Suburban Japan:3
If I were more of a global traveler, I’d like to compile a book of pictures of table settings in different nations, showing the remarkably different ways in which human beings eat on an everyday basis.
This picture is of a typical evening meal at the house where I stayed in Aomori. For reasons that seem primarily rooted in tradition, economy, and availability, fish is the primary source of protein. Local supermarkets offer at least ten times as much space for fish compared with meat (whereas in the United States, the ratio is reversed).
It’s hard to find anything unhealthy in this setting. The caloric content is minimal. Nothing is fried, and nothing is heavily loaded with fat or sugar. I guess it’s no surprise that the Japanese still show few signs of obesity, unlike the populations of most western nations, and have an astonishing average life expectancy of 79 for men, 85 for women. (In the United States, the average numbers are 4 years lower.)
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That looks like 25 dishes for a four person setting. That's a lot of washing up.
ahhhhh....sigh.....
Does it remind anyone else of Mark Frauenfelder's daughter's place setting?
Lots of Japanese food is incredibly unhealthy, and I believe the national obesity rating is rising quickly. There is a ton of fried food, like katsudon, karaage, etc etc.
But yes, the Japanese do continue to pillage the worlds oceans to feed their fish hunger!
Curious about the photo, is this a wealthy home, or would most Japanese families serve a meal like this? It looks beautiful and delicious - and as someone that loves food, I'm envious.
Hmm, I think I will trade those last four years in return for not eating cold fish and rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner all my life.
Is there any living thing in the ocean that the Japanese will not eat?
I love seafood, fresh food, and particularly unprocessed food. I'm soooooooooooooo jealous.
asian food definitely goes to all senses!!
Yes, BdgBill, all Japanese food is sushi. Just like all Chinese food is lo mein, all Mexican food is tacos, and all American food is hamburgers and hot dogs.
@4 I'm from a Japanese household and yes, this is what most household's dinner tables look like, if my childhood is any indication. We were from a middle-class home.
This picture makes me nostalgic and hungry!
Minus the beer, it looks just like breakfast!
check out the book 'Hungry Planet'. It has a similar premise -- showing the various foods different families throughout the world keep on hand.
@Charles: I'll make one point about the sugar: A lot of Japanese dishes require either sugar or mirin, and tend to have a fair bit of sugar one way or another. One cookbook I read pointed out that part of the reason for keeping sweet food for between meals with tea is that meals have so much sugar in them already.
That said, the sugar is included in a subtle way, so that nothing is heavily loaded with it.
#1 MDH: You have to do it that way, or the flavours mix.
#2: Tak-kun, I've gleaned enough about where you live, and been here long enough now, to know that pretty well everything you need to replicate this yourself is available around here...
(I like cooking for people - I'd be happy to do you and the family a full Japanese 9-dish meal at some point.)
#4: And tempura, of course. That said, I get the impression that the (slow but gradual) rise in obesity in Japan is largely blamed on the influx of North American foods.
#6: BdgBill: I think it's possible you think sushi is the be-all and end-all of Japanese cuisine. (As for the Japanese eating just about anything coming out of the ocean: Yep.)
#8: marilonge: Japanese food, in particular, emphasises five principles, each of which has five forms which must be incorporated - colour (go shiki - red, yellow, green, black, white), flavour (go mi - salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami), preparation/"transformation" technique (go ho - steaming and grilling are two, but I'm not sure I'm clear on the exact five), sense (go kan - sight, smell, sound, touch, taste), and "outlook" (go kan mon - something a bit more nebulous that I think you grasp slowly and intuitively through actually cooking the food).
Anyway, the point is, the whole experience is taken into consideration - the combination of colours used, the visual effect on the eater, the sound the food makes as it is eaten. Just as you say, it goes to all senses.
Argh, just got back from Japan 2 weeks ago and this is pretty much what I saw every day .. sigh .. miss ...
When looking at the picture, envision this on a very low table and that you will be sitting on the floor eating this.
I keep taking pictures of food, too :)
I'm going back to Japan next Thursday. Yaaay! Unfortunately the food I will be eating probably won't be as much shojin ryori as in my last trip. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is my favorite type of food in the world. It has the same setup with many different dishes with little portions. Each meal is like an adventure in taste and variety.
The caloric content is minimal. Nothing is fried, and nothing is heavily loaded with fat or sugar.
So...what's the point of eating it, then?
The book's been done, and it's called "Hungry Planet." Around the world taking pictures of a typical family in each locale posing with a week's groceries, plus great pics of what they eat, how they relate to food, and recipes. Some of the rodent skewers and fried beetles were somewhat off-putting, but not as bad as looking at a week's typical diet in the UK or Australia. LOTS of sugar and white starch.
the pleasure maybe ?
You guys have the worst food in the world.
And even you you try to cook something in the U.S
the result has no taste because yous basic products have no flavour at all.. NONE
You guys eat all the time, too much and bad food
Someone said the future of a nation is readable according to what's in your plate.
Wrong room MOSAT - youtube is down the hall.
I've lived for most of my adult life in Japan (Himeji, Shizuoka, Kanagawa and Tokyo), and this seems to be the anglicized version of a standard menu: that is, the same dishes would be served, though from one central, communal vessel. Each person would pick pieces of food here & there, and those most deft (and daft) in practice would transfer these morsels to various plates before consumption; leaving, of course, the final bite, which is poisonous.
I saw the washing up first as well MDH.
+1 on washing all those dishes being the first thing I thought of.
Also you can have those four years if it means life without bacon.
