{"id":17029,"date":"2011-02-22T00:02:46","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T04:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=17029"},"modified":"2011-02-23T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T04:39:07","slug":"cooking-in-japan-share-your-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/22\/cooking-in-japan-share-your-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking in Japan:  Share your stories!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lets-cook-japanese-food-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-17031\" title=\"lets-cook-japanese-food-1\" src=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lets-cook-japanese-food-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"182\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lets-cook-japanese-food-1.jpg 350w, https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/lets-cook-japanese-food-1-300x274.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Update<\/span>:\u00a0 See submitted stories <a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/22\/cooking-in-japan-share-your-stories\/#more-17029\">further below in this post<\/a>!\u00a0 Additional ones will be added as received.\u00a0 So keep checking back.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I learned recently from <a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/01\/07\/jet-alums-featured-in-shukan-ny-seikatsu-in-japanese\/\">our friends at the free Japanese weekly <em>Shukan NY Seikatsu<\/em><\/a> that <strong>&#8220;food&#8221;<\/strong> is the leading driver of tourism to Japan from the U.S. these days.\u00a0 With that in mind, I thought it might be helpful (not to mention <em>oishii<\/em> and <em>natsukashii<\/em>) if the JET and JET alum community were to share personal anecdotes about cooking while living in Japan.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <strong>E-mail responses to <strong>Steven <\/strong>at <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>jetwit [at] jetwit.com<\/strong><\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0<em> <\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Please  make sure to include your prefecture, city\/town and years on JET in the  following format:\u00a0 Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Responses can be as short as <strong>once sentence<\/strong> and as long as <strong>5 paragraphs<\/strong>.\u00a0 <em>(*If you want to write something longer, that&#8217;s great too.\u00a0 I just suggest checking with me first to get on the same page before spending a lot of time and effort writing.)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Responses will be aggregated into one easy-to-read post.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, this is one more project intended to help boost the &#8220;return on JET-vestment&#8221; for local governments as well as for Japan on the whole.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Itadakimasu!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>***********<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/22\/cooking-in-japan-share-your-stories\/#more-17029\"><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Stories of Cooking in Japan<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n<p><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><!--more--><\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>6:30am after an all-nighter in Shibuya, decided to take the subway to  Tsukiji.  Waited 50 minutes in line and paid $40 for 8 pieces of sushi.    Worth every second and every penny.  Still a meal my friend and I  talk about 3 years later.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>-Rick Ambrosio (Ibaraki-ken, 2006-08)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>**********<\/p>\n<p>Nakatsu,  the city where I was placed on JET, had a wealth of restaurant options,  from a cheap and delicious tonkotsu Hakata ramen shop across the street  from my house, to an authentic Indian restaurant, to the usual 100 yen  kaiten sushi. In addition, I had kyuushoku at my chuugakkou, so I never  had to worry about lunch during the weeks. \u00a0Nakatsu is famous for being  the ancestral home of Fukuzawa Yukichi  (the guy on the 10,000 yen notes), and on the culinary front known for  hamo (a kind of boney eel &#8211; in my opinion a bit overhyped) and kara-age  (marinated and batter-fried chicken &#8211; absolutely sublime. \u00a0In the town  lore, Nakatsu&#8217;s kara-age stands apparently put KFC out of business  because the locals preferred their homegrown friend chicken.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all the eating-out options, I still had  plenty of opportunities to cook for myself, and for my friends, as my  house was the site of many a dinner party  during my time on JET. Unlike more rural JETs, I was lucky when it came  to finding a variety of ingredients. \u00a0There were a handful of big  grocery stores in town, a specialty\/import food store across the street  from my house (right next to the ramen shop), as well as a farmer&#8217;s  market near one of my schools. I loved how the produce at the former&#8217;s  market was labeled with the names of the people who raised it. \u00a0Such a  direct and personal connection to food. \u00a0You can&#8217;t get any more  locally-grown then that, especially in a town where the small dense city  center quickly turned into vegetable patches and rice paddies.<\/p>\n<p>Some things took some getting used to though. \u00a0Like only having two burners on my gas stove,  or not having an oven. \u00a0But I quickly learned to be resourceful and to  find workarounds and &#8220;kitchen hacks&#8221;, such as how to make a molten chocolate cake in a rice cooker.  \u00a0With such easy access to a variety of Japanese foods, I have to admit I  rarely cooked Japanese food at home, but instead explored my own  personal fusion cooking, or made foods that I couldn&#8217;t find in  restaurants in the area. \u00a0I have fond memories of hosting my Japanese  friends and fellow JETs for &#8220;theme&#8221; dinners at my place. \u00a0Among the many  dinner parties I  hosted, I remember we had a Middle Eastern tapas night, a Thai food  night, a Taiwanese dinner, and a gumbo fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina  relief.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>-Lee-Sean Huang (Oita-ken, Nakatsu-shi, 2003-06)\u00a0 <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/leesean.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/leesean.net<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update:\u00a0 See submitted stories further below in this post!\u00a0 Additional ones will be added as received.\u00a0 So keep checking back. I learned recently from our friends at the free Japanese weekly Shukan NY Seikatsu that &#8220;food&#8221; is the leading driver of tourism to Japan from the U.S. these days.\u00a0 With that in mind, I thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,70,369,282,368],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-food-drink","category-japan-local","category-jet-roi","category-traveltourism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-4qF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17029"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17036,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029\/revisions\/17036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}