When I worked in Japan a long time ago, everyone in the office who came back from trips to the U.S. said unequivocally,
“American food is awful. They put salt and pepper on everything.” And I thought, “but I use soy sauce and mirin all the time. My cooking isn’t any better than American cooking.”
However, I understood what they meant once I came to the U.S. The food I ate at mid-level restaurants and diners reminded me of Japanese hospital food. Once in Chicago, the city was hit by a major storm and my husband and I could only find a couple of restaurants open. We went to one of them for breakfast and I ordered the safest dish available: two sunny-side eggs with toasts. I’d never had such bad eggs in my life. How could they mess this up so badly? My husband who ordered an omelet, on the other hand, said rather cheerfully,
“This is pretty good!” which brought home the fact that he was American.
In my first few years in the U.S., I cooked Japanese and Chinese food almost exclusively. Then slowly, I started to venture into other cuisines as I believed there must be a simple and yet delicious dish in every cuisine. I was into cooking Indian and Italian for a while and then finally began to learn American or cosmopolitan cooking.
The most delightful discovery in American cooking was the oven. Most Americans take the oven for granted. But in Japan, it’s not a standard feature of the kitchen, and I didn’t know how to cook with it. So, when I moved to the U.S. and saw this massive apparatus that took up so much space in my small kitchen, I wasn’t pleased. I was exasperated every time I opened the oven door and looked into the dark hollow space; I couldn’t even use it as storage.
Once I started using the oven, though, I couldn’t live without it. If you cook steaks in a Dutch oven pan, and put it in the oven, then you’ll have really good steaks at home. Put seabass in a casserole dish soaked in olive oil, wine, herbs and lemon, and the oven will cook them nicely. While you cook a main dish on the stove, your oven can roast vegetables for you. This is utterly wonderful!
But it’s hard to explain my delight to Japanese who haven’t tried to use their ovens yet. I share my experiences, and they’ll agree with me that there are some good things about it. I can tell, though, that they’re not really excited about or even interested in cooking with oven. It’s hard to convey my joy with just words, when there is a gap in experience: Japanese-style stove top cooking and American-style oven cooking. It’s not a language issue, as I’m a native Japanese, but I feel as if something is lost in translation.
Cooking is rather personal, and you don’t have to agree on how to cook. But when you’re working with someone from a different culture, you need to find a way to narrow the experience gap and reduce the possibility of losing something in translation. This may be a chicken and egg argument, but what can be a cause of this experience gap?
A Japanese female executive and I were discussing how to effectively exchange information with others. She is a very smart and quiet woman, but she suddenly shouted,
“But Americans are rude!” I was taken a back for a second. Where did that come from? I thought we were talking about information gaps, not mannerisms. But soon I discovered that she resented the fact that Americans didn’t always say “thank you” for the information that she’d given. I was talking about how to deliver the information in a way that is more meaningful to her counterpart, but she couldn’t even start discussing it, as she was emotionally blocked by her own perceptions of Americans.
Another time was with three male executives. We were discussing differences in values between Japan and the U.S. Every step of the way, one of them challenged me, but conceded each time that what I said was right. He was self-conflicted in a way. I could tell that he understood the differences intellectually, but something was making it difficult for him to swallow the very things that he agreed with me on the surface. Near the end of the session, he couldn’t contain himself anymore. He burst out,
“You said that America was built on ideals and principles. But there are many lawsuits in the U.S. How can you explain this!?” I agreed,
“You are right about that. Although as a nation, America strives for ideals, there are many gaps between their ideals and what actually occurs. That is exactly why we have countless lawsuits here.” With that, I could see the blockage melt away and his attitude shift.
I always say, as most intercultural trainers do, that cultures are just different from each other, and that one culture is not better or worse than another culture. But that doesn’t stop my clients from getting emotional about the differences.
As a Japanese, I understand what they’re going through. Most of us don’t experience cultural differences as we grow up, while anywhere else in the world, multiculturalism is increasingly becoming the norm. Japanese have a lot to catch up on dealing with their own emotional reactions to different behaviors and ways of doing things. Although most Japanese understand and appreciate the cultural differences on an intellectual level, getting past the emotional border that is rooted in their cultural values still seems hard to overcome.
One Saturday, my daughter who went for a walk came back with several friends. They wanted to cook something. Soon, a smell that was the combination of sweet and cheese wafted into the next room where I was reading; I became mildly nauseated. Later my daughter explained that they sliced doughnuts in half, put the sugary sides together with cheese in between. This is American cooking going awry. I know I shouldn’t judge a culture without experiencing it, but this is the border that I can’t cross not only emotionally but also physiologically.
But if I were working with them to develop a new teenage food, I would take a bite, and try to understand their fascination with this crossover dish. I might even suggest that they use the oven instead of a frying pan in order to make mass production possible. If I stride over my emotional border and become part of the group, I may be able to avoid some frustration and wasted time. A cure for an experience gap is to experience it directly. Being a bystander isn’t the most helpful.