What's the deal with the food in Japan?
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- Опубліковано 20 лис 2023
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The food in Japan is really delicious, but why that is - and what exactly we can learn from it - is complicated.
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Hi MinuteFood, I love the videos you make. But I find it a bit frustrating that such a scientific channel as MinuteFood makes such a one-sided positive advertisement for wine. While alcohol is scientifically proven to be bad for your body. I understand that for some people wine is an important part in the way they enjoy their food. So in a food channel it is logical that this topic will pass by. But I just think it shouldn't be done like it is done here. Keep on the good work! Cheers
I'm originally from the US, but have been living in Thailand for 4 years now. When I first moved out here, I couldn't believe how much better the overall food quality was (especially when comparing cheap options from both countries.) I lost about 15 pounds, and not from dieting, just from shifting my diet to one that is mostly Thai food (which is also the cheapest food to get here). I also generally have better access to fruit and veggies here. I went back to the states to visit for the first time a few months ago (I got stuck during covid) and I found most of the food in the US to be nearly inedible. Most shocking was the bread. I bought the brand I used to buy, and I thought it had gone bad or something somehow, it was so weirdly sweet. My family thought I was nuts. With the exception of the Cajun & Creole food (I'm from the New Orleans area) and the Mexican food, I found most meals I sat down to extremely disappointing, and almost everything was sweet. I was ready to come back to Thailand after a couple weeks.
I also spent a year and a half in the UK in university, and I remember having a little bit of a weird adjustment period when I went back to live in the US, but it didn't hit quite as hard as it did this last time coming from Thailand after 4 years.
This is probably because the US adds sugar to more or less everything, including bread. Probably explains both your weight loss and the weirdly sweet bread.
Exactly like the commenter before me said: Sugar is everywhere in the US and it is no wonder that obesity is an epidemic there. A home made one, mind you. As I understood from other youtubers food companies aren't even required to clearly state every ingredient. I'm sorry, but if you're telling to the world you are the greatest democraty ever you should be able to demand from your government that by law you need to know what you put into your bodies. Sorry for that excursion... ;-)
Food in europe is generally healthier, too. The UK takes a similar direction like the US in some aspects, too. I always saw it as a toned down version, food wise. US American food sometimes seemed to me like a parody of the dishes it was originated from.
To get out of this situation you need to reinvent food preparation and cooking, start making things yourself from the basics, bake a bread and youll know what's in there.
I'm from Thailand, and is currently traveling the states for a few weeks. Most places except the asians are way too salty for me, say sausage or bacon breakfast.
@@MartinManscheryou wish it was sugar. Reality is that US likes to put corn syrup (which is probably worse than cane sugar) on pretty much everything.
Even moving to the US from Canada, the bread was shockingly sweet. Almost inedible. And mass-market Canadian bread is too sweet for me too! But American bread is almost like a dessert. It's weird stuff. (I actually find Japanese bread to be completely unpalatable because it's so sweet too, but I was a bit less sure what I was getting with Japanese bread, so I might have just bought all the wrong stuff haha.)
I’m just back from my first time in Japan and couldn’t agree more! I have high standards: i’m french living in Switzerland. And it was paradise for the foodie i am.
I lived in Japan for many years. We go back frequently to visit relatives and I agree that the “average level of quality” is extremely high. My normal heuristics for what will or won’t be good are usually off by a standard deviation.
For example: You can get off at a random train station in the countryside and there is one shop. And you’ll say, this place must be terrible, there’s just one shop. But it turns out to be really good.
And you walk outside and see a bunch of other closed shops nearby and you say. “Hm. There are market forces here, and some sort of path dependency that I’m missing”.
Some things to think about
High quality home cooking with an emphasis on Fresh ingredients bought that day (simiar to parts of Europe)
Lots of restaurants that opened during the boom period and only the good ones survived
Limited economic opportunities (especially for women) mean a much better talent pool - with lifetime employment people who aren’t on the corporate ladder don’t have options to start a business later in life
Focused menus (you mentioned, very important)
Cultural obsession with food - So many tv Japanese language TV shows that focus on food; japanese people will seek out good food, stand in line for it, etc - there is more marginal return in being tasty because people will seek it out
Good cheap restaurants creates an environment where any new restaurants has to be good and cheap to survive
High real estate costs means restaurants are small; the kitchen isn’t overburdened trying to make too many dishes
Some regional network effects - there is some clustering of same-restaurant types (monja yaki in tsukiji, certain places have a lot of ramen)
Those market forces are "collapsing population", not "that restaurant or shop was terrible". The population is in such a freefall that we're seeing a major realignment of... everything in Japan. As the fall accelerates, I'm curious to see what the crashing real estate prices (already evident in rural Japan) start to do to the average square footage available to each person in their homes. Are we going to see 500 square foot apartments in Tokyo that someone who isn't rich can afford? It's going to be interesting to watch.
