And I'd assume, based on the messages and comments that I've gotten from my American friends, that a lot of people have become fairly defensive over the subject. How am I so audacious as to criticize American food but not Japanese food?
In fact this is a legitimate point. No culture is perfect, no food without criticism and no form of pleasure absolute. Perhaps it is philosophical of me, but the inherent quality of pleasure is that it ends, which just by hedonistic definition is bad. We all die, after all.
Therefore, it only seems fair to maybe take a stab at Japanese food. We've already discussed American food and it's seemingly less than desirable respect for the ingredients in which food is made.
But let's consider the opposite. What if you respect food TOO much?
It leads to something I'll call "hyper brand naming," and this is a phenomena all too common in Japan.
Perhaps we are all familiar with the idea of branding as a marketing tool. Fashion requires brands to make sales, fast food chains require a brand name to establish a sense of similarity among different shops as a pull strategy. Chipotle is owned by McDonalds? You'd never know, the brand name is what you assign the product to, not the stockholders equity.
Okay, fine fine, that's pretty standard. We need names to help us generalize by quality. It helps us make decisions.
Alas, in Japan, this trend is, well... obscene. Appalling. Hilarious.
To my previous readers, maybe you remember the melons I took a picture of? They are actually a brand of melon called "Yubari Melon", which is a melon farm located in the town Yubari, Hokkaido. The strange thing is that, as my friend Teppei told me recently, those melons are CHEAP compared to normal Yubari Melon.
Normal Yubari Melon, as Wikipedia also agreed with, costs 60-150 USD.
I mean to be fair it's quite pretty, ahahaha. Priced at around 70 USD.Ho
Ly
Crap.
And thus we have the problem with hyper branding. No one in their right mind would spend 60 dollars on ONE fruit in the states. It's a melon, you have to draw a line somewhere. But precisely because it's made by Yubari, there is a niche market for it. This company survives in this cultural climate.
This idea of branding however, is frequently put towards food as a location, rather than a company, though there are some exceptions. As an example, other companies make Nama Caramel for far less, but the Hanabatake farm (the one I purchased) is the original, and thus the most liked. They have established branding.
We have it in America too, (Wisconsin cheese?), but this is taken to a hyper extreme. Japan loves branding. They love the idea that a product came from somewhere special. Kobe beef, Hokkaido milk, Kyoto green tea, I mean the list is endless.
Perhaps more appalling is that this is actually taken one step further. Products, to further make sales, stick on key brand words to their products. Yubari melon flavored white chocolate, or Hokkaido milk flavored cookies, as examples. Not melon, but "Yubari", so it must be better somehow, despite it not being an actual melon at all.
Does the quality always correlate with the brand? I'd be willing to bet no.
It's merely a completely outlandish extension of the idea of "local food." Everything has a location and thus a price and a suggested quality. But for many times it's just a marketing strategy, it has nothing to do with how good the dang thing tastes.
This correlates well with the idea of "omiyage" or souvenir gift giving, which comprises mostly of expensive, BRANDED foods that are limited. A perfect example is Shiroi Koibito cookies (White Lover in english, lolz). Despite being factory made, and easily shipped nation wide, Shiroi Koibito is only purchasable in Hokkaido, and only really consumed for gift giving.
Well what if I just wanna eat some Shiroi Koibito? Those things are tasty! Why isn't this product expanding? Why do I need to be in Hokkaido to buy cookies for 20 dollars? That's nuts!
Ooooh, brand appealllll.Because the brand, the idea that it is limited, is appealing. Too appealing. Everything is branded, and too much stuff is "limited time only". And most of it is nonsense.
It's like fashion of food.
To be fair... it usually tastes pretty darn good. But not for all the extra effort and branding.
Your spelling of "appalling" is appalling! Hahahaha.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that insightful comment; I now understand more about the world because of your remarkably profound statement.
ReplyDeleteI knew you would. You just have to open yourself up to new experiences sometimes, Mike.
ReplyDeleteMike, I think you're missing the point here. Nobody buys a 60 dollar melon for themselves to eat. The point is giving it as a gift, and the point of the gift, more than anything else, is that it be expensive.
ReplyDelete