Somehow many people overseas believe that the Japanese eat ONLY rice and raw fish three times a day. I must say it is not true. What do we eat, then, can you guess?
You might know that our diet has been westernized, especially for the younger generations. We have almost all the American fast-food chains. Actually, if you come to Tokyo, you will be amazed that they have every kind of restaurant - Italian, French, Spanish, Mexican, Russian, American, Asian etc. You will see some rice (I wonder whether this "some rice" is like the potatoes Americans order with their meals in restaurants) with those international dishes. However, we eat it less and less. The government is worried about this situation because they care about rice producers. They have started to promote rice in the mass media, like "let's eat rice." But time never reverses. We are simply busy eating a variety of overseas stuff. And we really enjoy it! Of course we cook Japanese dishes. We sort of mix our traditional and western foods - boil, fry, or bake with a variety of vegetables, fish, and meat (we don't forget to use soy sauce, you know).
By the way, Japanese love seafood. Again, however, we have been changing. We eat meat (beef, pork, chicken but not turkey -- I haven't seen turkey in Japan), and young people like steak. Certainly Japanese love raw fish, but this is so expensive that we cannot afford it every day. If you eat sushi a couple of times a month, you are probably rich.
Let me tell you about one interesting difference between Japanese and U.S. recipe books. U.S. books show the total calories and amount of fat in a dish, right? Ours tell the total calories and how much salt it includes. Because we love soy sauce very much, we, especially the older generation, consume it almost every day. Even though we use "Lite" soy sauce, it includes quite a bit of salt. Therefore, recipe books warn us to "watch your salt content." "Fat" vs. "salt". This is an interesting cultural difference, isn't it?
Yuko Suzuki, Denver, USA
ysuzuki@ouray.cudenver.edu