It's seriously noticeable even in fast food.
I went to a mcdonalds with my mates and the bread was warmed for us. Like dayum. At a Mos Burger, the patty was grilled well, and you could feel the toasted bun. Like I was genuinely surprised by the quality of the food. Even Yakisoba (fried noodles) were amazing, and I've eaten so many stir-fried noodles in my past to be stunned by how delicious and simple the noodles were.
When you talk about low standards for inexpensive American food, you're most likely talking about chains. Taco bell and McDonald's may have started as small restaurants run by passionate people, but now they're huge corporations that need to maximize profit. Culture is also another part of it. In America, financial success is the top priority for people in general, not just in the food industry. That's what people dream about and strive for. Excellence is secondary.
And the chains in Japan absolutely have lower quality than other restaurants. Some of them are quite bad and disgusting. Just like any chain in the world.
sure, but there's lot of independent places with crappy food too.
I had a similar experience when my family visited France. Not a single bad meal. Even the sandwich from the airport coffee shop was delicious.
It's the culture, pride in your work which by itself I don't see a lot here (Netherlands in my case). Just hiring someone is a huge gamble due to that.
It depends on what cuisine and part of the small country. Febo shouldn't be the Dutch culinary standard.
when i returned from japan, i barely ate anything for 2 days. Because the food in japan was soooo good, i didn't want to eat anything else, but hunger got the better of me.
I currently live in Japan. My favorite thing is the random places you find away from the populated areas. Most places I've visited you want to stay mostly in the populated areas because of safety and because that's where everything is. In Japan you can walk down a seemingly random alley and find some of the best food you've ever had and it's not listed anywhere
Japan is definitely unique, but having lived in and traveled to a bunch of different countries, I think the US's food culture is more uniquely bad than Japan is uniquely good. I got food poisoning from restaurants a bunch of times in the few years I lived in the US, but I've literally never got food poisoning from a restaurant in any other country I've lived in or visited. Food safety is such a low bar to clear, and a scary number of supposedly professional cooks in the US fail at this.
what's unique about japan is that it's relatively affordable for how wealthy the country is
This is definitely also true. When I stayed in the US for a few months everyone was warning me “stay away from X, you’ll get food poisoning” and I was always astounded that they were allowed to remain in business. And the biggest, fanciest restaurants in some southern small towns were just like… mediocre strip-mall locations to my mind.
Like, the cheap independent Japanese restaurants definitely go further than the equivalents I’m accustomed to in Europe. But the USA was definitely a step below what I was used to, as well. I only went to one or two places that impressed me, there.
@@kaitlyn__L I think it's a "the customer is always right" mentality taken to extreme. In the US you have to have an excessively big menu, or your rude-ass demanding customers will take their business elsewhere. They demand every type of food for every palette on the menu.
It's weird going to a family restaurant and being able to order localized versions of Chinese food, Ukrainian food, Vietnamese food, Thai food, Indian food, Italian food, Mexican food, and a bunch of different genres of American foods all from the same place. Like... you're not going to be an expert at crafting all of those dishes, are you? And they all require unique ingredients to make them properly. Are you really selling enough of each of those to have fresh ingredients coming in every day? No, no you aren't. Because it's impossible no matter how busy your establishment is. And bad ingredients automatically lead to bad food, even if the cooks were good and the chef skilled (and they often aren't because cooks and chefs are so low paid in the US).
Oversized, over-generalized menus kill restaurants. But the customer is always right, so you have to have every type of food under the sun!
I think this is closer to the truth than the video is.
@@jasonwalker9471 this makes sense to me. Though I definitely went to only-Mexican and only-Thai places there, and those two were the ones I thought were actually pretty good.
But yeah, even the “Japanese” one someone’s family took me to in the southern US had a ton of Chinese, Korean, Thai-ish, and more options which all were pretty bland and greasy. Chain or local it was mostly the same story.
Where I live there’s definitely some element of that, but you can usually tell they’d rather you not pick that one because the cuisine they’re not so good at is usually just one or two menu items shoved in the corner.
Take this wonderful Italian place near me, which hand-makes all kinds of pasta. Their pasta is great, their pizza is great, and so is their soup. The two burgers and one steak option - not so much! Which makes sense, you need a lot of attention to get a steak just right and they can’t do that while simmering a bunch of pasta sauces. Even 30-60 seconds longer and a steak can be massively overdone. So the steak option just exists for someone who really hates pasta, basically.
(For sake of completeness I feel I should mention in one much shorter much earlier visit to the US I also had a good Italian place with a pretty small menu - but that was in Little Italy in NYC so I’d hope it’d be different!!)
