The humid summer air is thick with the scent of fried food in Tokyo.
Several restaurants in Japan's capital offer traditional delicacies, ranging from unagidon or fried eel with rice to yakiniku or grilled meat -- popular recipes that are supposed to counteract the exhaustion that usually comes with summer.
Others prefer lighter fare such as soba, hiyashi-chuka or cold noodle dishes called somen or hiyayakko -- cold tofu with soy sauce, ginger and leeks.
PHOTO: EPA
Authentic Japanese food is making a comeback (some say it never left) in the land of the rising sun. Annual sales of food as summer gifts -- simple specialties that customers can order at post offices or through catalogues have been on the rise in recent years. Cookbooks are also gaining popularity, especially slick, modern volumes that showcase recipes using traditional ingredients. Nursery schools are already focusing on balanced diets.
Even the exemplary diet of Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542-1616) has caught the media's attention. His favorite foods included rice with wheat along with a miso broth, dried sardines and plenty of vegetables.
A menu based on his diet, dubbed "The Long Life Meal," includes special herbs in sesame sauce, cooked radishes, soybeans, konnyaku or a jellied mass of arum, ocean carp, tubers and wheat noodles with pheasant meat.
Ieyasu Tokugawa was probably also blessed with long life because he made it a habit to rise early and go to bed early. He lived to be 70 years old in his day, but probably would have reached 100 today, when more than 20,000 Japanese citizens have hit the one-century mark.
The balanced, lean diet of the Japanese is often given as a reason for their longevity, much higher than anywhere else in the world.
Women average 85.6 years while men average 78.6 years.
Traditionally, all three meals consist of rice, miso soup and a variety of side dishes. The food is not only healthy and easy to digest, but a feast for the eyes.
Usually fresh and either raw or lightly cooked ingredients are served in many small bowls, providing material for innumerable television shows in which gourmets taste the culinary cornucopia with zeal.
But things changed under the influence of Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901), then one of Japan's greatest experts on the West. He was convinced that Japan's strength and health would improve only with wholesale acceptance of Western-style nutrition.
After the opening of Japan in the mid-19th century, he pushed energetically for regular consumption of beef. Although Fukuzawa's radical push for a complete change never happened, Western cuisine eventually become standard in Japan. Instead of rice balls or fresh vegetables, more and more Japanese now consume so many calories that health officials have begun to sound a national alarm sparking new interest in health.
Consequently, menus at company cafeterias now regularly offer rice that is only 30 percent shelled. Millet, a vital ingredient of Japanese dishes such as miso soup, tofu, wakame or seaweed leaves) and salmon in sweet-and-sour sauce has also made a return to those menus, along with umeboshi or dried, pickled plums.
Southern Okinawa, known especially for the long life spans of its residents, who eat particularly large quantities of vegetables, has gained a reputation as a stress-free place with a carefree lifestyle.
According to media reports, the spread of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, has also caused many Japanese to fear Western food, prompting a return to their healthy, native cuisine.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
A white horse stark against a black beach. A family pushes a car through floodwaters in Chiayi County. People play on a beach in Pingtung County, as a nuclear power plant looms in the background. These are just some of the powerful images on display as part of Shen Chao-liang’s (沈昭良) Drifting (Overture) exhibition, currently on display at AKI Gallery in Taipei. For the first time in Shen’s decorated career, his photography seeks to speak to broader, multi-layered issues within the fabric of Taiwanese society. The photographs look towards history, national identity, ecological changes and more to create a collection of images
March 16 to March 22 In just a year, Liu Ching-hsiang (劉清香) went from Taiwanese opera performer to arguably Taiwan’s first pop superstar, pumping out hits that captivated the Japanese colony under the moniker Chun-chun (純純). Last week’s Taiwan in Time explored how the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) theme song for the Chinese silent movie The Peach Girl (桃花泣血記) unexpectedly became the first smash hit after the film’s Taipei premiere in March 1932, in part due to aggressive promotion on the streets. Seeing an opportunity, Columbia Records’ (affiliated with the US entity) Taiwan director Shojiro Kashino asked Liu, who had
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
RSS