New JET Food Guidelines

I have heard from a reliable source that the New Zealand JET interviews have been completed for this year's intake. Because I am all about giving back, I want to share - free of charge - some of my amazing wisdom with these new JETs. You're welcome.
I want to talk specifically about food. Because it's important.

I have to make something clear before we begin: this is not one of those articles like, “Oh my God, I think I just ate the scrotum of a wildebeest”. I feel like when you move to a completely alien culture you should expect to have at least 17 of those moments, minimum. In fact, I probably went too far that way when I was considering the move to Japan. My imagination went into overdrive about what I could be fed.
It probably didn’t help that I had a fairly narrow view of what happened in Japan. It went like this:

- Everyone eats fish.
- Robots fly you to work.
- Sometimes space tentacles will try to have sex with you while you’re hogtied.
- Everyone is a ninja. Except the Red Herrings (people who just look like ninjas)

One of these people is not a real ninja.

So far only one of these preconceived ideas has turned out to be true, and it’s not the fish one. Which is a huge relief, because I think fish tastes like a combination of metal, slime and ass.

This plus Ass equals Fish.

In my case the ‘fish’ rumour was reinforced when one of my first school lunches included what I was told were ‘Vegetables from the Sea’. This sounds like something Jessica Simpson invented and tastes like something Vegemite invented so people would stop giving it shit about tasting so weird.

But it’s not all fugu and other foods from the sea lottery. There are some truly amazing foods here in Japan that I had no idea about until I arrived and experienced them myself. Why aren’t the Japanese people or the the JET organisation publicizing these foods? If it was my job to prepare uninformed morons like myself to come and live in Japan, these are the foods I would tell them about so they could really prepare themselves.

Kit Kats
What is it with Japanese people and Kit Kats? Before we even think about going any further with this discussion, look at this shit.

The cartography of my dreams.

That is a map that shows where you can go to get the regional specialty Kit Kats of those areas. In other words, if you want a sweet potato flavoured Kit Kat you have to go to ___________. You can’t just buy it wherever you want. You have to make a pilgrimage to show that you’ve earned it. I have heard about ‘Temple Walkers’ - people who travel around Japan visiting all the temples. I wonder if there are Kit Kat Walkers? Perhaps I shall be the first. But I’ll pass on Soy Sauce flavour, thanks all the same.
The Japanese way is actually that one person goes to that area, buys 68 of them and dishes them out to their colleagues.
That works too.

Beef
Everyone knows that Japan is 60% mountains and 40% train tracks. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to raise livestock. So the Japanese have to really get their money’s worth out of a cow. I’ve seen the Chinese approach to this problem: eat every single part of a beast, including the parts that normal people don’t even have names for and any farts that were left inside those parts.
But it appears the Japanese use science and technology instead. First they show the cows a good time by giving them a beer and a back rub. That’s not the science bit, that’s just lovely.

See if you like this next part as much, Clementine.

Then they slice them with what I can only assume is a laser made by a James Bond villain using bastardized alien technology.

Hold the fuck on. Has anyone tried this on a cow?

I’ve heard that medical science can slice a molecule-thin layer of someone’s brain for study. I’m pretty sure the Japanese are doing the same thing to entire herds of cows. The beef here is sliced so thin that I had to stack sixteen pieces on top of one another just to make something I could call a morsel. It’s so thin that if you accidentally dropped some it would slide between the atoms of your floor like The Flash and really piss off your downstairs neighbour.

Sorryimsorryiknowidothisallthetimepleasecontinuetoenjoyyourbath.

Oh, and one more thing about beef here: it’s delicious.

Chu-Hi
So no one believes me, but I’ve known for years that beer is a conspiracy. I’m pretty sure that no one actually likes beer. Anyone who says they do has already had too much beer, because they’re clearly drunk off their face. I sure as hell don’t like beer. But I also don’t like wine. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for getting smashed, unless you feel like sending a week’s pay on a bottle of spirits. (I dooooo!)
But in Japan someone awesome invented the chu-hi.

Probably Dr NakaMats. He's awesome.

Either that or it was invented by a pedophile. Chu-hi is the drink you should be using to introduce your child to the joys of alcohol. It sucks to go straight from Fanta to beer. There’s not a lot of common ground there. Chu-hi is like soft drink with trace amounts of ethanol added to it. There is more alcohol in the sneeze of any person on an evening train. This means I can drink, like, four chu-his before I get off-my-face-i-really-love-all-you-guys-by-the-way-i-am-the-best-dancer-in-this-room-let-me-show-you drunk, instead of my usual two. It comes in a rainbow variety of delicious colours and flavours.
Back in New Zealand, chu-hi would be considered a ‘girly’ or ‘gay’ drink. Actually, I get teased for drinking it here too… Goddamn it.
But not anywhere near as much, so yay!

After a hard day's work, sometimes a man just wants to crack open a peach chu-hi and relax.

Nabe
For over 50 years only the Emperor himself has known where nabe came from. It seems as though nabe was made by the Gods as proof that Japan is the ultimate place to go for eating. But the truth is a little more sinister…

The Secret History of Nabe
In 1953, over ten years before the first “official” moon landing, Japan sent sixteen space ninjas to the moon in a device that looked like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Great Glass Elevator. It was powered by bushido. The flight took seven hours, but it took them another hour to all get out of the Great Space Elevator because they all insisted that others go first.
When they took their first steps on the moon they were amazed to see little extra-terrestrial space whales. As a gesture of peace the aliens gave the space ninjas a giant meat laser and the secret of nabe.
Of course, the space ninjas used both of these things to make space whale nabe.

If you could put all of your memories of being warm and happy into a big bowl, boil the shit out of it and then chow down, that bowl of amazingness would be called nabe.

Pictured here: Happiness.

The weird thing is, I didn’t even know nabe existed until about three months after I got here.
Nabe is more a way of cooking than it is an actual meal. You put things in a big pot and cook it over a tiny gas stove. It’s like doing the best part of camping without all the dumb stuff like putting up a tent and being outside.

Pictured here: mostly mosquitoes.

What I really like about nabe is the cool communal feeling when eating it with a few friends, even when one of those friends doesn’t chip in any money for the ingredients, Mary.

In theory, the perfect way to commit suicide would be to cook up some beef nabe, then rinse it down with a chu-hi and 38 Kit Kats for dessert. You would die of happiness (or possibly hyperglycemia) and who could begrudge you for it?
That's all for today. Be sure to tune in for the next installment, we will spend sixteen pages discussing the merits of  Japanese cakes.