J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

This excellent video, not taken by me, shows the Japanese tradition of having school students serve food to each other in classrooms. This encourages them to be cooperate and grateful for the efforts of others that which might otherwise (in school canteens for example) go largely unnoticed. It is a tradition that is carried out in pretty much every school in Japan, and a wide variety of festivals (Uni campus festivals are essentially cooking and providing food) television shows (such as Smap x Smap and many others), and Japanese shabu shabu, monja yaki, okonomi yaki, yakiniku, and other restaurants where the customers are given the "opportunity" to cook for themselves and sometimes the people they are with. The origin of this tendency lies at least partly in the fact that Japan is a matriarchy where people are much more likely to want to behave like mummy, the most powerful parent within the home, who makes everyone food. In the UK, which is far more patriarchal, food preparation is more often considered something rather naff that we often leave to immigrants, to the point where we find it difficult to say what British cuisine is.

Labels: japanese, japanese culture, matriarchy