A Study of The Food Culture in Japan

Did you know that the main source of food in Japan is rice? Well if you did not know this I can tell you it is. It is also used in some folk tales from Japan. This shows how much of these peoples everyday life is used in folk tales from Japan. Many other types of the people are used in folk tales also.

My first topic for Japans culture is the food. It tells about working to gather food. In Japan they collect lots of rice and herbs. Almost all families in Japan eat Rice. Rice for the Japanese people is like hamburgers and hotdogs for the Americans. About 70% of what they harvest are rice, which requires a lot of work and effort. The people of Japan are used to the long, hard hours of work that is put into growing food. Another thing that is often used is tea. In Japan, people drink tea in the hopes of eternal beauty and extension of life. In most meals tea is the drink and rice is included in some way. The basis of all cooking is around rice and tea. Dumplings are also a main food in Japan but is not eaten as much as the regular rice.

In the story, Dragon Princess Tasuko, the people work very hard for their food and don t take much for granted. This reflects the life of the Japanese very much in a sense that the people of Japan are much more work driven than the people in our country. There is no just kicking back and relaxing as much here. The people in my story drink lots of tea and worked hard for their living of farming for the rice. Along with the people of reality Japan the people in my story Japan eat dumplings also. That is one other main food in the country of Japan. Like in Japan the people in my story believe that tea helps with eternal beauty and longer lives.

The story, Dragon Princess Tasuko, is about a girl that wanted to be beautiful forever. She was the most beautiful girl in all of northern Japan, but like any young person she did her share of working in the rice fields. One day when Tasuko was gathering rice she knelt down to drink some water and saw herself and noticed that a strand of hair was out of place and thought of how beautiful she was and if she actually was that beautiful. From that day on she would not do anything else but sit deep in thought. She sat and watched the fires gleaming. She thought how everyone grows old and not as beautiful and that there was no exception for her. She went to the temple and prayed for eternal beauty. And she sat there and became thin and beautiful. She sat for 100 days and nights. Then a voice said, Don t sit like this forever. Go to a spring north of her and drink the water for beauty. But think once if you really want it. Consider this a warning. She went there and drank until she could drink no more. Then she tried to stand up and fainted. People in the village heard strange noises and went to investigate, and they found Tasuko turned into a dragon. When they went to see more of the dragon they saw a lake with the dragon of Tasuko in it. Then they saw a goddess who was the most beautiful thing and also Tasuko. I am beautiful forever now and I don t regret it. That s the end.

Like the first story, The Fox Wife, it has a lot of culture from Japan. In this story I am focusing on the topic of clothing. In Japan the people wear a verity of clothing. Everything from traditional wear to things Americans wear. The businessmen in the country wear suites and ties usually. The women are mostly the people to enforce traditional wear. All of the family will dress traditionally at special occasions. The children wear the clothing like Americans do. Jeans and name brand clothes are very popular in Japan. The Japanese are usually mistaken bye the Americans, most of us think that they all wear silly clothes and walk around collecting rice, even though some of that is true, they are regular people just like you and me. The men are just like or businessmen with the suites.

This relates to the story, The Fox Wife, because they wear a verity of different clothing throughout the story. They wear the traditional clothing most of the time, but the man in the story usually just wears a T-shirt and a pair of cotton pants. The farmers in Japan do wear those clothes often, which was the case with the guy in my story. He was a farmer and wore the traditional farming clothes. The women in this story wear the traditional old time Japanese clothes. This consists of a long silk dress and hair put up in a certain way to look as their ancestors did.