Nikkei Chronicles #6—Itadakimasu 2! Another Taste of Nikkei Culture

I love natto. But it wasn’t always that way. My mom gave me my first taste when I was around seven or eight years old and it didn’t go well. I gagged and begged her for a cup of water to wash the bitter taste out of my mouth. “It’s good for you,” she said, but I swore right then that not a single, slimy, smelly bean would ever touch my lips again.

Growing up, I put it on the same list with things like tamago gohan and tazukuri—weird foods that my parents and grandparents ate that I …

I have, for years, advocated the celebration and codification of a uniquely Japanese American culture of eating that I have come to refer to as “Nisei cuisine.” Nisei cuisine is the uniquely American food that developed as the “second generation” (first to be born in the USA) of Japanese Americans, generally considered to be those born between 1915 and 1940, came of age and, post-internment, moved throughout the United States, taking part in the development of the great post-war American middle-class.

The foundation of this cuisine are the taste elements the Issei, the first generation of Japanese immigrants, brought from …

“I enjoyed it for the first time in three years.” In June, 2005, Makoto Oka, (age 66 at the time) chairperson of Brazil Okayama Kenjinkai (prefectural association) commented on the feijoada, a major Brazilian dish, with a face that showed his getting over some past woe.

As a matter of fact, Oka almost died from a burn on his body when he turned over a giant pot of feijoada at the kenjinkai hall in the past.

Feijoada, a local cuisine representative of Brazil, is a dish that is cooked with black beans stewed with ingredients such as cow ears …

In the documentary film Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides, Hiroko Tolbert says, “I’m completely American.” Her daughter Kathryn counters, “You know, it’s funny to say how American you are, yet every morning you make miso soup.” Hiroko giggles, “Well, the food is a different story,” she says, and she and her daughter both laugh…and it is.

As we grow older, it seems, my best friend Brenda and I talk about food often. We are the daughters of Japanese war bride mothers and American fathers who were born and raised in the South. Just …

Dona Miyoko is my mother, who is currently 93 years old. She was only 29 when my father passed away, leaving her with four small children to raise. At that time, my grandmother encouraged her to open a boarding house, offering bed and board to youths from Japanese families who lived in the interior of São Paulo State and came to the capital to study.

She started out by receiving eight boarders who had come to attend college, providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner—or take-outs for those who stayed out all day.

The boarding house was located in a building on …