Part of the reason I think is economics. Or at least the business model of fast food chains. Workers there are paid low and so just doing it until they can get something better. And while bosses may check quality of work they paid based on time. Cooking tasks are designed to be easily replicated across different restaurants of the same franchise.
I compare that to the street food I had in Thailand, especially away from the tourist trap areas. Those people got payed per meal served and if they could do something that their competitors couldn't, they got a bigger queue. That model favours building and perfecting your art.
I’ve never been to Japan (I love Japanese food though), but I’ve lived in Italy and the have a similar food culture. Everything tastes good, from high-end restaurants to the little sandwich you buy on the street to the industrialized food. They really care about food and ingredients.
She mentioned the Japanese pursuit of mastery, it's a highly regarded virute in their culture. I'm Chinese, so im not speaking as someone who has lived this, but as someone who has observed it and contrasted it with my culture. The first time I realized this is when I learned about the Japanese tea ceremony, i was just a kid and i was watching a travel show that was explaining Japanese customs. It blew my mind that they cared so much about making tea "the correct way". We Chinese love tea too, very much so, obviously. My family comes from a very tea obsessed part of China 潮州, and while there are some customs on how to make the specific tea from there 功夫茶, i have never even heard that there is a "right way". All we have a guidelines, like, "rinse" the tea once with hot water, pour that out, and then add water again and let it seep. Or, use the tea pots and cups made of 紫沙 ceramic, it will make the tea taste better. It blew my mind how serious Japanese people take everything. The older i got, the more i saw this in all the TV shows, manga, anime, travel shows that i consumed. Japanese culture values doing things the right way, to a high standard. This is ao drastically different from Cantonese culture (i cant speak for northerners and other areas), but we do not prioritize doing things "to the best, proper standards", because we prioritize profit and efficiency. And we only care about efficiency because we deeply believe "time is money". Im not saying that we are sloppy or have low standards, its just a difference of priorities. When faced with a choice, we are raised to put profitability above the pursuit of perfection.
In other words, i noticed that Japanese people do not prioritize profit or being speedy. They also value efficiency but for a totally different reason, they want to be efficient because it's better, it's a part of the pursuit of mastery and doing things properly.
This is a good example of why Asian cultures may seem similar on the surface, but when you dive deeper into the belief system you realize each culture is actually very different.
I respect Japanese people so much for their dedication to a craft. It's a world view that is so different from how i was raised.
Chinese culture used to have such qualities too, ask a Japanese person in their 90's or older..... then Mao happened.
Well, that's a fresh perspective coming from someone Chinese because all I've ever seen in china is Japanese hate.
You are probably too young. And of course, Japan is not what is used to be. The japanese people that did horrific to Chinese have all died and the younger generations have nothing to do with them. Japanese people now are some of the nicest and they don't deserve to be labelled as such.
Heck yeah, shout out to my fellow Cantonese friends. My mind and taste buds were blown away whenever I travelled back to my mother's home in Hong Kong several times during my childhood. In fact, the food was so good, I have nothing but good memories associated with that place even though I haven't been back in 7 years. The milk tea from Hong Kong has so many different blends of tea leaves and done at certain temperatures by the diners there back in the 90s that obsession was an understatement on how they went over every single detail on making the best possible tea. I can't wait to go again and explore the food scene over there
@@donwald3436 Uhm you sure?
I think urban planning actually plays a big part. Think of how dense, walkable, and affordable it is in Tokyo compared to a typical American city. You need those traits if you want cheap, highly-specialized vendors.
I do think that the relative affordability of housing and commercial space, combined with the density of everyday living makes it easier for the average restaurant to be able to coexist alongside a lot of other specialized restaurants. The fact that it's a quite compact country as well, with not a ton of emigration opportunity historically for its people has meant that families spend many generations in the same place, since even internal migration doesn't offer too drastically different circumstances.
I don't want to discount, however, how the more recent history of feudal and isolationist governance led to a high level of inequality, and the effect that had on the artisanal culture of food. At the top of the pyramid, the rich and powerful did not have the opportunity to display their extravagance to each other through foreign imports, so ceremony and the highest quality preparation reigned. That also meant that aspiring climbers would have to perfect their craft to be able to compete for that lucrative patronage. At the bottom of the pyramid, isolationism meant that the peasantry didn't have many opportunities to trade for nutritional variety. They had to focus on creative uses of the available nutrients around them.
Japan has a smaller population.
Very neat to see Ithkuil text at 1:23
Does it translate to anything? I tried to translate it myself, but I'm not a supercomputer so I couldn't get further than figuring out that it isn't simple transliteration.
Glad someone noticed! I'm intrigued
I also noticed but could not translate it.
I also recently got back from Japan and totally support your view on overall quality of food.
I love how you make vids! (Also is that New Ithkuil at 1:24 )?
