Japanese Cuisine Quotes

Finally, we would have been offered either a spring takiawase, meaning "foods boiled or stewed together," or a wanmori (the apex of a tea kaiseki meal) featuring seasonal ingredients, such as a cherry blossom-pink dumpling of shrimp and egg white served in a dashi base accented with udo, a plant with a white stalk and leaves that tastes like asparagus and celery, and a sprig of fresh sansho, the aromatic young leaves from the same plant that bears the seedpods the Japanese grind into the tongue-numbing spice always served with fatty eel. ~ Victoria Abbott Riccardi

The key to this risotto is Japanese peppers of all things?!"
"It's sharp, refreshing aroma highlights the mellow body of the cheese... while making the eel's umami flavor flash like an explosion!"
"And that one key ingredient that quietly ties it all together...
... is garlic!"
"Garlic?! In traditional Japanese cuisine?! That's almost unheard of!"
"Those are special smoked garlic chips a junior of mine made. They were smoked using wood from a walnut tree, which is known to emphasize seafood flavors well. By lightly crushing those chips and sprinkling them on as a topping, I added a pleasantly crunchy texture to the dish.
But the most critical feature of my dish... is that I broiled the eel using the Kansai region Kabayaki style. Unlike the Kanto region style, there's no steaming step. Leaving all that oil in gives the eel a more fragrant aroma with a heavier texture and stronger flavor...
... meaning it pairs much more naturally with a flavor as powerful as garlic. *Steaming the eel makes much of its natural oil seep out, leaving the flesh light and fluffy.*
But what makes these chips so extraordinary... is that they're infused with Ibusaki's earnest passion and the pure sweat of his helpers, Aoki and Sato. There's no way they could not be delicious!"
"Ew! Don't say they're infused with sweat! That's gross!"
"This much alone is already an impressively polished gourmet course. What's in store for us in that teapot?"
"That ~ Yuto Tsukuda

I'm fascinated by Japanese cuisine. ~ Eric Ripert

I think that the Japanese - and I do love Japanese cuisine and adore Japanese food culture - I think that they're going to plow through the entire world's fishing. They're going to eat everything anyways. ~ David Chang

It's a myth that generally Asians are mostly vegetarians. The Japanese are the kings of red meat, but it's expensive. The Chinese and Vietnamese love their pork. Many Indians, especially the Muslims, can't live without their lamb. ~ Wolfgang Puck

The significance of the cherry blossom tree in Japanese culture goes back hundreds of years. In their country, the cherry blossom represents the fragility and the beauty of life. It's a reminder that life is almost overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short. ~ Homaro Cantu

Terri and her mother arrived. She was obviously a dedicated stage mother because she was loaded down with camera equipment, looking like a Japanese tourist. ~ Audrey Meadows

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese. ~ Haruki Murakami

Besides, my taste in porn has calmed down a lot since I was young. As a twenty-year-old, I resented any dialogue or attempt at a story whatsoever. I just wanted the sex. Now that I'm forty-four, I kind of want the story. Who are these two? How did they meet? Are they in love? Will the Japanese girl's parents approve of these three giant black guys? ~ Greg Fitzsimmons

Having met other immigrants like myself in America, I can say that a great number of us came to our same "Oriental" identity in a similar fashion. We arrived in the United States as Japanese or Korean or Filipino, but over time we became Orientals. ~ Alex Tizon

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius ('nobody's land'), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history.
In the early twentieth century a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of 'a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]'. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored. In 1969 Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never was. Such views are very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed conflicts against something that doesn't exist. For example, in February 2016 MP Anat Berko gave a speech in the Israeli Parliament in which she doubted the reality and history of the Palestinian people. Her proof? The letter 'p' does not even exist in Arabic, so how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic, 'f' stands for 'p', and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.) ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I have a lot of Japanese fans, but in Korea they seem to go crazy for me. I don't know what it is, but they seem to like my style. ~ Shu Qi

Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined. ~ Cathy McMorris Rodgers

So there I was eating haute cuisine in a mobile home. He cooked for me as seduction, a courtship, so that I'd never again be impressed with a man who simply took me out to dinner. And I fell in love with him over a deer's liver. ~ Kristin Kimball

I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm. ~ Rick Steves

A team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned. ~ Graham Hancock

An obstacle which would frighten discreet men is nothing to determined women. They dare what men avoid, and sometimes they achieve an unusual success. ~ Ōgai Mori

Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation
Delivered on December 8, 1941
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American shi ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

