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Several years ago, when the Michelin Guide decided to swoop into Japan and rate its cuisine, restaurateurs were slightly shell-shocked to learn that Japan came away with almost as many highly regarded establishments as France.  (And in fact, Tokyo wound up with two more three-star restaurants than Paris.) Then, in 2013, UNESCO put washoku (Japanese cuisine) on its Intangible Cultural Heritage List, alongside such icons as the Argentine tango, Turkish coffee and falconry.

So what gives with all the excitement over Japanese food?

Most people don’t realize they are indulging in some form of “living history” as they dig into a bowl of noodles or pluck sushi off a platter. People’s palates have changed over the years and adjustments have been made for taste, but the cooking methods and formality in the spectrum of Japanese cuisine have remained the same for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Fine dining in Japan is astronomically expensive. Most people don’t frequently enjoy traditionally prepared Japanese foods such as tempura, sushi or kaiseki preparation in an upscale, established restaurant. Because Tokyo is the largest city in the world, many people spend a great deal of their free time commuting to and from work, so their meals tend to be takeout from the supermarket or simplified versions that can be prepared at home. In recent years the frozen-food section of refrigerators has been moved from the bottom to front and center because it is the most widely used section of the appliance. For the younger crowd, light dinners with friends or co-workers near one’s place of work are common. A quick drink and then some takeout from the combini (convenience store), or a quick bowl of ramen noodles near the train station at either end of the commute, is often dinner.

Speaking of trains, the underground Metro and the rail system linking the Tokyo suburbs and city are so clean one could eat off the floor, except for the fact that it’s the height of ill manners to eat in public. For that reason, a great variety of street food can be purchased on shopping streets and along the paths surrounding shrines, as well as at stands set up for festivals, but most foods will be brought somewhere else for consumption. Until recently, yatai (small pushcarts) could be found, particularly late at night, dishing out noodles, oden or even roasted sweet potatoes. The proprietor carried small stools that could be perched next to the cart for an impromptu meal. Most have unfortunately disappeared.

Lunch is a quickly eaten meal. Many office workers and schoolchildren carry either a homemade or store-bought bento lunchbox with them. Bento boxes are an art form all their own in Japan. Each train station houses stands with piles of lunchboxes, usually of a local specialty. Little pushcarts with insulated coolers stuffed with fresh bento meals can often be found outside Tokyo’s mega-office buildings. Nestled inside a bento is usually a copious amount of rice (the basic ingredient for most Japanese meals), vegetables and a small portion of fish or meat.

A good place to find a variety of dishes is at an izakaya, or Japanese pub. An izakaya offers small dishes of seasonal ingredients that accompany alcohol, mainly beer and sake. In Tokyo one can see “salary men” and “office ladies” pouring out of office buildings in the early evening and into izakaya to enjoy a quick bite and a much-appreciated beverage before the inevitable long commute. The trains stop running around midnight in Tokyo, which means a night out often ends around 11 p.m. The alternative is to drink all night – and many people do.

Traditional Japanese food exists within parameters of preparation and presentation, whether haute cuisine or a hurried curry. For that reason, little has changed concerning how it is prepared and how it is eaten. There are formal and prescribed ways to prepare and eat everything. Only recently have chefs started to step outside the box. Foreign chefs adopting and adapting Japanese cuisine have had a substantial effect on contemporary washoku. The old ways aren’t going down without a fight, but they are slowly changing.

The formality of traditional Japanese cuisine has produced the “B-Q Gourmet” craze, or B-grade food that is Japan’s current “it” cuisine. Stoked by the media, which long ago discovered that food commentary was inexpensive to produce and report about, younger Japanese people flock to small, underappreciated eateries to sample the “ultimate” bowl of noodles or the “newest” okonomiyaki, or savory pancakes. B-grade sometimes extolls the mixing of odd ingredients used in fast food to make new and unusual foods that are the first of their kind to be served. Word often spreads over social media and these gourmets are happy to stand in line for exceptionally long periods of time to eat an inexpensive, simple and often unusual meal, just for the bragging rights.

Japan has traditionally incorporated foreign foods into its cuisine and tailored it to Japanese taste. Locals consider Japanese curry rice, hamburgers and many forms of noodles “Japanese food.” Vegetarians and vegans are often shocked to discover that there is almost no such thing as animal-product-free food in Japan. Some form of fish-based dashi stock is always part of a dish. Likewise, gluten-free food is almost nonexistent, because soy sauce contains wheat.

Although Japanese sweets are varied and quite special in their ingredients, they are rarely served as dessert. A formal Japanese meal usually ends with fruit. That said, tearooms serving sweets are always a pleasant and quiet oasis in the bustling city of Tokyo.

Lastly, one would think that in a country where tea is so revered, coffee would be a second thought. Not so in Japan. Coffee, and the drinking of coffee, is an art into itself. Tokyo is now littered with Starbucks and the Japanese equivalent of modern coffee culture establishments, but the city still respects the old traditional kissa-ten coffee shops, where one not only pays for a cup of strong coffee, but also the right to sit for long periods of time over conversation or contemplation in a classy environment.

Tokyo apartments and homes tend to be small and kitchens are relatively tiny. Cramped living conditions make socializing at home a challenge. Estimates say there are over 80,000 restaurants in Tokyo, compared to around 40,000 in the New York City area, 40,000 in Paris and 5,000 in Berlin. Whether standing at a noodle bar or lingering over an extensive kaiseki dinner, Tokyoites enjoy eating out.

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Fran Kuzui

Published on July 13, 2015

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