"Attention in detail" also visible in the precise timing and arrival of trains, and (usually) clean public bathrooms in train stations and konbini.
We have a big Japan Community here in Düsseldorf Germany. And I LOVE eating there ^^
If another culture is doing something right, yoink it! and add their technological and cultural distinctiveness to your own. Appropriation is not a real comcern if it gives me better food. The last thing i care about when eating healthy inexpensive food is how sensitive the owner was in delivering me a better service.
sorry, you are only allowed to eat/cook food the way your ancestors did, dont you dare taking inspiration from other cultures! :/
Though this is very subjective there's two countries I consider very focus on high quality around food. It's my home country Norway, and Japan.
This has turned me into a very picky eater, but it also let me really enjoy my own visit to Japan. Everything there was fresh and top quality.
My best guess is both countries heavy reliance on sea food. Which needs to be straight from the ocean and properly handled to be enjoyable.
This resulting in that same mentality being included in other non-sea based ingredience and dishes.
I’m not from Japan. Worked in food service. But I recommend everyone stick to places that do 1-3 things well. 50 page menu means using undress (unfresh is what I typed) or premade and nuked product
I visited US and I must say that in this country if you go to a more expensive restaurant, you don't really get way more value in the food you get or at least not in the same scale as European standards
The food here tastes ok (been living in Tokyo for 8 years) but it's usually made with super cheap ingredients and its very repetitive. People hear about the starred restaurants and sure they exist, but they in no way talk for the quality of the average restaurant. Honestly when I go back to Australia I have far more choices for excellent and varied restaurants.
I love most authentic Asian food, cook a lot of Korean for my Korean partner, but we also love Japanese, Chinese, Vietnam and Thai food. Haven't visited there yet so can't judge the eating out scene. I have the impression that most Asians like 3 warm meals a day, compared to here in Germany where people are fine with bread for breakfast and dinner. And I agree food is very valued. Due to inustrialization people have become more busy, and especially in workaholic Asia have less time to cook themselves. But Japan for a long time had a partriarchic housewive culture so often the wife would cook. But another option if you are too busy is eating out and seems like over there people s tilo value what they eat when they do so.
Albariño, you touched my heart! One of the cultural marks of Galicia, NW Spain. You should try Mar de Frades, Paco & Lola and Santiago Ruiz. Serve at 10º C. They're the ones I like best :)
Hey, presuming you return to Japan in the next few years, could you do a video on the pros and cons of trying to be Vegetarian (or Vegan) in Japan? One of my friends is Vegetarian in the U.S. -- to the point of sadly giving up McDonalds french fries once he learned they used beef flavoring -- but when he's in Japan, he's not Vegetarian, because in his experience it was a quite difficult task to reliably get vegetarian food without really going out of his way (and having it cost more, if I recall).
I vaguely recall him saying something about how a lot of people over there didn't seem to grasp the distinction he was trying to make in the first place, so he couldn't trust the servers to know what he was after. Or maybe it was more of a communication problem due to whatever level his Japanese was at the time. But I appreciate his pragmatic view of ethical eating practices (do so to the extent you can, but don't hold your moral high ground to the extent of it having a strong negative impact on your ability to function), and I'm quite curious if the Japan of today is just as hard for vegetarians/vegans or if things have changed (or if, say, he just happened to have bad experiences that were never emblematic of the country as a whole).
While I do love Japanese food (lived here for 5 years) I still think that south east asian food are better. They have more spice. Sure the quality control isn't as good as Japan, but they have their own versions of 職人(shokunin).
I loveeee soba! 😭
I believe its Quality vs Quantity and comes down to passion.
Usually in high demand items usually go down in quality when companies try to meet the quantity. But it relatively backfires when the customers notice that the quality went down. The reason why they wanted to buy it in the first place.
Now the passion, The passion for cooking and food has practically disappeared in most restaurants Especially those of cheaper pricing. It mainly has to do with the Stigmatism around those establishments.
"Like it's not a real job like an office job."
"Study hard if you don't want to work at McDonald's/TacoBellect.."
Just making me want to visit Japan even more.
I like the Katamari reference there!
Mixed feelings about this video- I’ve been living in Japan for a few years and on one hand I definitely agree that the overall quality of food is really good! And I love Japanese food so much❤ but on the other, I kind of hesitate to wax poetic about how amazing and exceptional Japanese food is, because (as silly as this may sound) bragging about how “Japanese food is the best in the world” is a common form of nationalism that I’ve come across a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I love Japanese food. But I really hesitate when people start talking about how Japanese people just have such “attention to detail” and the conversation starts leaning into talking points about how Japanese culture is just so amazing. It’s complicated and messy. Honestly I don’t really love seeing this kind of *vibes* narrative promoted on a channel that’s usually focused on scientific data. Still love the channel though! ❤
It's definitely subjective to some extent. I'm willing to believe standards are objectively higher there -- that's probably true for the reasons you outlined -- but for whatever reason Japanese cuisine didn't quite work for my very northern-European tastes. I didn't enjoy sushi, and things like ramen/soba, while perfectly fine, are just not my favorite. So even if it's high quality, the enjoyment I could get from it was more limited.
