Bringing Japan to America..the other double edge...

Oden and nabe are winter favourites in our house. Generally I cook North American style and my wife will cook Japanese so if she cooks it might be oden. I remember several years ago a couple of mountain bikers were visiting from the States in winter. So I took them on a local ride in my area (Kamakura). Lots of mountain trails around here. Well there is one OchayaSan that is in the middle of the hiking course and they make Oden. So I thought I would take them on that course and we can stop for Oden along the way - a kind of cultural ride. It was cold and the Oden was piping hot and you put that mustard on it and it's so good. Problem is they weren't so keen to eat it. I thought later that probably Oden is a little bit of an aquired taste. Not too hard to aquire mind you but...
 
Even here in Maine...which is about as isolated from Japan as you can get...we feel the influence of the Japanese culture, traditions and palette.

Living on the coast, we have several Maine Fisheries that owe their existence to the Japanese culture. The first is the harvesting of sea urchins. A tough form of fishing that requires mid-winter diving, tiny fishing boats and dangerous waters...an industry that makes Alaskan King Crab fishing look mild. Anyway I am not sure what they are used for specifically over there, but every Sea Urchin picked up off the sea floor here in Maine is sent to Japan.

Myself I have been Tuna Fishing and caught a Tuna with enough size, weight and fat content to be shipped to Japan and sold on the Tokyo Fish Market. It fetched a pretty high price of $9,000 dollars before it left Maine!

Tuna_Fish_II2.JPG
 
This reminds me of the section in Walden where Thoreau describes the team of 100 men who "swoop[ed] down on our pond" in the dead of the 1846/47 winter ... to harvest the ice! Apparently it was pretty profitable back then to ship New England pond ice to places as far off as India!
"Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well."​
Amazing.
 
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