People who love to travel, they want to see the world. But for me, I love to travel not just to see the world; I also wanna taste the world. I really love cooking and believe that food is something really crucial to life. We eat every day and engage a lot through each meal.
Different family has different food preference and that is one thing that derived from different culture and share values. So, I believe that one way to learn about other different cultures is to taste their foods and observe the way foods are cooked and served.
For foods, the hands-on experiences is important as you cannot feel how other feels or taste like other taste if you do not experience with with all your senses. Every time I travel to new places, I always find some place that serve the local foods. Imagine for those who love cooking or eating, and you have a local chef who cooks freshly for you; and some times they even reveal you about their secret traditional recipes because theyâre so proud that you love their foods.
So, today I wanna share with you how do I learn different cultures through their foods when I travel as a local guide. Hope you will enjoy this meal from your screen and picturing yourself tasting the favorite dish and enjoy this beautiful moment together !
Letâs go to Japan for a great example. Japanese foods say a lot about their culture !
Attention to details
Look how attention to details the Japanese people are. They present their foods in the way that is simple, but sophisticate enough that allow us to see the details and feel that this plate has a story that happens in a Spring - when flower blooms and full of hope 
Japanese people are very attention to details in what they do. They do in simply but in order to present simply but beautifully, they think deeply and spend amount of time and always link it to a story. Iâm really impress with this traits of people in this country.
Neat with discipline
In Japan, Sukiyaki is the food that will have a proper way of eating it. When you go to a specialised Sukiyaki or Shabu Shabu restaurant; there will be a waitress who will enthusiastically take care of you. She will prepare the pan, put the oil, cook the first Mable A5 wagyu for you, let you taste the first bite with the raw egg, then slowly put the vegetable, konjak noodle, tofu, etc. in sequence for you.
We used to try to put more sukiyaki sauce or mixed more hot water by ourselves, but some place the Japanese waitress wonât allow as they see this is already the best way they serve. You should have the best tatse !
Sukiyaki and Shabu Shabu was once the food for high class people. So, itâs the tradition to serve in the proper manner with such sequence and excellent service.
For me this imply to the culture that Japanese people are very neat, highly discipline. Even for the foods, they even have the sequence of serving.
Thrive for Excellence
If you ever play a ramen game or only see what is in one bowl of Ramen, you may have the pre-judgement that ramen is easy to cook. The ramen chef says that ramen is the fast food that isnât fast to prepare.
Ramen champion chef usually reveals that their soup are overnight prepared for more than 10 hours - for me or Thailand, we would call that âOvercookedâ but for Japanese chef, they do whatever it takes for the best soup to make people who come to their shop happy. I think this isnât just great but it is the thrive for excellence.
This is maybe why we see a lot of innovation and continuous improvement concept born in Japan
Selfless-ness
This 3D cappuccino may not be a great representative example to what Iâm going to explain. But I think that Japanese people always think of other people before themselves as they always design a product that can surprise customers, give a new experience, and WoW us all the time.
To be able to design or invent such product, they will really have to understand customers and think it a customer centric way which mean: think selfless-ness
Some of you may have heard about this, if you ask direction to Japanese people; you may not get the answer but they will walk you there! This is real and this already happened to me and my friend. Which kind of people who just walk down from the great hill, and walk us up to the top just to show us where the tea shop we ask about is. This is insanely great and for me, this is so called âself-lessâ
Passionate
This is a specialty nut shop in Nishiki Market, Kyoto. This is just an example of specialty store in Japan. If you go to Japan, you will find that in one town on the same street; there can be so many different specialty store that focus on selling only one of few things that they specialise and do it extremely well.
Like food restuarant, if you want to have the the Unagi; there is one shop. If you wanna have Ramen, there is another shop. In one shop, even theyâre so reputable; they donât expand scope or create more product lines. Japanese people focus on what they do best, and they have the so call âpassionâ or âIkigaiâ the reason they wanna wake up every morning or why they do what they do and it is usually simple but great.
Like the ramen champion chef says he just keep doing the ramen in the way that people will have the same good taste every time they come here. I love their minimal but not so fancy and materialist in fantacise what they do. They just love it and that love that makes their work outstanding!
Do you wanna go out and taste the world like me now? For your next trip, use this trip and share it back with me. Or if you have the same experience, Iâm looking forward to reading your comments and feedback.
Have a yummy day !
Here are more tips ! I used the Google Map lists to help plan our trip. You can find some of the restaurant in this articles through this lists >> https://goo.gl/maps/GfSUBNsj6DMEWZ7S8