The main enjoyment on my trip was just trying so many foods that were completely new to me, which was quite an experience in itself, even if whether I loved each thing was hit and miss. I did like the convenience stores though -- found plenty of things I liked there. Was great for trying a bunch of foods at a reasonable cost. Exploring a culture so different to my own was really fun and interesting.
I think she was trying to explain the fact that Japan puts a lot of effort into their food and maybe possible strategies, like only serving one type of food and serving variants makes food better. Overall, good tasting food is an option but it's these strategies that Japan uses that leads to better food overall.
@@pokegaming2590I don't try and eat at a place with a menu longer than a harry potter book.
To much on the menu is a red flag for me.
That was a problem I find in America far to often. (Not that is an American only problem)
@@pokegaming2590 I know. My point is just that when you're not into the cuisine it kinda makes the improvement rather pointless from the perspective of a traveller. I didn't find European foods noticibly better personally, but to be fair I did mostly eat Japanese food so maybe I need to try more European style food in Japan to judge it more fairly.
@@Aaronwhatnow I'm Korean Canadian and the thing that still bewilders me is a large family all eating their own separate meals in a restaurant. For a small group, ordering family style can be difficult. But a lot of western restaurant menus are structured to discourage sharing. To me, it's similar to everyone ordering a different personal pizza at a pizza place instead of a whole pizza so that no one has to agree on toppings.
@@pokegaming2590 I think Japanese diners have a trust that the person making their food knows what they are doing. Too many westerners seem to think their own preferences are the only acceptable option.
1:56 Matthew Perry gazing over Japan, 1853 (stick-figurized)
I'm NOT going into the Ithkuil at 1:24, do anyone knows what does it mean or if it actually says anything at all?
Been there twice too, and absolutely agree!
Just to add something from personal experience though... I have a handful of uncles and relatives who went to Japan in the 80s to early 90s to work, and their experience doesn't quite match mine. xD
Situation was different though. They went there to work. They lived all around, but mostly on small industrial towns - not Tokyo, not Kyoto, not Osaka... I think most of them lived most of their period there somewhere around Aichi prefecture, perhaps Toyota city, or more likely smaller towns around.
Some of them liked the food despite being far simpler than what you get in big city restaurants in current day Japan. But several of them complained about one thing - the food is too sweet. xD
I personally know a bit of US food, some European food, and a lot of Latin American food which is where I'm from. And the thing is, it is true - a lot of everyday life food in Japan is sweet. Sometimes overly so.
Particularly in everyday food, like the bento you get at a discount by the end of the day in super markets, you almost won't find purely salty food. It's always a mix of sweet and salty. If you ignore imports, which compose a large portion of Japanese food these days, the older Japanese food, traditional stuff... purely salty things are not that common.
It's like, you have the pickled stuff that is salty and sour, and you have lots of glazed, miso based, or baked rice based stuff that is savory and sweet - but almost nothing that is just salty. Most of the sauces they use are sweet and salty. You almost have no food that a bit of salt is the only seasoning.
Even for stuff that is mostly salty, there's a lot of MSG in the mix, so you end up with the umami, the savory flavor in, which don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's not pure salty too like a lot of our food.
Also good to note that milk, bread, and a few other western staples are relatively recent additions to Japanese cuisine, and the further back you go the harder those were to find, so I kinda understand my relatives' desperation back in the early 90s. xD
I went there back in 2008, and then again in 2018, things had advanced a lot already. The difference between my two trips was in just sheer number of tourists... I kinda enjoyed my first trip better, Japan is becoming too crowded with tourists these days. Can't complain much since I'm one of them after all, but still... there is something special about going places there that don't have crowds of international tourists around.
My latest trip I also had to stick to major urban centers more because the relatives who went with me are all at retirement age and some mobility limitations, so no adventuring into the inaka. :P
I do want to go there one day to explore the places visited least though... and I highly advise people who already knows the main touristic spots to also do this. At least for me personally, the real magic of Japan is in the small towns, the countryside, the places least visited by tourists. There's just so much to see there...
o/
I have been to Japan many times and I can verify that this video is spot on.
Have you visited Portugal too? Our food is delicious aswell :)
Next level video! Right now, I'm stoned, so anything sounds like it would be the best....👀
Japan culture values respect, respect breeds care and into culture.
