Eating in Japan
Like everyone, we are stuck in our home country wanting to travel. So, in my free time I’m toying with Duolingo and a few other language learning apps. I’ll share them later. I usually use Duolingo, but I recently got to the one of the food sections of Duolingo and it just wasn’t syncing with me. I was getting the positive dings, but something didn’t feel true. Then I looked at the summary/tips page.
I talked with Mica about it and it was very clear. I would never say this. 今日のタめしはせんせんおいしくないです。 The app was doing a lot of iterations of “This is bad food.” First, to say something is less than delicious is frowned upon in Japan. Further, to say it is bad is more than rude.
Okay, so when I first started eating at izakaya’s I always replied with oh- ii- shi 美味しい to food I was served. I also used うまいい, umai, coupled with a big smile.
Every now and then I would get something that just was not my cup of tea. The first time I had cartilage comes to mind.
I had to come up with something. So, decided on… おいしい、ちょっと、少し、辛いです. ”It’s delicious but a little spicy” Yea, I know spicy doesn’t fit with everything. I also know I am saying “a little” twice, but you’re the foreigner so sometimes you gotta use it. It is all in the delivery. O-ii-shi (smile, long pause) chotto, (teeth suck) sukoshi (pause, like I am searching for the word) tsu rai des. While it didn’t actually convey my dislike, it does imply “I’d rather not have that again.”
However, to be honest, I rarely used it and just mucked down whatever was given to me as it usually is super delicious. Today, me and chicken cartilage are on speaking terms. When travel opens up, it will probably be the third maybe sixth thing I order.
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