hey all,
I mentioned earlier that Michi and I are planning on cooking some chili this weekend. Because of that, I've been haunting grocery stores near my house looking for ingredients, but have not had much luck finding some of them. No, I'm not looking for things like Dragon's Eyes, Unicorn Tails, or jellied manticore brains. I've been looking for salsa, tortilla chips, tomato paste, and canned chipotle peppers. I have seen salsa and tortilla chips, and something that might be tomato paste, but chipotle peppers are apparently in the same class of items as Unicorn tails, etc.
No one has ever accused Japan of being a cultural melting pot, and that is probably with good reason. Although there is the indigenous Ainu people, they receive less attention than the aboriginals of Australia and the US: Japan is basically just for the Japanese. Even second and third generation ethnic Koreans born here are treated as foreigners, despite being educated in Japanese public schools and speaking only Japanese.
Their food is about the same. While you can find curry, spaghetti, and pizza in the grocery store, don't look for tacos, mascarpone cheese, barbecue sauce, or anything else like that. Like in Amsterdam, the average grocery store here is about 1/4 the size of its US counterpart, and has 1/4 the variety of items. I've even searched two nearby international grocery stores, and still have not turned up any chipotle peppers. I remember being able to buy these at Meijer's, Kroger, and Harris Teeter in the US. (I think part of the problem might be that I live in Saitama, which is just outside of Tokyo, and has a lower population of foreigners.)
I started asking some of my ALT friends about it, and they (at least the ones from other countries like New Zealand) seemed to think that the US is unique in this regard. Growing up, I never thought it was strange that I could eat pizza, spaghetti, macaroni, and tortellini, all Italian foods, in a country that is 5000 miles from Italy. Or eat Kung Pao chicken, Mongolian beef, or lao mein 8000 miles from China. Same thing for Indian, French, Middle Eastern, and Mexican food. Not only could I eat these foods at a restaurant (you can do the same here), I could easily find the ingredients to make them at a normal grocery store.
For all that the rest of the world is forever complaining about Americans' lack of knowledge of the rest of the world (What is the capital of Columbia? I sure don't know off the top of my head.), we experience the cooking and culture of other countries much easier, much more often, and expect to be able to do that. America is rightly called a cultural melting pot. The sheer lack of variety in other countries is hard to understand.
Cheers,