It’s very subjective, I’ve never visited Japan , but I visited Paris , I did not eat a less than perfect peace of bread or croissant there, I jumped from city to city in Italy , I didn’t have a bad meal there, especially pizza and pasta, I spent a month in Istanbul, I think I only had one or too good meals there and they were at fancy restaurants, the rest I didn’t really enjoy, I visited Tunisia and Malta , really spicy food there , but okay.
If you ask other people they would probably disagree about these places based on their experiences, and whether they ate with a local friend who really knew where the goods at.
America USED TO have lots of nice small quality local restaurants. Watch documentaries on US cities in the 1940s-1950s. Even the cafeterias served up amazing cheap foods.
0:20 that's CGPgrey with beard
Damn that bento box looks better than a meal at a medium expensive restaurant here in the US
A big part of the issue is the obsession with calories per $, and the trend is spreading through europe.
When eating out gets cheaper than cooking yourself, there’s something broken.
@@franck3279not necessarily, some places have historically always had people eat out at cheap stalls which had economies of scale versus cooking at home. People would often gather in a communal eating spot with benches away from the stalls, or the stalls have just 1-3 stools, or both.
Part of the expectation for restaurants to always be more expensive is down to the prevalence of sit-in restaurants with waiter services in the west. From the pure economics of it, a street stall that feeds everyone in the neighbourhood should absolutely be cheaper than everyone cooking individual portions for themselves.
I think a lot of this comes down to infrastructure. American cities are much less dense, and zoned in a way that you usually have to drive several minutes to get food. This means that locations that get the foot traffic that a small business specializing in a single dish would need to survive are few and far between, and that scarcity makes them so expensive as to be entirely unaffordable to those businesses. I think there is of course a cultural element at play as well, but like a lot of things those cultural ideals come from a material place.
That's is a complex topic.
But Yeah making comparison between japan and the US isn't fair, The US haven't really got good standard of cuisine.
I Think 3 points could be see here.
-First, Japan regulate more the food to control the quality of it. Some animal must be feed from the right cereal in the right condition. It's even more regulated in countries like France and Italy.
-Second, Japan have local food. Each region have his own dishes, and they try to master it. Like you said , each restaurant try to do what they do best, and that requiert doing a few meal only.
No meal that pull off the freezer , just food made on the day they are going to be served . Again, countries like France and Italy are doing that.
-Third, Japan try to use local product to make local food. it's kinda a combinaison of the first and the second point.For exemple, if you want Wagyu from Kobe, the beef has to be specialy raised on the Hyogo prefecture, which is the area where Kobe are located. You guess it, France and Italy are generaly also doing that
My point is that when japan have amazing food (i'm returning here in february for a reason) , some other countries are too. The US aren't placing the food standard very high in general, so i could understand the feeling.
Having said that, and that one little problem i've with japan, the food speciality here aren't that old. Some of the dish you can eat are 40-90 years old for the most part. Like Okonomiyaki for exemple. Before the Meiji Era, japan didn't even eat meat! It's a little sad that they don't keep a lot of the old recipe. (The buddhist cuisine, the Shojin Ryori, are great exemple of older style of japanese cuisine). I'm also glad as a French that we have keep trace of these older recipe. Like some of the recipe we still used today are at least 500 years old, we even have a paper where Charlemagne (a "french" king form late 7th to early 8th century ) discover the roquefort, a very famous french blue cheese.
Japan is amazing.
Go to Lima, Peru... I'm sure it beat Japan's deliciousness.
I wish my family knew the side that lived in Japan, my grandfather was orphaned as a child in okinawa before moving to Canada, so we don't know our relatives to the east.
Have you ever been to Belgium? I am curious how our food offer compares to Japan.
And why does onigiri look like 1980's underpants?
Great video 👍🔝
One big difference is that there the calculus changes when you have food allergies or even just preferences. Japan has some delicious food, but it can't possibly compete when it comes to having options and substitutions available. Thats one of the big advantages of the US. Trying to live in Japan with celiac can be a major challenge for instance. Small shops that specialize in one thing have no ability to accommodate any dietary restrictions, you just take it as it comes. That works wonderfully if you can eat everything without having to ask what is in it but for those who are disabled, not so much.
One of the many reasons that we (i.e. Hong Kongers) consider Japan as our second home
I've been learning japanese for 1 year and i almost broke the screen hearing you pronounce japanese words wrong AAAAAAAAAAAA
I haven’t ate anything Japanese, but Nepali food is good too
next stop: Vietnamese cuisine and noodle with stews pls! :D
i think vietnamese food is way better than japanese
2:52 that brown thing is a French dessert actually
not mentioned: government policy/subsidy and local ordnances (and how those are affected by culture and history)
Please, please, please someone tell me what the octopus bits in batter @2:26 is!!
I don't know, maybe takoyaki in the making?
