Beans and pickles aren’t something you often associate with a country’s national culture, but I’ve observed that you can learn quite a lot from these basic food items. The Japanese have a rich tradition of eating beans, from anko used in traditional sweets to the famous fermented soybeans called natto. While I like most foods in Japan, it took me a decade to learn to eat most Japanese beans, and I still don’t do natto: they were all just too different from the beans I was used to back home, mostly of the Mexican refried and Boston baked variety. This beanocentric bias works the other way, too, and Japanese nearly always despise the beans Americans love. This tendency to prefer food from one’s own culture works for pickles, too. To me, there’s nothing better than a cold jar of Vlassic dills, perhaps cut up small and put on a tuna sandwich, but the Japanese aren’t too keen on American pickles; they prefer their own culture of pickles, which include pickled eggplant, pickled radish (called takuwan, which smells horrible) and of course various local versions of Korean kimchee (which is glorious on white rice in the morning).
