Gaijin's Torment: Adjusting to Japanese Food

The day comes for every gaijin in Japan when he or she encounters food that he just can't -- or won't -- swallow. Back in the day, for many gaijin this food item was raw fish (though it's hard to believe this is still the case, when sushi is the first solid food fed to half the children in Manhattan). Though I wasn't yet a fan, I had at least conquered my fear of raw fish by the time I got to Japan, so this wasn't a problem for me.

Nor did I flinch at eating the grasshoppers caramelized in sugar that were once served to me in an izakaya the way that chips or pretzels would be in an American bar. (They were really good.) I happily ate thinly-sliced raw horse meat and was surprised to find the raw chicken sashimi to be delightful. The cod sperm-sac stew I had at a chankonabe restaurant was silky, salty, and perfect on a cold winter night. My yakitori-shop-owning gourmand of a friend, Daisuke, even took me to a famous "hormone" restaurant, where we waited for an hour for a chance to eat pig liver, intestines, uterus and other organ meats completely raw. I'd happily go back there if I ever get the chance.

But I was shocked to that mayonnaise, the French condiment that now symbolizes American cuisine the world over, shows up repeatedly, and unexpectedly, in Japanese cuisine. It coats okonomiyaki (lit. "whatever-you-like" savory hotcakes), covers takoyaki (battered octopus-chunks), and, when people feel compelled to eat some vegetables in an izakaya, serves as the dipping sauce for yasai (veggie) sticks. Mayonnaise is what you put on grilled whole squid or roasted dried squid at the ballgame. And, if a restaurant eschews carrot-ginger or shiso dressing for a green salad, mayo inevitably replaces them. I didn't even know they had mayonnaise in Japan, but when I got there, it was everywhere and on everything.

Corn, which I did not expect to see in Japan either, also appeared where I least expected it. A green salad an in izakaya consisted of a few slices of iceberg lettuce, one wedge of tomato, a sprig of parsley, mayo dressing, and a spoonful of corn kernels. One can imagine the irritation of eating a bunch of corn kernels one-by-one with chopsticks, so they often tended to be left floating around uneaten in the bottom of a bowl of watery mayonnaise. Corn kernels also showed up in the most inappropriate place of all: pizza.

In fact, not only corn defiled pizza in Japan. There was canned tuna, too. Though some Italian restaurants served good brick-oven style pizzas, the New York variety could not be had except through delivery services that charged about $30 for a pie, at a time when the going rate in New York was about $10. And a plain pie could not be had -- except after one picked off all the corn and tuna. Corn and tuna were, in fact, the baseline items for all delivery pizza in Tokyo. You could get corn and squid or tuna and spicy cod roe, or corn and tuna, but you simply could not get a plain pie delivered to your house.

Pepperoni was out of the question.