The time has finally arrived to tell you all about the tastiest part of my study abroad adventure–Food! Being from Hawaii, I grew up eating many of the popular foods in Japan. That being said, nothing compares to the amazing food I was able to eat in Japan. Though I would love nothing more than to explicitly explain each dish I ate, for both of our sakes I will focus on the best and the most unique parts of Japanese cuisine.
By far, my favorite food is a fairly famous Japanese dish that goes by the name sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a popular communal dish where we sit around a hot pot to braise beef, tofu, clear noodles and various spices. A delicious and simple dish, Sukiyaki’s sweet and salty taste will satiate your taste bud every time. Though it is easy to find a Sukiyaki restaurant, in my experience the style made within a home is easily more tasty.
The next food, a Hakodate specialty, may be the most interesting food I have tried. This food is so unique even many well travelled Japanese people have never heard of it. Its name, is Ikameshi. Ika(squid) Meshi (cooked rice) is a dish made by cutting the legs off of a squid and stuffing it with cooked rice. From there, it is then braised in a shoyu broth and then cut into slices. Though this wasn’t the most appetizing or tasty food I have ever had, it is definitely representative of Hakodate.
Lastly, this last food needs no real explanation. Hakodate being a squid fishing town, there was no way I could leave before I had this famous Hakodate dish. Ika Sashimi. A delicious plate of fresh squid, this delicious food is served with the squid’s legs still wiggling. Truly an amazing food.
During my time in Hakodate, I often found myself wishing that America, or at least my hometown, would become more like the city of Hakodate. As I previously mentioned, Japan is almost unbelievably clean and possibly the safest feeling country I’ve ever been too. That being said, for all the good that Japan or most specifically Hakodate has, it isn’t a city without faults. As you can probably imagine, 60 students from U.S schools don’t exactly go unnoticed in a rather small fishing village where even tourism is fairly rare. Despite holding historical significance as one of the first ports opened to the U.S by Commodore Perry in the 1900’s, Hakodate has a relatively scarce amount of foreigners. To say that during our time in Hakodate, we were treated with amazing kindness wouldn’t be a lie, but at times, there definitely lingered a sense of xenophobia.
This was best described to me by a classmate of mine at Notre Dame who also participated in this program and happened to be caucasian. Though he rarely road the tram, much preferring the extensive bus system, on occasion he would humor me by coming along for the ride down the line. What he found however, in our opinion slightly humorously, was that in many cases he would find the seat(s) next to him vacant of people. In most cases, we simply chocked it up to there being extra seats available making the seats next to us insignificant. That being said, on one occasion, we found ourselves in fairly packed tram, but yet again too our surprise, the seat next to him remained vacant for the majority of the trip before it was finally occupied by an older man who was incapable of standing during the ride. In one particularly blaring incident, my friend and I boarded the tram and took two available seat, only for the passengers next to us to switch seats away from us at the very next stop. “That’s weird, that has never happened to me before, and I ride the tram everyday twice” I thought.
After some thought, it occurred to me that perhaps being Vietnamese, I simply didn’t standout as much and sure enough I found that when I sat quietly on my own the other passengers would sit next to me with little to no hesitation. In contrast, when I sat next to Alex or any other one of the other students and spoke english, the seat next to me was often left vacant in a somewhat crowded tram. But this too, befuddled me. From my understanding, in Japan, English is often seen as a pretty “cool” language. In some cases, I even found stores with nonsensical English names simply for the sake of attracting customers, and yet there we were being avoided like the plague. In their defense, there was not a single time in Japan where I felt as if anyone had an ill will towards me but this reoccurring phenomenon truly confused me. Historically of course, Japan was notoriously Xenophobic, going so far as closing the nation off, but it was my belief that with all the intertwining with american pop culture, that they became more open. In a way that may be true, as Tokyo was often filled with foreigners, and catered very much to English speaking tourist , but perhaps deep down their old beliefs still linger on?
Not satisfied with my inquires, I went to the most honest source I knew, my host family. Speaking to my Host Grandma, I learned that the xenophobic tendencies definitely exist, especially in Hakodate. In her opinion though, many of those who react distastefully to foreigners are those who have had very little interaction with them. She went on to give the example of how herself and the rest of my host family had the chance to visit Hawaii and as a result, the became more aware and interested in foreign culture and people . That made a lot of sense, especially given that the feeling was most often felt in the small city of Hakodate .
