People travel to see the world, but not for me, I travel to taste the world. I really love cooking and believe that food is something really crucial to our life. We have at least 1-3 meal per day and engage highly during each meal. Different families also have different food preferences that derived from different cultures and share values. So, I believe one way to learn about other 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 theyāre so proud that you love their foods.
I wanna share with you about my experiences on learning new cultures through their foods when I travel as a local guide. Hope you will enjoy this meal course from your screen and picturing yourself tasting the favourite dish and enjoy this beautiful moment together !
Iām from Thailand and today Iāll take Japan for a great example. Japanese foods say a lot about their cultures and these are just some of them based on my perspectives.
Attention to details
Look how attention to details this gorgeous appetiser is. Japanese chef presents the foods in the way that is simple, yet sophisticate enough that allow us to see little details and feel that the story in Spring season when flower blooms and is full of hope 
Japanese people are very attention to details in what they do. In order to present things simply but beautifully, they think deeply and spend amount of time before come down to the simplicity. Iām always impressed with this trait of Japanese people.
Well-Organised and Discipline
In Japan, Sukiyaki has a proper way of eating it. When you go to a specialized 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 aable A5 wagyu for you, let you taste the first bite with raw egg, then slowly put the vegetable, konjak noodle, tofu, etc. in sequence for you.
It is a unique experience. I tried to mix sukiyaki sauce by adding more water by myself and was stopped by a waitress as she believed that it was already the best way to serve and that shouldnāt be changed in order to keep wonderful tatse.
Sukiyaki and Shabu Shabu was once the food for high class people only. So, itās the tradition to serve in the proper manner with correct sequences and excellent services. For me this imply to the culture that Japanese people are very neat, well-organised, and highly disciplined.
If you ever play a ramen game or only see what ingredients to put in one bowl of Ramen, you may have the pre-judgement that ramen is quite easy to cook. The ramen chef says that ramen is the fast food that isnāt fast to prepare.
Many ramen champion chefs reveal that their soup are usually overnight prepared for more than 10 hours. If this is for Thai kitchen, I would call that āovercookedā but for Japanese chef, they do whatever it takes to make the best soup, to make people who come to their shops happy. I think this isnāt just great but it is the thrive for excellence. This is maybe why we see a lot of innovation and continuous improvement concepts born in Japan
Selfless-ness
Japanese people can always design great products 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 in a customer centric way which mean: think selfless-ness to really put yourself in other peopleās shoes.
Some of you may have heard about this amazing story about Japanese people. If you ask direction to Japanese people; you sometimes may not get the answer, but they will walk you there ! This is real and once happened to me and my friend. Think about which kind of people who will walk you to the top of mountain to tell you where the tea shop is, just right after they have just recently walked down from the great hill and meet us on the entrance. This is insanely great and for me, this is so called āself-lessā.
Passionate
This is a specialty nut shop in Nishiki Market, Kyoto. This is just one of many specialty stores in Nishiki Market. If you go to Japan, you will find that in the same road or in same town; there can be so many different specialty stores that focus on selling only one or few products that they really specialize and make it really great.
Like food restuarant, if you want to have the the Unagi; the Unagi shop usually just focus on selling Unagi menus. If you go to ramen shop, they will serve few menus of ramen and usually no sushi and other kind. Even in the shop that is highly reputable; theyāre quite stick to their specialty and usually donāt expand scope or add more product lines. Japanese people focus on what they do best, and they have the so call āpassionā or āIkigaiā the reason they wanna wake up every morning or why they do what they do and it is usually simple but great.
Like one of ramen champion chef says he just keeps doing his ramen in the way that people will have the same good taste every time they come here. I love their attitude and minimal thought. They work passionately to create outstanding work.
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So now, do you wanna go out and taste the world like me? Hope you find this post great and will reflect it to yourself what cultures have you learn through foods and share it back with me. Iām 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