Nikkei Chronicles #1—ITADAKIMASU! A Taste of Nikkei Culture
For many Nikkei around the world, food is often the strongest and most lasting connection they have with their culture. Across generations, language and traditions are often lost, but their connections to food remain.
Discover Nikkei collected stories from around the world related to the topic of Nikkei food culture and its impact on Nikkei identity and communities. This series introduces these stories.
Our Editorial Committee selected their favorite stories in each language. Here are their favorites:
- ENGLISH:
Authentic
By Barbara Nishimoto - JAPANESE:
Grandma’s Pickles Story: Sharing Grandma’s Rakkyo with the World
By Asami Goto - SPANISH:
Japanese Stoicism By Ariel Takeda - PORTUGUESE:
Ofukuro no aji: Mrs. Shizuka’s cassava misoshiru
By Rosa Tomeno Takada
Stories from this series
Elsie Kikuchi’s J-Town
Aug. 29, 2012 • Janice D. Tanaka
I’ve been driven by food all my life. My chubbiness, which I’ve never been able to shake all my life, can be attributed to the fact that I love food and have eaten considerably more than what a 4'9" girl should. In fact, in many of the candid photos I have from my childhood, you’ll likely see me with food clutched in my hand. Alan Kunihiro, one of my Maryknoll classmates sent me a great shot of a group of …
The Odyssey
Aug. 22, 2012 • Rachel Yamaguchi
We were on our way from Los Angeles to Turlock, located in the central valley of California, for what I believe was my grandmother’s funeral. My father’s mother passed away in January so we were naturally a sullen group. During the winter there is usually snow on the Grapevine, a portion of the Interstate 5 freeway that connects Northern and Southern California, complete with road closures and sometimes perilous fog and mudslides. This necessitated my family in flying out of …
Blending Recipes And Cultures
Aug. 15, 2012 • Francesca Yukari Biller
Whether I watched my Jewish grandfather carefully save the chicken schmaltz, after preparing Matzoh Ball soup or my Japanese grandmother make tamago gohan, a meal of rice, eggs, and shoyu. What far surpassed the intimate cooking lessons was the invaluable respect both sides of my family showed for each other’s cultural differences, and bonded through the shared and blended recipes of exotic cuisine from each. As a child, I felt I was a misunderstood ethnic rarity, I never knew other …
Farm Food
Aug. 7, 2012 • Erik Matsunaga
I didn’t eat much Japanese food growing up. Born hapa Yonsei of a second generation German American mother and third generation Japanese American father who’d grown up together in the “old neighborhood” of Lakeview, Chicago, circumstances didn’t dictate much knowledge of overt Japanese customs, culinary or otherwise. Our family emigrated from Kyushu in the early 1900s, farmers who plied their trade in California’s Central Valley, culminating in ownership of acreage purchased under the names of their American-born Nisei infants due …
Our Lady Queen Of Pickles
July 19, 2012 • Edward Moreno
My last assignment before quitting the Army was at Valley Forge Army Medical Center, in the Pennsylvania boondocks. We found an apartment in Phoenixville,1 where the locals (population near 14,000) clearly divided the motto E pluribus unum into three distinct war zones: Slovak, Pole, and across-the-tracks. The Slovakian and the Polish contingents tolerated each other—even attended Mass together. However, both maintained rigid incommunicado with the west-of-the-railroad Italians. In such a world of hostile microcosms, finding anything Japanese would have required …
"Look'it" Food
July 17, 2012 • Rachel Yamaguchi
Come on, admit it. There is one in every family. You know at least one. I’m one. You may be one too. We’re called “squirrels,” “pack rats,” and in the most extreme case, “hoarders.” In my particular case, I inherited this trait from my Nisei mother. Whenever our family got a special gift like that delicious white two-pound box of assorted chocolates, sembei, or manju, Mom always told us, “We’ll save these for a special occasion. This is only for …