A Matter of Taste

Last Tuesday, I was finally able to implement a plan for a Japanese lesson I’d had my heart set on: using sushi to teach Japanese vocabulary. It was a strong success. Somehow, people just remember things about food very well. It must be genetic.

Sushi comes in wide varieties. The picture above is funamori, and to explain simply, fune is Japanese for “ship.” More broadly, think of the English word vessel and you might grasp the rest: it’s sushi served in a vessel of some sort. In ancient times, this was usually a lobster shell, but the “ship” theme caught on, and anything looking like a ship or boat or what have you, is employed to serve funamori style sushi.

The objective reason for using this in a lesson was to provide vocabulary for the formation of sentences. Forming useful sentences at an early date is the entire focus of my current style, and part of it is for critical short term reasons: keeping morale high, giving the learner a sense of advancement and progress,  and driving the level of frustration to a low and insignificant level.  It’s not just about having fun; really, it’s not. It’s about the feeling of empowerment vs.  helplessness.

Of course, helplessness is a normal feeling for people learning Japanese. Hence, why I seek to dispel it.

Besides this, the verb I use as the penultimate beginner’s verb is taberu, “To Eat.” Having a verb for eating without discussing anything to eat is a rather impoverished way to go about it.

Besides this, I strive to never forget that the Japanese language is a bridge to culture, with food culture being one important aspect of this. Learning the language is important, but we must not lose sight of what learning language is for.

The next lesson with this particular girl will concern where and when eating is taking place, or is to take place, or with whom it takes place. This allows us to focus on particles we have not yet addressed. Simplicity is important to ingrain the early steps, but it is also important to follow up. Fortunately, I am very pleased with overall progress and the “sushi lesson” (which she enjoyed greatly) seems to have sunk in quite well. I can throw in sushi terminology in future lessons, essentially at random, to have fun and, more importantly, further ingrain this useful terminology.

So, having fun is great, but using fun to enhance learning is fantastic. That, at least, is my personal opinion, backed up by my personal experiences. Everyone should give it a taste,  so  to speak. – J

Overreach

Here in the LA Times we have a story about a man with Diabetes who refused to eat the rice in an “all the sushi you can eat” special offer at a sushi restaurant, wanting only the fish. I think the kicker here is that the chef kindly offered to prepare him sashimi specifically, but the customer dramatically refused – and then sued for “over $4000.” What an ass.

Not for the last time will I say this: “sushi” is vinegared rice. If you’re not eating the rice, you’re not eating sushi. The chef would be quite literally compromising his craft to take any other stance.

Key para:

Oh said he offered to prepare sashimi for Martin. Two orders of sashimi cost $25, or $3 less than the all-you-can-eat sushi deal. But Oh said Martin declined the offer.

To me, this makes all the legal and moral difference in the world. If you want sashimi – that is, the sliced fish – then order sashimi. Don’t order all you can eat sushi and not eat the sushi (i.e. the rice).

For his lack of respect, the customer wants $4000+ for humiliation and discrimination for his disability.

Sir, you have a medical condition, not a disability. Disability is someone who can’t walk because of a genetic defect. I have Type 2 diabetes; I take pills before meals. I’m fortunate that I do not have to take insulin, but I do not. I realize this might impact my enjoyment of Japanese meals if I was living in Japan, but people would understand… and by the same token, I wouldn’t be baka enough to go after all-you-can-eat sushi.

More to the point, just going after the fish is abusive to the hospitality of the chef and is in effect robbing him of his work.

It’s not just a financial mugging; it’s a cultural mugging. Maybe the image of “sushi” as the fish is being preyed upon here. But we have no obligation to humor cultural ignorance as the basis for a frivolous lawsuit. Nor greed.

Long story short, a new type of sushi bar is attracting a female clientelle in Tokyo: one offering slices and cuts of raw meat other than fish, such as beef, chicken, pork, deer, and horse. The rice is being sold with balsamic vinegar to offset the different meat better than the usual regular variety.

Now, I do see a rather obvious problem. I can understand raw fish of various sorts being entirely sanitary, but raw pork…? Isn’t that dangerous, since pigs are just close enough to humans (in body temp and so on) for a lot of bugs to be able to make the species jump? Well, I’m not their meat inspector, so I’m not going to speculate.

All I know for sure is that it’s an excellent opportunity to underline how the fish is not the sushi, so this, too, is sushi, without any abuse of language. I just don’t intend to vouch for it being good sushi, but someone likes it.

Pressed By The Chef’s Loving Hand

So, to “nigiru” is indeed to grasp. Nigirizushi (sushi > zushi, at the end of a compound word; this makes it easier to say) is grasped by the chef and pressed together. It is formed of some sort of meat pressed on top of sushi. The above picture shows ebi, or lobster, in this case. The meat is pressed on top of the sushi while the sushi is in an oblong rectangular box (which simply means that fish/ lobster face forward when being pressed). The sushi (vinegared rice) thus packed provides a stable foundation, and the nigirizushi can then be served as-is.

A variant is known as the gunkan maki (“battleship roll”), using nori seaweed to form a perimeter around the sushi rice that constitutes a “vessel” that can be filled with soft toppings. This invention, pioneered by the Ginza Kyubey restaurant in 1931, greatly expanded the variety of toppings that could be used with nigirizushi.

Now, for pretty much all of the history of sushi, the idea of this being done by a machine was ludicrous, but you may want to take a peek at the video below. Behold – a robot with a silicon hand that can pick up squishy meat correctly, and put it on top of sushi! The idea was to have something that could save time. I doubt it’s economical, but it sure is nifty.

Incidentally, the meat that is put over sushi rice like this is cut in two and served in pairs, allowing the eater to appreciate the taste more (by being, well, less of a chore to handle). This is sensible. I just wanted to mention this to put the above video in context.

Rice You Can Hold

For once, eating with your hands (in Japan)  is OK.

To nigiru is “To Grasp.”

O-Nigiri (Japanese: おにぎり、お握り) is sushi that you grasp while eating it.

Put simply, onigiri are rice balls with fillings of some kind.

Traditionally, these fillings included:

• Pickled dry plums (umeboshi)
• Salted bonito (katsuo-bushi)
• Konbu seaweed (konbu)
• Cod roe (tarako)

Cod roe for the Japanese market is actually one industry that has existed for many years in my tiny coastal community here in Nova Scotia, though overfishing etc. has decreased the quantity, and the Japanese economy has not been booming, either.

Anyway, the point behind these traditional fillings is simple: anything salty or sour acted like a natural preservative. The onigiri long precedes the electric refrigerator, after all. (If you didn’t know that, now you do!)

Today, onigiri are highly popular in Japan as a snack food. A wide variety of flavors and fillings are employed. Onigiri are widely sold at convenience stores all across Japan.

Note that the rice in onigiri is actually not vinegared, thus, it is not itself sushi. Nonetheless, onigiri are common, easy to make, and do not require any worrying about servings or other issues a chef might otherwise face, so you will find them in any sushi-ya (sushi restaurant) alongside quote unquote “sushi.” You can’t miss them. They’re everywhere.