This may appear as a counterintuitive choice: not only is the city the undisputed stronghold of Japanese traditional high culture, but also its residents' more mundane practices are widely regarded as highly distinctive. Yet still, not everything that occurs in that city is typically Kyotoite, or typically Japanese. ~ Christoph Brumann

Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can they make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are helpless without you. What would happen to the Burmese forests if the English were not here? They would be sold immediately to the Japanese, who would gut them and ruin them. Instead of which, in your hands, actually they are improved. And while your business men develop the resources of our country, your officials are civilising us, elevating us to their level, from pure public spirit. It is a magnificent record of self-sacrifice. ~ George Orwell

Every morning the cuisinier must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove. That is what real cuisine is all about. ~ Fernand Point

All forms of beauty are poignant, Japanese beauty particularly so. That lily-white complexion, those mellow eyes, the inimitable shape of the nose, the well-defined contours of the mouth, and the complicated sweetness of the features are enough, by themselves, to eclipse the most perfectly assembled faces. ~ Amelie Nothomb

But of course I love my Japanese fans and the show must go on, no matter the daily aftershocks or husband kidnappings! It's not right but it's okay ~ Katy Perry

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I'm just very obsessed with Japanese stuff in general. ~ Grimes

Daisuke was of course equipped with conversation that, even if they went further, would allow him to retreat as if nothing had happened. He had always wondered at the conversations recorded in Western novels, for to him they were too bald, too self indulgent, and moreover, too unsubtly rich. However they read in the original, he thought they reflected a taste that could not be translated into Japanese. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of using imported phrases to develop his relationship with Michiyo. Between the two of them at least, ordinary words sufficed perfectly well. But the danger was of slipping from point A to point B without realizing it. Daisuke managed to stand his ground only by a hair's breadth. When he left, Michiyo saw him to the entranceway and said, "Do come again, please? It's so lonely. ~ Soseki Natsume

As the rising sun melts thinly frozen ice, so the Japanese Army is overcoming Chinese troops. ~ Shunroku Hata

war, instead of finishing in 1945, would have ended in 1948 had the Government Code and Cypher School not been able to read the Enigma cyphers and produce the Ultra intelligence." During this period of delay, additional lives would have been lost in Europe, and Hitler would have been able to make greater use of his V-weapons, inflicting damage throughout southern England. The historian David Kahn summarizes the impact of breaking Enigma: "It saved lives. Not only Allied and Russian lives but, by shortening the war, German, Italian, and Japanese lives as well. Some people alive after World War II might not have been but for these solutions. That is the debt that the world owes to the codebreakers; that is the crowning human value of their triumphs. ~ Simon Singh

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia - that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone. ~ Noam Chomsky

The heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself. ~ Junichiro Tanizaki

The Japanese, if I understand them, are masters of the unsaid and the unstated, of subtlety and ambiguity, all of which constitute powerful stimulants to the imagination. ~ Semir Zeki

The Japanese say, If the flower is to be beautiful, it must be cultivated. ~ Lester Cole

When I venture out to eat, I like to go to places with food that I don't know how to make. So my favorites are Japanese and Indian. Indian food has so much layering of flavor, and the dishes go together so harmoniously. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or Thai. ~ F. Sionil Jose

I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill-my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from my stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension. ~ Osamu Dazai

You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don't even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean? ~ Bill James

Otaku (おた) is also a formal way of saying "you". た means "house", and with the honorific お, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house. ~ Ruth Ozeki

I have an all-Japanese design team, and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation. ~ Pharrell Williams

The pleasure of eating something because it is expensive has absolutely nothing to do with the taste of good cuisine. ~ Marcel Boulestin

If Japanese tea 'stands,' it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used. ~ Isabella Bird

This matter of the "love" of pets is of immense import because many, many people are capable of "loving" only pets and incapable of genuinely loving other human beings. Large numbers of American soldiers had idyllic marriages to German, Italian or Japanese "war brides" with whom they could not verbally communicate. But when their brides learned English, the marriages began to fall apart. The servicemen could then no longer project upon their wives their own thoughts, feelings, desires and goals and feel the same sense of closeness one feels with a pet. Instead, as their wives learned English, the men began to realize that these women had ideas, opinions and aims different from their own. As this happened, love began to grow for some; for most, perhaps, it ceased. The liberated woman is right to beware of the man who affectionately calls her his "pet. ~ M. Scott Peck

European travellers find the Japanese a smiling race. ~ Bertrand Russell