(1/2) Hi! I was wondering if growing up your parents/grandparents taught you any Japanese cooking tricks/traditions (like a seasoning to always keep on hand to spice up a dish or a special sauce)? Did you have any Japanese comfort dishes to have when you were sad or sick? Bedtime stories they told you when you were little? Or any Japanese music you or your family liked to play throughout the house, even if only on special occasions? I’m just wondering about little cultural nuances to help create
2/2 (an authentic-as-I-can-achieve) atmosphere and avoid jilting any Japanese readers out of parts of the story. Even if you don’t get round to answering, thank you for taking the time to answer to answer so many people and spread awareness. Happy AAPI month!
Some Japanese cooking tricks / traditions that I got from my parents, grandmother and also a very popular Japanese app that has a ton of recipes
Both of my parents work in Japanese restaurants, actually!
When you are about to deep fry something, you can tell if the oil is hot enough by sticking a single chopstick into the oil. If little bubbles start popping up from the chopstick, it's hot enough to fry. [Advice from father]
Alternatively, drop some panko (breadcrumbs) into the oil to see if they begin to sizzle and fry. If they do, the oil is hot enough. [Addition from mother]
When deep-frying foods that are coated in panko (such as tonkatsu or croquettes), you want to fry them until they are fox-colored. [just something I've heard somewhere]
Apparently a ton of Japanese food use the same combination of ingredients to create flavor: Soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and cooking sake. [Observation from using the cooking app]
Aesthetics and plating is extremely important to Japanese cuisine. It's not enough to just throw food on a plate, you should arrange it and plate it in a way that makes the food look aesthetically pleasing. For example, just the simple act of placing the food on the plate so it has more height makes a massive difference. [Lectured by mother several times]
Having a variety of color is important for Japanese cuisine. Not only for aesthetics, but also health and nutrition! There are five food colors that should be a part of every meal: White, black, red, yellow, green. [Wisdom from my mother as she chastises me on not having enough colors in my meals]
Japanese food uses a ton of dashi, which is Japanese soup stock. It's real hard to make Japanese food without dashi. There are several different types! [Complaints from mother, struggling to figure out what kind of food she can make my vegetarian boyfriend who doesn't eat fish.] (Vegetarian dashi made from seaweed also exist! Just not on hand at my home)
Umeboshi is picked plum. If you put it in a rice ball or inside the rice of a bento, not only is it a delicious way to add some flavor, it helps keep the rice fresh for longer, and prevents it from spoiling. This is important and common knowledge because when people bring bentos to school and work, refrigeration isn't always an option. A single umeboshi in the center of rice in a bento box is called a hinomaru bento, which translates to 'circle of the sun' because it looks similar to the Japanese flag. [Wisdom from mother]
If you can't peel an entire apple in one continuous peel with a knife, you're not Japanese. [Said to me by my parents when they found out I couldn't do it. For the record: I can do it now. I'm finally Japanese.]
Aesthetics are also very important to bento (and that's also why just throwing food into a bento box doesn't make it an authentic bento necessarily). My mother had a collection of cute little picks, dividers, and cups for decoration. She would also decorate my bentos with bento art made out of food. [Back in school everyone would come over to look at my lunch because it was super cute.]
When you bring apple slices to school for your lunch, putting them in a ziploc with salt water will keep the apples from changing color and getting mealy. [This is what my mother used to do for my lunches, and my classmates thought that it was weird.]
Japanese sick food
Japanese rice porridge is a very common sick food. It's very plain and neutral, which makes it easy on the stomach. It can be flavored with salt, umeboshi, or eggs. (And other things too, I'm sure).
Plain udon in dashi
Grated apple
Apples cut up like little rabbits.
Once, when I was sick, my grandma made me drink a mixture of: Hot water, honey, lemon, ginger and Japanese horseradish. It was absolutely disgusting, but it also cleared up my sinuses really quickly, soothed my throat and made me feel better afterwards.
You know how when Americans are sick we drink Gatorade? In Japan, people drink Japanese sports drinks like Pocari Sweat and Aquarius.