Don't forget the waste line measuring fine for companies probably plays a part in it too
Interesting how this was basically “the food in Japan is good and they work hard at it…” I was expecting even a bit more in depth opinion.
Interesting take on culinary travel. Focusing on the culture of the food. Really nice video.
You should try Israel 😊 it might not be as high standard as japan but still respectable, its also the most diverse cultural kitchen. Israelies came from all over the world and during the last 70 years fused together european, Mediterranean, Easter, African and other kitchens into a new creative local kitchen, I have tried many over the world and always come to the conclusion that we have the best food in the right here!
You can look to In-n-Out Burger for fast food quality. They make hamburgers and Fries, and that is all.
The customers are the key. If they want low quality food, they will get it.
I think one reason Japanese cooks can afford to sell cheap high quality food is that rent there is soooooo low, both residential and commercial. Why? Because Japan builds builds builds, baby
Only experiencing US food along the eastern half of the country, it appears to me that the main issues are not specializing in a small menu, pushing the lowest quality products for profit, and most of all not following the “system”; places like McDonald’s can drastically taste better or worse just depending on if your food was prepared by following their process properly or not.
I've never been to japan but I do believe that specialization makes a huge impact in craftsmanship. Without the meditation on a specific subject (why did this go wrong? what could I have done different?) it's improving your craft can be a very slow process.
Car dependent places generally have worse food, fewer independent restaurants, higher prices, and less competition
honest answer for the standards in the US
"record profits"
I want to go to Japan
I love Japan and even studied there several years back. The food however for my Southeast Asian palate is very plain. The seafood and some of the produce are very flavorful and high quality on their own but the cuisine is just not one of my favorites. The predominant flavor seems to be soy and is a bit on the sweet side for me. The presentation and technique is very impressive though.
Shoyu is definitely a lot sweeter than tamari, that’s for sure! I definitely understand what you mean though, I like how many flavours Thai and Korean food tends to have.
I love ramen too. And sushi. But sushi is expensive here in Poland even though (or so I heard) it is considered a fast food in Japan.
when i went to japan a while ago sushi seemed to be a high end food too, mostly at expensive restaurants that cater to tourists, while things like katsu or ramen were much more common around the city.
@@theawecat27 Sushi is still sometimes a low-end food, and it was even more so in the past, where it was done by street vendors who pressed sheets of fish with sheets of rice before cutting it up. But it started to become more and more high end as it merged with Sashimi, which was considered an aristocratic artform
@@theawecat27 Sushi can both be cheap and expensive in Japan, If you go to Japan, you can find cheap prepared sushi in places like the supermarkets, they can be as low as 500-600 yen per set at certain time during the day. Despite it's being cheap, they still taste better than some rubbish foreign japanese resturants though. Conveyer belt sushi chain stores such as Sushiro or Hamasushi etc are quite popular in Japan as well. On the other end of the spectrum, you can find michelin 3 stars sushi resturants.
@@theawecat27 Conveyor belt sushi near me in Osaka was 100 yen for a pair of salmon nigiri, 150 yen for tuna. Granted that place was extra cheap for not being near a subway station, but still, very cheap. In the US, $3 would be cheap for the same food, 3-4 times the price.
You need to visit Penang or Kuala Lumpur, and I've always been disappointed in Michelin-rated restaurants, bar none
I'm currently living in Japan, and I think a lot of the Japanese food quality is due to culture and geography. Specifically, the culture of eating raw foods. The Japanese equivalent of fast food chains serve raw fish, and constantly give you the option of adding raw eggs as a topping. So of course there has to be a lot of regulations to prevent food borne illnesses. Restaurants are forbidden from delivery or even letting you take food home if they are not certified for it. For example, I once ordered too much pasta at a restaurant, and they won't let me take it home, since they are only allowed to deliver pizzas. In convenient stores, ready-made foods that are near expiry are given constant discounts throughout the day.
I think the other cultural part is the honing of a single skill throughout your lifetime. This is after all the country where several hundred year old family stores exists, and the traditional expectation is to work at a single company until you retire. Japan's geography meant they can't compete on the international market at producing cheap foods, so they specialize by making super expensive fruits and wagyu beef. It's the country where chefs spend over 10 years training to serve customers poisonous fugu without killing them.
the answer is easy . . . Food Honor . . .
Have you been anywhere in around Mediterranea?
Coming from Central Europe, I was in the US for the first time. Eating at McDonald's, it was the worst food I ever had. McDonald's here is decent.
However, I also ate a burger at Cheesecake Factory, and it was pretty good.
That is new ithkuil around 1:30! I took way too long to halfway translate it to something like country-eating-comparison-tool, which I guess makes it basically just a caption for the green table? I don't know what I expected but that was somewhat anticlimactic 😮
I saw that JOJO reference @MinuteFood you can't hide from us 4:37
huh. what's with the higher than usual amount of dislikes?
