Food Culture Analysis!

 Just like I wrote on my introduction, I’m Japanese, and currently living in Japan. Japan is known as an island country: a country surrounded by the ocean.  Given this information, which country came up to your mind as a country with a similar characteristic? My answer would be Australia, and by chance, it was the country I was assigned to analyze the food culture of. Forget my unskilled introduction, and let me introduce what I learned about the country’s food culture from the book "Hungry Planet". 

As I mentioned, Australia is geographically similar to Japan; it is enclosed by the sea. Obviously, this has a lot to do with the similarity between the cuisine of the two countries; Seafood is often consumed as a primary option in both of the countries. Though the Australians may not eat raw fishes, they still enjoy eating them. The big difference, however, is perhaps the history of the two countries. While Japan maintained its distinctiveness, Australia was ruled mainly by the British people and accepted immigrants from various countries, which caused the merge of several different food cultures. This difference caused the two countries form their own unique food cultures. Japan’s so-called washoku has many unique features compared to the European, American, and other kinds of food. The food eaten in Australia contains the characteristics of numerous ethnic cuisines. I personally prefer Australian food, because it’s relatively close to American cuisine, and I think the variety of the food there would be quite enjoyable. It’s not like I don’t like Japanese food; the simple taste of washoku is pretty nice, too. Anyway, that’s it for my analysis. Analyzing the country’s cuisine made me want to visit Australia. I hope I could go there one day.