Adventures in Eating: Anthropological Experiences in Dining from Around the World

9: Eating Incorrectly in Japan

167 Biographical sketch. James Aimers grew up in Toronto and he completed his B.A. and M.A. at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He obtained his Ph.D. in Maya archaeology at Tulane University (New Orleans) in 2002 and has taught at Southern Illinois University, Miami University (Ohio), and the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. In 2008, he accepted a permanent position in anthropology at SUNY Geneseo. [E]ach man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice . . . for we have no other criterion of reason than the example of idea of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. Montaigne (1978, in Geertz 1984:264–265) In 1989 I finished my undergraduate degree in anthropology and was accepted to the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) program, a cultural exchange program sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education that brought people under thirty-five years of age from eight countries to Japan to assist in language instruction in public schools. For a twenty-three year old with little experience outside of Canada and no teaching experience or knowledge of the Japanese C h a p t e r N i n e James J. Aimers Eating Incorrectly in Japan James J. Aimers 168 language, this was the ultimate in cultural immersion. In August 1989 I found myself in the historic city of Kyoto, working as the only non-Japanese person in a large high school and living on the grounds of a Buddhist temple. I was prepared for the difficulties posed by not speaking or reading Japanese, but I was somewhat startled by the number of serious issues that emerged regarding food. Language and food—things we take for granted every day—suddenly became stress-inducing, time-consuming quagmires. Try grocery shopping without reading labels sometime. Imagine my consternation after biting into a peanut butter and lard sandwich (impossible to tell lard from butter without being able to read . . . or ask). I cannot recall how many time I bought a delicious-looking chocolate pastry to find the “chocolate” was azuki bean paste. The Japanese love the stuff. I do not. Fortunately, I quickly made some wonderful friends who were warm, fun, and unfailingly helpful. One of these friends I’ll call Mr. Sato. Mr. Sato was a physical education teacher and an energetic, funny, outgoing man. He had visited the United States and Europe and was one of the few Japanese friends I made who seemed to have a real sense of the strengths and weaknesses of those places without either idealizing or demonizing them. While he was a man with a real curiosity about the world, he was also fiercely proud of Japan, its history, and its culture. He loved to show me and my friend Mike (also a Canadian) the rough and tumble world of Japan, the small bars and working-class restaurants of the back streets of port cities like Kobe and Osaka. These are places I might never have seen without Mr. Sato, and they added depth—and plenty of fun—to my experience there. In one of these places Mike and I tried eating raw intestine. Early on in Japan we had both resolved, in the spirit of anthropological relativism, to eat whatever was offered in Japan, no matter how horrifying. That night we reached a classic Japanese compromise and barbecued the intestine. Mr. Sato liked it raw and found it amusing when we begged him to let us cook it. The Incident On this same night occurred one of the most awkward incidents of my entire stay in Japan. Mike and I were happy to let the fluent Mr. Sato order the food while we focused on the delicious Japanese beer. Another policy I had adopted when eating was not to ask what a food was before I tried it, but we had just eaten intestine and I could see that the mischievous Mr. Sato was up to something , so I asked. One of the questions Japanese people often asked me was, “Do you like Japanese food?” The frequency of this question, I think, draws attention to the fact that although the Japanese are proud of their cuisine, they are also aware Eating Incorrectly in Japan 169 that is distinctive, and thus it is a significant way they distinguish their culture from that of others. I always enthusiastically (and honestly) replied yes. Years later, when I have a...