Little Rascals

On Japanese TV it must be mandatory to have a panel of famous people sit around to discus the stuff you're watching. Maybe there's a law I don't know about. For example, you can see "America's Funniest Home Videos" here. Almost literally. They are the same videos, it's just that before, during and after watching the videos there are a half dozen minor celebrities (Think David Hasselhof, people that got kicked off the island in 'Survivor' et al.) commenting. So after a little kid in a video throws his pea soup at daddy, the celebreties say "Wow, good shot." (see later blogs about Japanese culture being a 'silent culture' that unlike English is comfortable with long pauses.)

Anyway, that's the situation. Most of the time I think it's annoying but I have to admit that on occaision it's a good idea. In this case it was because it was illuminating about people's opinions.

On that program, there was a brief intro that scientists in Canada had discovered a really healthy food. It turns out that this food is in pancakes, cookies, even desserts in Canada. There are a lot of TV programs about food in Japan, in particular about the magical healing qualities of the Japanese diet.

What is this new magical ingredient? I immediately thought "Buckwheat" when I heard pancakes. To help out the discussion panel, a half-Canadian woman was there to give some hints. She said it has been grown in Manitoba for over 100 years and it's 20% of the annual harvest. (Don't quote me on that, I forget.) Then the panel was given 3 choices. A kind of wild grain rice, brown unpolished rice (genmai) or buckwheat (soba.)

What surprised me was that every single panelist confidently declared that there was NO WAY it could be buckwheat. Now, I ate buckwheat pancakes sometimes as a kid so I kinda knew. But let's say you're not so familiar with Canadian dietary habits. Ok, bacon wasn't a choice. Hmmmm. Can rice be grown in Manitoba? To me that alone would exlude the first two options. I was surprised because Japanese often assume that rice is the sole domain of Japan, and ok, maybe China and Vietnam, but it's not so delicious over there. People ask me "Can you eat rice?" Note the nuance. They don't say "Do you like rice?" or "Do American people sometimes eat rice?" but "CAN you actually put rice in your mouth and swallow it?" When I say yes, people think "Wow, he's really adjusted to life here." like it's a big accomplishment.

But as I saw the TV show unfold, I figured it out. Rice may be dear to the Japanese heart but there's something about soba (buckwheat) that makes it distinctly Japanese. People were thinking 'Ok, maybe lately other countries started to eat rice, but there's no way they could have something so special as buckwheat. It's just too special" I was watching the program with a Japanese family at the time and all 3 of them had the same reaction as the panelists and were shocked when I said "Oh, yeah, it's definitely buckwheat."

Anyway to wind up a long story, the answer was buckwheat but you can imagne the stunned reaction. Which brings me to another common theme that I'm sure you'll see more of here:

"Only in Japan."

I understand when people think that maybe karaoke, judo, mechanized parking garages, sahimi, heated toilets and so on are "only in Japan" but there's a large number of things that surprise me that people think exist only in Japan.

I think different countries are stupid in different ways. Americans often have a "USA #1" attitude or express surprise that other places also have representative democracies. In Japan's case, it's common to search really hard for ways that Japan and the Japanese people are unique. For some reason it's a matter of pride. The Japanese seem really disappointed to learn that cedar trees for example exist someplace else. And when they do, they seek solace in the fact that those trees aren't JAPANESE cedar trees.

So in summation for you social researchers in the year 2066: Japanese people in 2005 are shocked to learn that buckwheat is grown and consumed in another country.