But What Do Gaijin Eat?

Today I’ll let you in on a little secret I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about for the last year and a half or so. I didn’t just choose to name this blog “Gaijin Cuisine” because it rhymes (well, uh, kind of). Back in August 2008, when I was setting up a space where I could electronically catalog my experiences in Japan for all to read and follow religiously, I had in my heart the vision that it would be written from the angle of a food blog.

Well, if you follow this blog very closely (as I know you do), you’re aware that it hasn’t exactly lived up to my initial ambitions. I don’t usually write about food here. Or, when I do, it’s seldom a central theme to my writing. But now I feel I have an avenue by which all that is about to change.

I’ve been a fair-weather vegetarian for quite some time now. Ever since my sophomore year in college, when I decided I would be participating in a short-term mission trip to Kenya the following summer, my motto has been: “If you might possibly make someone uncomfortable or offend them by not eating it, then just eat it.” I carried that principle on with me through the rest of college and beyond, always feeling that it was better to keep my mouth shut when a friend suggested going to a burger place for dinner, rather than butting in, “Well, uh, I’d rather not. Because, uh, they don’t have any vegetarian options there and conventional beef-production practices are detrimental to the environment, to the cows themselves, and to the future generations of this planet.” No, that usually doesn’t fly in most circles. So I just went with the flow.

Since moving to Japan, I’ve eaten things that I didn’t even know existed before I came here. Some of them have been outstandingly delicious; and some, like raw shrimp, I now avoid at all costs. I’ve learned to appreciate certain kinds of fish as they come into season, and to savor the first persimmons of fall with an enthusiasm that I never would have foreseen. This is a country with rich culinary traditions; every meal has the potential to be a deeply memorable (whether in a good way or a bad way) experience. And I’ve been pretty eager to not miss out on any such experiences. So far.

I could easily go into lengthy detail as to my reasons for deciding to go vegetarian in Japan. But, for now, suffice it to say that my personal moral convictions regarding the decision to eat meat have finally outweighed my hesitancy to offend others by not eating the same things they do. It wasn’t an easy decision. Most of the vegetarians that do exist in this country are foreigners. If a Japanese person ever really prods me (which I doubt would ever happen, but for the sake of speculation...) as to why I don’t eat meat, I’m still not sure how I will manage to provide a satisfactory answer. The easiest thing would be to half-lie and blame it on my upbringing: “My family never ate a lot of meat while I was growing up, so I never developed a strong liking for it.” That’s only half true. What it really boils down to, for me, is: “All things considered, it’s just not worth it.”

What this means for my blog, at least for the time being, is that I have a fresh opportunity to share with the world my experiences abroad on a meal-by-meal basis. Being vegetarian means that I can’t eat the school lunches, so that’s five more meals per week that I have to work out on my own. I started the week out strong with vegetable enchiladas and a spinach salad on Monday, and sweet potato stew with rice on Tuesday (today). And tomorrow…more enchiladas?

Tonight’s offering: a picture of a cupcake. A vegan cupcake. The recipe comes from the cookbook, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The authors, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, promise in the introduction, “A surefire way to get people to look at your blog is by posting pictures of cupcakes,” so I’m going to give it a go. These come from the recipe for “Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake” with “Peanut Buttercream Frosting” and “Rich Chocolate Ganache Topping.” I had a lot of fun with these. And, boy oh boy, were they rich.