@ #6 BdgBill: Well, they don't eat wha- oh, wait.
#12 & #17 -- thanks for mentioning Hungry Planet; I hope it inspires charles to seek it out. A great and enlightening photo book documenting the weekly food intake of families around the world. Highly recommended for some perspective.
This could be a pretty typical table from any meal time at my in-law's home. Lots of small dishes, several communal plates, lots of fish and veggies. They made special items for me, like scrambled eggs at breakfast, but it would be right there next to the fermented sea urchin, (that's another thing, lots of fermented stuff). They do fry things and they do use lots of sugar when they use it (in scrambled eggs; is this typical or family specific?), but the difference is frequency and portion control. Tempura is a once in while thing, and they just don't have the "Big Gulp" mentality. Bacon is no stranger in Japan; one of the best things that I ate was bacon yakitori; inch-thick chunks of bacon, beer on the side; I had a mouthgasm.
There is an awful lot of mercury in that picture.
One thing the Japanese diet has an overabundance of is salt. Something like 17 to 24 grams per day.
I forgot to add: but it's delicious.
That is NOT a typical evening meal. That's a "hey let's impress the gaijin doing the homestay here so he'll think Japan is super awesome" meal.
Most home meals I've seen outside of New Year's Eve feasts at homes were 3 bowls/dishes per person maximum.
Of course it's hard to see these meals if you're a guest because they're going to roll out the carpet for you. Again, not a bad thing at all I loved it, but it's not typical when you take the guest out of the equation.
I am surprised no one has noted that this is actually a very ancient pattern of table-setting first popularized by shinobi during the Tokugawa shogunate in the mid-17th century known as "小さい皿雨".
Diners would eat warily from their own dishes, each one maintaining eye contact with at least one other person, and then suddenly all would fling the small shuriken-like dishes at their rivals. Diners would be expected to catch the plates, scoop up the food, and continue eating. Any diner who allowed food to fall to the table would be obliged to rub the jika-tabi of the others.
Yeah, I'd agree a big deal is frequency and portion control...I rarely see anyone eat anything between meals, except for the occasional omiyage, and there is a LONG time between Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
@25: Bacon Yakitori is particularly good when they wrap the bacon around a cube of melting cheese....Mmm.
That being said, I don't really like the bacon in Japan...its not smoked I think?
@10: I erased my comment about that earlier today, because after looking at it again up closer, it does look pretty normal.
Hmm, yeah. Eating lots of fresh fish and rice means having it three times a day every day for the rest of your life and never having anything else. Also, it is not possible to vary the ways you prepare these things.
Maybe the problem with the American diet is that its subscribers apparently believe if you eat one thing, you must eat a lot of it, all the time, and exclude all other things.
Enjoyed the photo, but after reading Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, (http://www.amazon.com/Bottomfeeder-Ethically-World-Vanishing-Seafood/dp/1596912251/ref=pd_sim_b_13), I was really dismayed to learn how completely unconcerned the Japanese are about where their seafood comes from. Don't see myself visiting anytime soon.
When I was in Japan in 2007, for part of the trip I stayed at a family-run ryokan in Kyoto for about a week. They only served breakfast, but every breakfast was like this. A great way to start a day of schlepping around the sights of southern Honshu.
Regarding the mercury content in the fish--maybe so, but the average Japanese still lives years longer than the average westerner.
Regarding "plundering" the oceans, Paul Ehrlich warned everyone about this almost 40 years ago. If ocean fish stocks do eventually decline, I assume prices will rise, and farmed fish will become more attractive as an alternative.
It was mentioned that images of meals might make a fine book. Peter Menzel has done just that. He has other interesting image collections as well.
Take a look at your favorite library or bookstore...
What the World Eats by Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio, Tricycle Press (August 2008)
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel, Ten Speed Press (September 2007)
I've lived in Japan for most of my adult life as well. My wife is Japanese.
This meal is not atypical, but yeah, it's missing the fried food. Seriously, I am asked to eat much more fried food here than I am in the US. I hate fried food, so I'm very well aware of it.
The rise in obesity in Japan is, indeed, being blamed on the dirty foreigners, but I blame it on the same thing I blame it on in the US: shitty, mass-produced, poisonous food. People seem to eat a lot of frozen food here (some may remember the poisoned Chinese gyoza from last year--gyoza are not that hard to make!), and that all comes from god-knows-where in China. Also, the idea of the "long Japanese lifespan" has more to do with the current grandparents' generation's diets than what people my age (mid-30s) are eating now.
Finally, no, Japan is blissfully unaware of the facts that the ocean is being pillaged, and that Japan ignores every fishing treaty they sign. Fish is so cheap here, and the only way it can stay that way is by massive overfishing. Something really must be done. My wife and I kind of save fish as a special occasion food, being that her mind has been polluted by my gaijin influence. But really, most people just plain don't know. And then you have the crazy old coots in the government telling women to start cranking out babies, when Japan already can't feed its population.
Bah.
Anyway, to sum up, I just really get tired of foreigners gushing over the healthy Japanese diet, which is, as far as I'm concerned, a myth propagated by old Japanese people, not a real outside observation. In the US, I don't sit around shoving fried hamburgers into my gob; neither do Japanese people survive on slivers of fish and bowls of rice. These are cultural stereotypes with kernels of truth to be sure, but neither of them is actually true enough to be "true."
The fish may be fresh and bountiful, but I was really surprised at how much pre-processed food there is in the Japanese groceries. They import almost all of their food from other Asian countries.