An incomplete list of Japanese spices, seasonings and sauces that we always keep on hand
Please look them up for more details on your own! This is just to provide a basic place to start your research. If you're having trouble finding them, adding Japan or Japanese should yield you more specific and appropriate results.
Weipa seasoning; white pepper seasoning (as opposed to black pepper); hondashi; tonkatsu sauce; tubes of grated garlic and ginger; shichimi togarashi; ichimi togarashi; sake (cooking sake); mirin; soy sauce; katsuobushi; ponzu; rayu; Japanese mayo; nori and aonori; karashi; sansho; miso; rice vinegar; mentsuyu; curry powder; furikake; gomashio; wasabi; karashi;
Bedtime stories
There are obviously a ton of different bedtime stories other than these, but I'm going to talk primarily about Japanese folk tales. I'll list a few of the most famous ones, and some of my personal favorites so you can have a place to start researching. These are just barebones synopses, so I'll definitely recommend actually reading through them because there's obviously a lot more detail!
Momotarō — A story about a boy born from a giant peach. He eventually goes on a quest to defeat oni on Onigashima with three talking animals that he befriended: A dog, a monkey and a bird.
Issun-bōshi — A story about a boy who is a little over an inch tall. When a princess gets kidnapped by an oni, he goes to rescue her and defeat the oni. (Which he does by stabbing the oni in the stomach when he gets swallowed). The oni drops a magical hammer which he uses to become full-sized and marries the princess.
Urashima Tarō — A story about Tarō who saves a turtle from being tortured by a bunch of kids. Turns out, the turtle was a child of a sea god, and so Tarō is brought to Ryūgū-jō, the Palace of the Dragon God to be thanked. He meets the princess, Otohime down there. Tarō stays for three days, but decides to go back to his village to see his mother. The princess gives him a box called a tamatebako as a parting gift, saying that it will protect him but that he should never open it. When Tarō returns to his village, he discovers that 300 years have passed and everything that he has known is gone. Grieving, he opens the box and it causes him to age and become an old man.
Taketori Monogatari, or, the story of Princess Kaguya — One day, an old bamboo cutter cuts open a mysterious, glowing bamboo. In it, he finds a baby girl. He brings her back to his wife and they name her Kaguya and raise her as their own. She grows up to be incredibly beautiful and has many suitors hoping to marry her. There are five princes in particular who are persistent, so Kaguya gives them each an impossible task to complete to be able to marry her and she doesn't marry anyone. Eventually, it's revealed that Kaguya is actually from the moon, and she returns there to be with her true people.
Jugemu — This one isn't a folktale, it's actually part of rakugo, which is a form of Japanese oral, comedic storytelling. It's about two parents who don't know what name to give their son, so they ask a priest for some names that will bring good fortunes. The priest gives several suggestions, and because the parents can't choose one, they give him all the names resulting in an incredibly long name. (Seriously, it's longer than you think. Check it out.) A ton of Japanese children memorize this name.
Music
Honestly, my family wasn't really a listen-to-music type of family, so I don't have a whole lot for this. (I didn't develop a taste in music preferences until college since it just wasn't a thing we did a lot).
My dad listens to a lot of enka, which is a Japanese music genre that resembles traditional Japanese music. It's popular among older folk.
If you're curious about popular Japanese songs, I'd recommend that you check out Kouhaku Utagassen. It's a huge Japanese New Years tradition. Every year on New Years Eve, there's this massive TV special program where all of the most popular singers and artists of the year gather for a competition. They're divided into two teams, red and white (Kouhaku is literally written as red and white!), to perform the most popular songs of the year and compete against each other. Looking up the songs that were performed is usually a great snapshot of the year.
Alternatively, karaoke is huge in Japan; looking at the most popular karaoke songs by year is also another good way to see what was going on musically in that year.
AAPI AMA Event, May 2022
Remember that these are just my personal experiences and opinions! My thoughts and experiences are not necessarily representative of every Japanese person, and should not be taken as such.










