeaways/takeout and readymade meals.

The bottom line is that home cooking is really better for you all around, health and taste wise. And it’s the best way to take control of your own, and your family’s health. (And all the better if at some of that home cooking is Japanese…a reason to keep coming back here to Just Hungry. :))

[Update:] See the followup discussion, Does going back to your culinary roots make you healthier?