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Why Japanese Cuisine is Preferred by People all over the World


Japanese cuisine is attracting great attention and is loved by people all over the world.


Let's explore the secret!


Due to the fact that Japan is an island nation, Japanese cuisine primarily developed in an isolated environment over the centuries. Even from a global perspective, its culinary features are unique and distinctive. Therefore, one of the reasons for the popularity of Japanese cuisine is that many people are interested in tasting something unlike anything they have in their homeland. The fact that it was registered as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage product in 2013 was also a great opportunity for Japanese cuisine to attract the global recognition it has long deserved. Here are three points about why Japanese cuisine was registered as a cultural heritage and why it attracted the attention of people from around the world.



The first point is the beauty of its appearance.

Japanese cuisine has played the role of “Omotenashi (hospitality)” since ancient times. It has always played an important role to play in entertaining, pleasing, and sometimes surprising the guests. It was basically a requirement to honor one’s guests. For example, a “decorative cutting” that entails vegetables being cut like butterflies or flowers, or the arrangement of dishes, or tableware to be used were all important elements of the dining experience. This history in the preparation of Japanese cuisine has sometimes been considered an art form in and of itself.


The second point is that it incorporates a sense of the seasons and uses a variety of ingredients.

Because Japan is a country surrounded by the sea, it is blessed with abundant amounts of seafood. In addition to this, because the Japanese archipelago is lined with mountains large and small, with arctic temperatures to the north and tropical conditions to the south, there are unique environments for many different varieties of plants and animals, which are utilized to their full potential in Japanese cuisine. Although Japan is a small country by some standards, it has a level of biodiversity and climatic differences that have allowed it to produce food stuffs wholly unique to the archipelago. By incorporating these ingredients into meals according to the seasons, Japanese chefs have gone a step further, by accentuating their creations to coincide with the seasonality of their products. This tends to maximize the flavor of Japanese cuisine.



The third point is that it is very healthy compared to other cuisine types.

A characteristic of Japanese cuisine is that the seasoning is relatively light and delicate. By relying on the taste of the ingredients and using dashi to add umami, one does not have to rely too much on the aspect of seasoning. It is a well-known fact that Japan boasts the longest life expectancy of any country on Earth, and a quintessential element to understanding how this can be the case is to look at the bounty of healthful qualities which the food products grown and consumed in Japan naturally contain.








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