Fake Wasabi and 4 More Japanese Food Lies You Believed

Most of the "wasabi" you've eaten is fake. It's usually horseradish, mustard and green coloring, especially outside Japan. Real wasabi is a plant that grows in cold mountain streams, it tastes sweet and fresh before the kick, and it loses that kick in about fifteen minutes.

Wasabi is just one of five Japanese foods you already order with a lie on the menu. In this episode of Rin & Tadashi, Tadashi takes Rin on a one-night food tour and busts wagyu, wasabi, tempura, kombucha and ramen, with six kanji along the way.

Wagyu just means "Japanese cow"

Rin orders the wagyu, "the finest beef in the world". Tadashi has bad news. 和牛 (wagyū) is 和, Japanese, plus 牛, cow. That's the whole word. In Japan you can buy it at the supermarket.

Kobe beef is wagyu from the area around Kobe, a city in Japan. Kobe Bryant was named after it: his dad saw "Kobe beef" on a restaurant menu. For years, most "Kobe beef" in America wasn't from Kobe, and from 2010 to 2012 Japanese beef was banned there completely. And the beer and massages? Some farmers did it, mostly in winter when the cows couldn't go outside. Today most don't.

牛 has four strokes and is a cow's face from the front, horns on top. 和 is on every menu as 和食 (washoku), Japanese food, and it's in the name of the current era, 令和 (Reiwa).

Wasabi: horseradish in disguise

Rin is sure the green ball at the sushi bar is real wasabi. Tadashi eats the whole thing. Horseradish, definitely. Real wasabi is grated on shark skin, which works like sandpaper, and then you've got about fifteen minutes before the kick is gone.

The most famous wasabi farm is Daiō, in Nagano, with old wooden watermills. Kurosawa filmed the ending of his movie "Dreams" there.

Wasabi is written 山葵. 山 (yama), mountain, is three peaks and the easiest kanji of the night. 葵 (aoi) is a leaf, the family crest of the Tokugawa shoguns. Tadashi pulls out the crest and shouts the famous line from the samurai TV show "Mito Kōmon": "Do you not recognize this crest?!" Everyone bows except Rin.

Tempura came with the Portuguese

Tempura isn't 100% Japanese. It arrived with Portuguese sailors and missionaries in the 1500s. On certain holy days Catholics skipped meat and ate fish and vegetables, fried. One famous theory says the name comes from the Latin "tempora", the "times" of fasting.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most powerful man in Japan and founder of the crest family, ate sea bream tempura in 1616, got sick and died a few months later. It was probably something else, but the legend stuck.

In tempura, 天 (ten) is only there for the sound. On its own it means sky or heaven: a big person with open arms and the sky above the head. You'll use it in 天気 (tenki), weather, and 天才 (tensai), genius.

Kombucha in Japan is salty seaweed tea

Tadashi orders a kombucha, "the fizzy fermented tea". He gets a hot, salty cup and spits. In Japan, 昆布茶 (konbucha) is seaweed tea, because 昆布 (konbu) is seaweed. Point for Rin.

The fizzy drink has another name there: 紅茶キノコ (kōcha kinoko), "black tea mushroom", for the jelly blob that ferments it. Japan went crazy for it in 1975. One theory says someone thought the blob was seaweed, and that's how the world ended up calling it kombucha.

茶 (cha), tea, has nine strokes: grass on top, a little roof, and a tree. You get free お茶 (ocha) in restaurants, and brown is 茶色 (chairo), "tea color".

Ramen came from China

Ramen is Chinese noodles in broth. In 1910 a Tokyo shop in Asakusa called Rairaiken, with Chinese cooks, got Japan hooked. Instant ramen, though, is Japanese. In 1958, Momofuku Ando, 48 and just out of business, locked himself in a backyard shed for a year and came out with Chicken Ramen. Cup Noodle followed in 1971, and in 2005 it went to space with a Japanese astronaut. In a 2000 poll in Japan, instant noodles were voted the best Japanese invention of the century. Karaoke came second.

面 (men) means face or surface. Put wheat next to it and you get 麺, noodles, also read men. And 面白い (omoshiroi) means funny or interesting. One fun theory says it means "white face", faces lit up by the fire, laughing. By the way, slurping your noodles is polite in Japan.

Japanese words from this episode

FAQ

Is the wasabi in sushi restaurants real?

Most of it isn't, especially outside Japan. It's usually horseradish, mustard and green coloring. Real wasabi is a plant, grated fresh, and it loses its kick in about fifteen minutes.

What does wagyu mean?

Wagyu (和牛) literally means "Japanese cow". It's a word for Japanese beef, not a promise that it's the best in the world.

Is kombucha Japanese?

Not the fizzy drink. In Japan, 昆布茶 is a salty seaweed tea, and the fizzy one is called 紅茶キノコ, black tea mushroom.