I love sushi, but not the condiments

Contrary to popular opinion, Japanese food is about more than sushi.

That said, I love sushi.

But I’ve always been a picky eater, and two things I can’t stand go with sushi: ginger and wasabi.

I like ginger when it’s in the form of, say, ginger snap cookies. I generally don’t like strong ginger in cooking, and those piles of pink pickled ginger is just gross.

I like spicy food, as in chili-spicy. But to me, wasabi doesn’t taste spicy. In fact, it doesn’t really taste like much of anything while a stinging sensation goes up my nose and I feel like my whole face hurts. It’s unpleasant, and I just don’t get it.

Consequently, one thing I really appreciate about most American sushi places is that the nigiri doesn’t just automatically come with wasabi between the fish and the rice. I can eat sushi feeling safe and all carefree-like.

Not so when I eat sushi in Japan, where I have to ask for no wasabi. My family then makes fun of me, as kids are the ones that don’t like wasabi. Sometimes I forget to specify, and I end up spending half my meal time painstakingly trying to get the wasabi out of my sushi (which as you can imagine, is difficult since it’s a pasty substance). Worst of all, I might just forget completely, stick a nigiri in my mouth, and my eyes water as I go running to drown myself with water.

The cat food’s in the oven

I was watching the Today show this morning (yes, I know I’m completely the wrong demographic for this show, but I’m allowed a few guilty pleasures), and I saw a segment about “‘Chinese’ foods that aren’t”. There’s some things that are obvious to me of course, but though I knew that fortune cookies aren’t actually Chinese, I didn’t know that they were started by Japanese people. I’d somehow assumed that they were a completely American invention.

But more interesting to me was more of a throwaway comment Jennifer 8. Lee made about these not-quite-authentic turkey dumplings she had on the table. She explained that her mother would make these turkey dumplings for her school bake sales, since…Asian people don’t bake, and they in fact used the oven as extra dish racks.

There just isn’t really any Asian food that involves baking, and most Asian people don’t seem to be into making homemade cookies and desserts and such either. My own mother experimented with a little bit of baking, but after she passed away, my dad just used the oven as extra storage for things like documents and cat food. (And the extra dish racks were the dishwasher that never got run.)

Hmm, I might have to check out Jennifer 8. Lee’s book & blog, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Seems like something up my alley.

Asian Food

My mom liked to joke to me, 「口だけ日本人」(“The only Japanese thing about you is your mouth.”) It was probably pretty accurate, especially at the time, when I had pretty much renounced any Japanese-ness about me except for all the Japanese food I loved to eat.

Yesterday, my friend alerted me to this website alllooksame.com which doesn’t ultimately prove anything but it’s interesting and fun. Embarrassingly enough, I more or less crashed and burned on these quizzes — except for the “Food” one, in which I only missed 2 out of 18 questions.

Portland’s a big foodie town, and I can name a lot of great Asian restaurants (or often, carts) here. Just off the top of my head, there’s the India Chaat House, Baan-Thai, Cha’Ba, Pho Hung, Swagat…

…but wait, the selection seems a bit lopsided! There’s a lot of Indian places, more Thai places than I can possibly keep track of, some Vietnamese, some Chinese places (mostly way out East on the other side of town from me, so I don’t get out there much), but…where’s all the Japanese and Korean restaurants??

I spent most of my life in California so I’m completely spoiled. And at the time, of course I didn’t think anything of the fact that there was an abundant, wide variety of delicious, authentic food from all over the world, so I completely took all that for granted. Also, my “hometown” of Osaka (still where most of my relatives live and where I spend most of my time in when I visit Japan) is particularly known for the food — my dad likes to say “Tokyo is the heart of Japan, and Osaka is its stomach” — which makes me a bit of a snob when it comes to Japanese food.

I’m still figuring out this blog and I thought maybe doing restaurant reviews would make it a bit too local-interest, but I might not be able to resist…particularly about the few Japanese eating establishments around here.