What Japanese food surprises foreigners? Introducing foods unique to Japan!

For us Japanese, escargot, a French dish of cooked snails, feels unusual.

However, as a matter of course, there are some Japanese foods that are surprising to foreigners.

So what exactly is such Japanese food? !!

Here, we will introduce Japanese foods that foreigners are surprised at and foods unique to Japan.

Raw egg

Raw eggs are the first food that foreigners are surprised to find unique to Japan.

"Tamago kake gohan", which is a mixture of raw eggs and soy sauce and placed on top of freshly cooked warm rice, is one of the standard breakfast dishes at Japanese inns and is loved by many Japanese people.

However, foreigners sometimes feel that eating raw eggs is a risk of food poisoning and is scary!

Of course, there are many dishes using eggs all over the world, but dishes that eat raw eggs as they are are rarely found in other countries.

Conversely, it can be said that we Japanese can eat raw eggs because "Japanese eggs are fresh and hygienic."

Natto

For us Japanese, natto is one of the standard breakfast menus along with raw eggs. However, it seems that many foreigners feel resistance when eating natto for the first time.

Recently, it seems that "natto" is also used in English, but in general, natto is often referred to as "fermented soybeans". When you look at natto, which has a unique smell of fermented foods and is sticky and stringy, you can certainly feel that foreigners hesitate to eat it at first.

However, natto is also one of Japan's world-class foods, which contains plenty of ingredients that are good for health and beauty, including nattokinase and vitamin B2!

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wasabi

Wasabi, which belongs to the Brassicaceae family, is a perennial plant native to Japan. Wasabi is a condiment unique to Japan that is indispensable when eating Japanese food such as sushi and sashimi.

Even if we are Japanese, if we eat wasabi at once, we may feel a stimulus and tears.

Because it is a food that is native to Japan, it is often difficult for foreigners to imagine what wasabi tastes at first, and it seems that there are many cases in which a large amount of wasabi is eaten and the mouth becomes a catastrophe!

Also, the fact that Japanese wasabi is very similar to the paste of "guacamole", which is indispensable for Mexican food, may be one of the causes of accidents. !!

Shirako

Did you know that milt, which is delicious when eaten in miso soup, is actually the testes of fish?

Cod, blowfish, Thai, anglerfish, etc. are mainly used as raw materials for milt, and it seems that the taste is superior or inferior depending on the type of fish.

Shirako contains plenty of various nutritional components such as fat, but when it comes to foreigners, there are opinions that it resembles a brain, so it seems that it is not a very familiar food. is. There are many cases where even if you can eat other foods peculiar to Japan, only Shirako is not good at it. Even if you know that it is very delicious when you actually eat it, it may be difficult to eat if you first know what it is made from.

From the perspective of Japanese people, Chinese food, especially Cantonese food, has the image of "eating anything that can be eaten," but even from the perspective of such Chinese people, Shirako seems to be a special person.

Horse sashimi

Basashi is a specialty dish that is often eaten mainly in Nagano and Kumamoto prefectures. Horse meat, which is a raw material, is a very nutritionally excellent food because it is low in calories and high in protein compared to pork and beef.

In particular, glycogen, which quickly becomes energy in the body, is contained in an incomparable amount compared to pork and beef.

Horse sashimi is a dish in which horse meat is eaten raw, so that the nutritional components contained in the horse meat are not lost by heating. The reason why horses can be eaten raw is that horses are extremely safe because they are less susceptible to diseases such as mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and O-157, which are susceptible to cattle and pigs.

The reaction of foreigners to such horse sashimi is that "I feel sorry for eating horses ...".

However, Japan is not the only country that eats horse meat, but it seems that it is also eaten in Switzerland, Spain, France, and China.

However, horse sashimi, which eats horse meat raw, may be said to be a rare food in the world.

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Summary

The raw eggs, natto, wasabi, milt, and horse sashimi introduced here are delicious foods for us Japanese without thinking deeply.

It's such a delicious food peculiar to Japan, but from the perspective of foreigners, it seems that you may feel, "Well, do you eat it !?"

Knowing about these differences in food culture and eating habits between Japan and the countries of the world will surely help you as a Japanese teacher when interacting with students from each country.

This article is a partial re-edit of the article published in Nihongo Biyori by KARUTA.
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