Hating Natto – a Dying Osaka Tradition

There’s so much about Japanese food that I love, but natto (納豆, fermented soybeans) is a culinary minefield. I can understand its health benefits and could probably even get used to the taste of the stuff, but (and this is no doubt a personal failing on my part) I can’t get past the fact that it smells like a foot infection. I’ve been here long enough to know that plenty of foreigners love natto and plenty of Japanese can’t stand it. The default opinion, though, is that “we Japanese love natto, and foreigners can’t eat it.”

It wasn’t always the case, at least in Kansai. In fact, when I first started working in Osaka, c.1989, the standard answer to the textbook question, “Do you like natto?” was “No – that’s Kanto food. We Osakans can’t eat it.” A bit of clever marketing in the early 90s changed that, nearly overnight. Dissenters, of course, still exist, but they keep their opinions to themselves.

Fifteen years on, it’s available in every supermarket or convenience store in Osaka, and it’s on the menu of many a diner, especially the lunch counters that cater to salarymen. I stopped by a gyudon  shop for lunch the other day (gyudon is a bowl of thin-sliced beef and green onions on rice), and while waiting for my order to arrive, I looked around to see which of the  tired-looking, middle-aged men in the shop had taken off his socks. Naturally, it was just the man on my right stirring up and tucking into his side-dish of natto and raw egg. I didn’t enjoy my lunch.

An import shop in Tennoji tried to popularize Thai tempeh a few years ago, but since I was apparently the only one buying it, they gave up. Tempeh is essentially the same food as natto (although I don’t know the difference, if any, between the fermenting agents used); the extra step, however, of pressing the tempeh into flat blocks during fermentation seems to take away the pong for which natto is so justly famed. I’ve only met one student who had ever eaten tempeh, and she complained that the smell and taste were too mild for her, and it felt funny in her mouth (unlike say, a bracing mouthful of tofu?). A dwindling number of old Kansai folk still audibly complain that natto stinks, has too strong a taste and … feels  funny in their mouth.

I’m with the old folks on this one, although it’s ironic that young Osakans (who live in an eternal present) assume it’s a sign of my foreignness that I can’t stand the stuff.

Osaka Largesse Postscript: Writ in Water

The day after speaking to the cheerful old man on the train who just had to know how much I weighed (in an admiring way, because he liked sumo), I went to my gym and, since I seem to have hurt a tendon in my shoulder (and can’t swim very well anyway), I opted to go for a long march – 2000 metres – in the walking lane of the pool (most pools in Japan have these). Imagine walking steadily for 2 kms in chest-deep water: a good low-intensity aerobic exercise and a good wind-down after work. Well, I was happily striding away (sometimes backwards, sometimes crouching, always looking ridiculous) when I noticed a woman about my age in the beginner’s swimming lane, next to mine. She had cap and goggles on, earplugs in, and was looking at me.

– Why are you walking?

I had never seen her before in my life. Taken aback, my Japanese evaporated.

– I can’t swim (suiei ga dekinai), I eventually blurted out, ungrammatically.

– So why don’t you learn?

– My arm hurts. Hurt it. Upstairs (the gym). I turned and kept walking.

Fifty metres later, there she was again.

– So you’re just going to walk. That’s all?

– I exercised and now I’ll walk (I was not in a chatty mood).

– Why?

– It feels good.

– Yes, but why?

I pretended I didn’t hear, turned, walked another lap. She bobbed up from the water and and smiled triumphantly.

– I know! I know why!

She pointed to my belly.

– Metaboli (メタボリ)!”

Metaboli is the trendy new word, short for “metabolic syndrome”, which has entered the language via the media here in the past year. It just means you’ve got a beer belly, but because it’s got a foreign faux-scientific sound to it (if you’re Japanese), it’s become the cool new way of calling someone a fat-ass. I don’t think she was being malicious, but she was certainly being insensitive (not that Osakans are accused of that very often…), and was probably a bit snapped (my turn to be insensitive).

Sadly, there’s only one way out of a situation like this without causing a scene (which would be blamed on me). I made a self-deprecating joke and moved on.

– I like Japanese beer too much, I said, over my shoulder (and so did your mother when she was carrying you, honey, I failed to add).

This seemed to satisfy her, and she laughed, continued swimming for a few laps, then mercifully left. I kept at my routine until I’d reached my goal, then went for a shower and sauna, where a naked old Japanese man relentlessly tried to speak to me in French until I fled. Je pense que vous aimez la cuisine japonaise, he remarked, pointing to my gut.

No wonder I drink.

I’ll say this much for being overweight in Japan, a country where fully 25% of all women in their 20s are officially underweight but whose media only talk about the danger of beer bellies: you’ll have no trouble starting conversations in public places. Now if only I wanted to.