GH #1- Japanese Food

For my first Genius Hour project, I chose to research Japanese food. I chose to research this because, as you might already know from my previous posts, that I’m a fan of Japanese culture. To help me in my research, I used the question: What is ‘normal’ for the Japanese diet?


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Throughout my research, this is what I learned:

Daifuku is a glutinous rice cake stuffed with sweet filling, most commonly anko, sweetened red bean paste made from azuki beans.

Japanese Diet: In Japan, people mostly feed on large amounts of rice, seafood, fresh vegetables, fruit, and a bit of meat. A lot of their dishes include soy sauce, fish, or alcohol from fermented rice called sake, but rice and tea make up or are included in practically every meal. Some Japanese dishes are also made with miso soup (bean paste soup), ramen/ noodles, curry, sashimi (raw fish), tofu, or pork.

Sushi: One of Japan’s most popular dish worldwide is sushi which is made out of rice, raw fish, fish eggs, dried seaweed (nori – nori maki), egg roll, or even vegetables or fruits such as avocado.
Sushi can be purchased at kaiten sushi bars (restaurants which serve sushi on a conveyor belt) for around one U.S. dollar. Good quality sushi and sashimi is expensive and usually reserved for special occasions.

Western Food: Japan is quickly adopting food, for example, American fast food. While sushi can be bought at kaiten sushi bars (restaurants that serve sushi from a conveyor belt) for as little as one U.S. dollar, good quality sushi and sashimi is expensive and usually served and eaten for special events.

Deserts: Japan, like any other country, has many desserts, however some of the most popular desserts include the following: wagashi, raindrop cake, mochi, and taiyaki.
– Wagashi. Wagashi is a kind of sweet made with plants. It is much like mochi. It is commonly served with matcha tea.
– Raindrop cake is simply just water and agar agar mixed and cooled. This dish can make a really nice desert but can as well be a main dish. It can be eaten along with almost anything but mostly with sauces or powder such as chocolate sauce or sugar, or savory-wise soy sauce or so.
– Mochi is my personal favorite. It is a rice cake made of a glutinous rice called mochigome. It is normally in a round shape but can be formed into any shape or mold. It is really sweet and tastes a lot like tapioca flour cakes if you know what those are.
– Taiyaki is a fish shaped cake filled with bean paste. Commonly red bean paste made from azuki beans. Some other fillings however could include custard, chocolate, cheese, sweet potato, sausage, etc… Right now taiyaki is trending world-wide, being stuffed with ice-cream.


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It helped me grow as a student and person because knowing this helped me improve my cultural knowledge and diversity, as someone only from Europe and Africa.
A reason why knowing this is helpful is because statistics from 2013 report that in that year, Japan had a 16% rate of poverty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Japan), which leads to starvation. If more research is done, many kinds of Japanese cultural foods could eventually be made and help against starvation in Japan.


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For my next Genius Hour projects I will research on animation (illustrations and maybe moving pictures into a clip). This project will help me start animating online and brainstorming ideas for illustrations. One of the ideas of future jobs would be a cartoon/anime creator or even video game creator, therefore this could help me head for that career once I graduate.

Here is my final presentation for GH #1.

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