As I said, Japan is an amazing place that in my opinion is unmatched in the world when it comes to culture and environment. That being said, in this age of continued globalization, Japan too has some more growing to do.
To start off I want to apologize for the long gap between post as time has been hard to come by. That being said here it is.
During my time in Japan, as one would expect, I was constantly shocked by the cultural differences between the U.S and Japan. Though there are dozens to choose from, the culture regarding trash had to have been the most surprising. Here in America, Hawaii included, it isn’t out of the norm to see trash littering the roads and public spaces. Wherever I go, I could expect to find some form of trash, but in Japan, the opposite maybe true. During my stay in Hakodate, despite traveling to nearly every subdivision, I was shocked to find that the streets were regularly pristine or at the very least free of all trash. On top of that, one could walk miles through Hakodate and never find a trash can. “How do they do it?”, I asked myself and after a particularly surprising event I got my answer.
Approximately five weeks into the program, my host family decided that we should drive about 45 minutes north from our home to attend a festival at a park called Onuma (O- Big/Great, Numa-pond). There I had my first experience at a lively Japanese Summer festival filled with food vendors serving everything from Octopus legs, yakitori and frozen strawberries with condensed milk. It was amazing and to finish the night off there was a beautiful firework show. Despite all that however, two thoughts stuck in my mind more so than any of that delicious food did and they were “Where are the trashcans?” and “Wow, this place is spotless”.
After devouring my delicious festival food, I was stuck with the conundrum of what to do with my trash but despite searching for over half an hour, I could not find a single trash can at the festival with at least 1,000 people. Upon returning to my host family however, I learned that in Japan there really aren’t very many trashcans at festivals, instead, most Japanese people simply pack their trash up and bring it home to dispose of it. At first I was in disbelief but as the festival ended and the hordes of people packed up to return home, I was met with a park that looked just as good as the time I had been there previously. It truly was a sight to be seen. But then I finalized realized why that was possible. On the way back to the car, a man ahead of us dropped a little piece of paper, not thinking much of it, I was just about to walk past it when I heard my 6 year old host brother cry out “まま、ゴミはだめだよ” (Mama, Trash is bad). Then without any hesitation, he preceded to pick up the trash and put it in our family’s trash bag. Needless to say, I was shocked but most of all impressed.
Returning to our house, I brought it up with my host mom who explained to me that from a young age, Japanese kids are taught that trash is bad and that if you are going to make trash you need to be responsible for it too. Though I would say that the same lesson is taught here in the U.S, we don’t seem to take it as seriously and in that respect I think we have a lot to learn from the Japanese and their Trash Culture.
On a final note, to stress how rare trashcans are in Hakodate, here is a picture I felt obligated to take at a different festival of me and one of the only trashcans I have ever seen in Hakodate.
For the last month I’ve had the amazing opportunity of studying in Hakodate, Japan and although it has been among the most challenging experiences I have ever had, it has been extremely rewarding. Getting off the plane in Narita, I was full of excitement despite just disembarking from a 8 hour plane ride, that is until I had my first conversation. Though I understood that my Japanese was far from good, I was shocked to find that I couldn’t even ask simple questions, like where is the luggage carousel. That being said, making it through customs on my own was pretty terrifying ,but to my luck, with the little Japanese I could use and the english speaking information guides, I was able to make it through.
Though those few days in Tokyo went relatively well, I was fully aware that unlike Tokyo, Hakodate would be a lot more difficult to navigate through due to its smaller english speaking presence. On top of that, I knew that if I had any hope of making any real relationships with my host family, I would need to improve my Japanese drastically. Unfortunately, my first encounter with my host family, although endearing, was extremely awkward. As much as I wanted to speak to them and get to know them, I simply couldn’t and instead resigned myself to being silent. Thankfully however, my host family had been extremely understanding and welcoming which led to me taking more chances with my speaking skills. Soon after, I found that being in such an immersive environment caused me to learn on the go, teaching me to use the context of the situation to figure out what was being said. As a result, after a month of constant conversation, with the help of new grammar and vocabulary from class, I feel as if I can actually hold meaningful conversations about myself and interesting topics such as the differences between Japan and America.
Though even now, I feel as if I’m far from fluency, I hope by the end of my time here, I will be able to hold more intellectually stimulating conversations.
