Zach awry in Japan

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7 December 2007 Waiting for Sweet Potato

 

This little shack sells sweet potatoes. And, they must be darn good ones because there is usually a huge line. These nice folk are waiting for the place to open.

 

 

(Japanese people in general seem more willing than Americans to wait excruciatingly long times for food. It’s part of a general obsession with food here that is well-commented upon. There’s no need for a Food Channel in Japan, for example, because every channel is the food channel. Every conceivable kind of program manages to find some way to film someone eating something enthusiastically and trying to describe just how good it tastes to the camera. My personal baseless theory is that this is because during and after the war there was so little to eat that once the country got back on its feet those who were deprived for so long went berserk enjoying the new abundance. This overcompensation then just became stuck as a part of the culture, and applies even to people of later generations who never knew food deprivation.)