Think it’s the America number 1 crowd
what language is that at 1:28?
Ithkuil
I think the reason fot this is very easy.
It is money and safety.
Compared to us in Germany they work pretty long hours without much breaks and this is bad for your health.
Also many earn very little.
Going this extra mile in every step takes a lot of time. So if you would pay them fairly. Lets say at least 20€/hour for a highly skilled cook.
So food produced this way would cost double or triple here
I think you could have done just a bit of research and learned at least a few things about why their food culture is so different. Or at the very least actually described what you think is better about the food.
There is a cultural focus on delicious, healthy food. That's really it. Enough so that they're willing to give time and resources for it. The best example is school lunch. My kids spent a number of weeks in Japanese schools (my wife is Japanese) and the difference is rather astounding. Kitchen workers in Japanese schools actually prepare and cook the food at the school. They are cooks, not cafeteria workers. So the children partake of ramen, curry, fish, soups, salads, etc that are actually prepared at the school at lunchtime, not dumped out of a can or package. The food is then delivered from the kitchen to the classroom where the children eat lunch. Sack lunch is pretty rare. Japanese meals are an event, not an afterthought.
Ironically, as you probably found out, despite the extra care and quality, restaurants in Japan are not any more expensive than restaurants in the US. And no tips. What is our problem? Too much money going to the chain's corporate HQ? Chains certainly exist in Japan, but it's less common than in the US.
great Katamari reference :P
maybe it's the use of plastic display food....once it arrives, it sets the standard and sits there in the window for all to see year after year...no sneaky downsizing or slapping stuff together in a dog dish allowed...it must forever looks like eternal plastic 😀i saw a show where fake food companies will take molds of the actual food from a particular restaurant to make the model imagine the stress of cooking the dish that will be sent to them and end up as your forever advertising to passersby
I went to Japan a few years ago, couldn't agree more!
Try to visit some very small trattoria in Tuscany and tell them you want order and geometry... they'll barely change your plate when serving the second dish 🤣 I think the culture plays a big role and in my example their culture is that you have to eat big portions, like the sunday lunch with your grand mother. Order and discipline are not in their spectrum while in Japan they are an important part of everyday life.
0:52 Michelin Stars made by the same company that gives you your tires created the michelin star back in the days so that the french who could afford cars, the rich, could know what restaurants are good to go to. However, since the michelin star started in france, the critics are more skewed to like restaraunts that make cuisine resembling and tasting similar to the french cuisine. This is why France is on the top? So why is Japan in 2nd place? Well while you might know Japan for its yakisoba and the riceballs, if you ever visit Japan, you will notice that Japan aims to emulate the experience of each and every country outside of Japan, and aims to perfect. Why? Goes back to the 1800s, when the rich british and americans and such, went to visit Japan, and to accomodate for these people's unwillingness to change their lifestyles, homes, terrain, and most importantly, food was created to emulate the desires of the rich. And eventually those people created restauraunts, and cultures around the world crossed over to the tiny country, along with settlements near China and Russia, and mastered the aets of our food, which is why their are a lot of Michelin Stars in Japan. Don't get me wrong, the food is probably good, but the Michelin Star is heavily skewed in criticism. If you wanted to know more, MatPat made a video on this very subject.
1:45 Hopefully this helps somewhat MinuteFood.
To be fair, you were on the point of why Japan can make food taste good.
It is probably a mix of Japan 🗾 being rich, the culture not wanting so much variety it severely compromises on food quality, and the nation being historically very internally stable resulting in time and stability for food making organisations to develop and expand.
had to change the title of the video
Food: 😒
Food (Japan): 😍
4:10 KERFUS???
Here on UA-cam there's a video called " Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?" and it addresses a couple of questions you asked.
Why the food is that bad in the US, though? Because quality and being proud of ones work rarely matters. What matters is how to maximize profit. This means cheap ingredients, cheap production, cheap wages, little time and so on which thus leads to low quality meals.
that still doesn't explain why the food is bad. if people demanded higher quality food, the restaurants that made crap would fail. the problem is what people demand in the US, and they demand that sort of crap
opinions
I live in The Netherlands, and we're experiencing something called "Amerikanisering" (where our culture is being highly influenced by the US, mainly thanks to social media and overal globalisation). There are more fastfood chains than ever before, and obesity rates have skyrocketed. Personally I don't think that Japan's food in necessarily fantastic, I just think American food (and now a part of Dutch food as well) is bad.
Even the inexpensive food is no longer inexpensive. I hate to say it but I have finally curbed my addiction to the taste and more importantly the convenience of fast food because I just can't afford it any more. I eat Ribeyes 3 times a week and I spend less on food than I did hitting the drive thru every day.