Hello again! It is the blog How Unique Japan!
In this section, I would love to introduce Japanese food as much as possible! So, there is no doubt that Japan has many unique foods and menus! Why does Japan have those? On the front page, I have already touched on the reason. Additionally, there are two reasons.
First, Japan’s main products are vegetables and rice. Eating meat (except fish) was forbidden for so long by the Japanese main (but not original) religion, Buddhism. Thus, our food is mainly crops.
And second is the climate of Japan. Let’s see more.
When did the Japanese become like vegetarians?
Following the first reason, it is the ancient Japanese emperor (Ten no). In 75AC, the emperor named Tem mu Emperor followed a religion, Buddhism, from China because he thought Japan needed it to organize the society under his control. Since then, it has still been our common religion.
So, Buddhism is the key. That religion is strongly forbidden to eat animals, including cows, horses, birds, and monkeys(!). It is hard to imagine how much the Ancient Japanese struggled to avoid eating meat for over 1200 years.
That is why the Japanese have become like a vegetarian tribe, and the food has become healthy.
The rich climates
The second. Luckily, Japan is a proper country for growing vegetables because it is a long island from North to South.
That means the products that citizens can smoothly nurture are different because of varying weather and soil conditions in each area. For example, they can have Daikon (Japanese white radish) around the northern part and Potato because they are tough against coldness.
On the other hand (around the southern area), they can have eggplant, tomato, or green soybeans because they are strong against hot. Each area created a unique menu based on such a featured product.
It is not yet. The country has four seasons.
They have been impressing all Japanese with such natural beauty – for example, cherry blossom in the spring and beautiful leaves in the fall. Thus, many traditional/ancient artists, dancers, and even chefs always try to express those. It is the second reason.
For those reasons, Japan has successfully created many kinds of vegetables (food) and menus from them.
Oh, and please do not forget about the rice. It is also a Japanese regular product.
Let’s see more!
So now, you might have seen, Japan has so many foods/menus. Then, you could understand it is hard for us to find the proper article about the Japanese food you want to read.
That is why I categorized some food below. If you want to see some fermented food in Japan, click it and open the page. Oh? You don’t know about fermented food? Why don’t you try to read it? Please click here.
If you still find it hard, please utilize the search on the top and right.
(検索 means search. You can type the words you want to know. For example, Daikon white radish. If this blog is not in English.)
(One big apologize. As you may know already, our English writing skills are not good. We are sorry if you feel complicated or lost sense, and there are a few pages we just started to write anything. Then, here we go.)
Vegetables
As already said, Japan has various kinds of vegetables and beans. In this section, we tried to specialize each. Try to find the proper article you want to see on the line in alphabetical order.
Azuki (Red beans)
Daikon (Japanese White radish)
Sweets
There are also varied traditional sweets in Japan. Check them out!
Dagashi (small and cheap snacks)
Fermented food
Japanese have managed to store food products using unique methods. It is one such storing technique. It is Fermenting.
So, the old Japanese successfully utilized some fungi or bacteria/oryzae to keep the food edible. However, the method also produces more nutrition.
Check them out here!
Japanese pickles
It is one of the common ways to keep food around the world. It’s Pickling. However, the Japanese pickles (called Tsukemono) have varied (so much) because of the number of vegetable kinds. Seriously, any vegetable would be tasty pickles in Japan.
Take a look at the article about that, if you want.
Dry food
The method for storing edible food is not only fermenting. Drying food for storage was created with the ancient Japanese discovery.
They created such a way over 4000 years ago! Since then, we have been improving the taste of food.
If you are interested, Check here!
To close
It is all for the simple explanation of Japanese food. As this article said, this topic (J-food) has a lot of complicated information. Please utilize the Search bar and categorized articles above.
However, our blog is not yet. We shall have the other catchy articles. They are about the Edo era with details about laws and social systems.
Moreover, an article on the Japanese lifestyle is also here. It also has details of the unique furniture, activities/sorts (Sumo Westling), and toys.
If you have free time and nothing to do, try to read them to erase your boring time (by boosting your knowledge).
OK! Time to go! Thank you so much for reading this article! New information on Japan is continuously coming!
See you for the next uniqueness of Japan!