When I was a little girl, I loved listening
to my grandmother’s old stories. Her stories excited my imagination. After I
began to learn how to write letters and characters, I also came to love
writing. Writing in my small notebook, the stories that I imagined, was my
favorite hobby. I have loved writing since then.
However I didn’t like to write compositions
in my Japanese class very much, because I was given themes and had to finish writing
it on the time specified. I wanted to write compositions freely according to my
imagination. My compositions I wrote in my Japanese classes weren’t nice, but ones
I wrote at my home and in the composition club, won a price in school
competitions. My works was included on the book that shows a collection of
essays and articles written by elementally school students, and which was
distributed to schools in Kyoto city. One of my compositions was broadcasted by
the local radio station, once when I was in the sixth grade.
As I reached puberty, when I was a junior
high school student, suddenly I stopped writing compositions and began to keep
a diary. I loved writing my feelings on my diary. I dreamed to be a novelist
secretly at that time, even though I had never showed my written works. When I
majored in American literature in my university, I was ambitious to be a famous
and popular novelist.
It was on a social networking site (SNS)
that I began to write my opinions and feelings. Since then, I got many SNS
friends, they read my writing works and gave me their comments. I loved using
SNS and I wrote many essays and some short novels. I just enjoyed writing and collecting
comments about it.
Recently I had an opportunity to think why
I write essays. I realized that writing essays makes my mind clear, moreover it
allows me to reflect on myself. I love writing as much as when I was a little
girl. Now I enjoy writing freely according to my imagination. I think writing
enriches my life.
Getting to know
different culture is very interesting. It is especially fascinating for me to
learn differences in food culture.
Now I study
English with the help of Filipino teachers in an online school and I often enjoy
talking about food in Japan and Philippines. But I don’t know much about
Filipino cooking and they don’t know much about Japanese one either.
I often tried to
introduce Japanese delicious food to my teachers but it is very hard for me to
do that in English. A typical example was “Oden”. It is a dish consisting of radish,
potato, konnyaku, chikuwa, hard-boiled eggs, fried tofu and other boiled meat. They
are stewed with Japanese soup stock, soy sauce and sweet cooking rice wine (mirin).
It is a very popular and well known cuisine in Japan and people are looking for
it especially during cold season. However the ingredients was very difficult
for me to explain in English, especially, “ konnyaku”. “Konnyaku is one of my
favorite ingredients, so I wanted to tell my teachers how delicious it is. I
tried to describe but I felt it is almost impossible for me to explain it.
I think everyone
loves “Oden” and almost all Japanese know it. But it is the common thing only
for Japanese. I found that "Oden" is a new and unique food for people
who have a different culture, so I was a little bit surprised at that time.
I’ve experienced a
similar situation when we talked about a typical Filipino food “Sinigang. “ It
looked delicious and balanced. However I still couldn’t imagine its taste even
though my previous teacher already explained how to cook it and what are
ingredients used.
It was the first time for me to know the
typical Filipino seasonings like tamarind, patis and bagoong.
I could only imagine that “Sinigang “ has
sour taste because I heard tamarind, which is the main ingredient, is sour.
I felt knowing
these two different foods impressed me and entice me to know more about the
vast difference of food culture in both countries. Moreover I even thought of
the factors that defines the back ground of dietary culture such as geography,
history and climate. It enriched my understanding about Philippines as well as
Japan.
“Oden” is a familiar
food for me and “ Sinigang” is familiar for my teachers. I know the world is
wider than before and knowing the difference of dietary culture taught me the
importance of learning it. Now I think that knowing the differences enriches
me.
