kovovil750 comments

Nibek32Today  03:02 pm JST

Yes, protection comes at a price.

Perhaps read a book on history. The US is not there to protect Japan, only to protect American interests.

 (≧▽≦)

Yeah. cos Japan just pays trillions of yen to have them there out of the goodness of their hearts.

Peter NeilToday  06:28 pm JST

Okinamwa is said to have the longest loved people in Japan, but they are the poorest and have the worst diet of all Japanese regions. Something fishy going on.

LOL

They also have the highest pension fraud and poorest record keeping.

browny1Today  11:04 am JST

> Then Japan's wonderful longevity rate must be impacted by far more than simply saying "unique diet and lifestyle".

Yes, it's incomplete record-keeping. It's the same for the crime rate.

stormcrowToday  11:18 am JST

Amazing. I'm always curious about the lifestyles of these people who live to a ripe old age. Did they live a clean life drinking green tea, eating fish and doing yoga, or did they smoke a few cigarettes everyday with a little rice wine?

RIP

5% liftesyle, 85% genes and 10% luck.

John-SanToday  07:06 am JST

There is something unique about the diet and lifestyle of the Japanese. Tomiko would of course lived through the nuclear fall out and no doubt come in contact through contaminated food, water and atmosphere. Image if the Japanese were not subjected to the nuclear fall how much longer their lifespan would be ?

Indeed. Okinamwa is said to have the longest loved people in Japan, but they are the poorest and have the worst diet of all Japanese regions. Something fishy going on.

Angus McGillicuddyToday  01:10 pm JST

Who ever calls Ramen "purely Japanese"? Its Chinese origins are no secret in Japan.

It's funny how, in any other country, if you've been doing something since the 1950s, nobody bats an eyelash at calling it "traditional", but if we're talking about Japan, you can't call it "traditional" unless people have done it since the Stone Age.

Can someone tell the writer that Japan is a living, evolving culture that isn't stuck in the distant past?

Indeed. Japanese view ramen as chuka ryori or just 'chuka' (Chinese food).

> kohakuebisuToday  09:25 am JST

I don't know what the first half of the article is doing, but the second half, about the headline question of whether "teishoku" type meals are actually traditional, is very interesting and deserves more investigation. The way in which people become invested in stuff that is not actually traditional is quite interesting. Traditions do not merely exist and can be created. This definitely happens in Japan.

I left the UK in 1990, but since then, it has now become common to eat bacon-wrapped sausages, called "pigs in blankets" at Christmas. This is not an actual tradition and Google says it spread due to cookery shows on TV in the 1990s. I didn't know what they were when I first encountered them, and was more surprised at how much of a "must have" they were being presented as. Even the most traditional meal of the year can changed in this way.

Interesting, in NZ 'pigs in blankets' means a sausage or savaloy wrapped in bread with tomato sauce and has been around for generations.