Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen, by Naomi Moriyama with William Doyle

Naomi Moriyama grew up in Tokyo with a typical Japanese mom provided attractive, nourishing food for her daughter.,.on the strict orders of Naomi's school!

(On the first day of school, a teacher made a speech: "We request that every mother make lunch for your daughter every day. Our main theme at this school is to help our students learn how to be giving and loving. One of the ways your daughter learns this is from your love-packed lunch box.") Can you imagine hearing this kind of a message in an American school???

Moriyama ended up moving to the U.S. to attend college and subsequently met and married her American husband. But she also came to miss and appreciate her mom's Japanese home cooking.

This book is a combination health book and cookbook. Moriyama includes statistics about how Japanese people live longer and have the lowest obesity rates in the world. They are also extremely active (few Japanese people use their cars every day, especially city residents)--instead they use mass transit, walk, or bicycle. I walked more during the three years I lived in Japan than I've ever walked in my life.

Moriyama also shares her own personal experiences--for example, when she arrived in the American Midwest to attend college, she gained a great deal of weight right away. When she moved back to Tokyo for awhile, she lost it all without dieting or exercising. The Japanese lifestyle, combined with fresh ingredients and home cooking, is the secret sauce!

Picking mikan (mandarin oranges)

As I was reading Moriyama's stories, I kept thinking of my wonderful stay in an old, traditional Japanese farmhouse on the western coast of Honshu (the most populated island in Japan), where we picked fresh persimmons, mountain potatoes, and mandarin oranges. My friend Debbie and I learned how to make gyoza (potstickers) and sushi, and the family had a brazier-fired kotatsu where they ate dinner each day. (A kotatsu is a wonderful table with a heater underneath it--we had one in our apartment with an electric heater, and the heat was kept under the table with a blanket...I loved that kotatsu as we didn't have central heating!) That weekend was the most traditional Japanese of any time I spent in Japan--it was fantastic.

Picking Japanese mountain potatoes (which taste amazing!)

Grandma on her tractor

Debbie and me with Grandma and Mama
(who was the mom of one of our businessmen students)

At the kotatsu at dinner--puzzled by the American Almond Roca we brought as a gift
(I don't think they liked it very much!)

Japanese home cooking is so much more than sushi and sashimi...you can find more of it at American Japanese restaurants than when we first returned from Japan. I loved delicacies such as spinach soaked in ground sesame seeds, okonomiyaki (Japanese-style pizza), takoyaki (octopus balls), yaki soba (fried noodles), ramen (noodle soup), gyoza, zaru soba (cold soba noodles with a dipping sauce), oyakodonburi (chicken and egg over rice), clams in sake broth, anything cooked with miso, rice balls with pickled plum seasoning, mochi with red bean paste, broiled mackerel or salmon, nabe (a soup that consists of each person dipping his or her own meat and veggies into a broth), traditional Japanese breakfasts, and edamame (steamed soybeans, now readily available in the U.S.).

Japanese roasted sweet potato street cart

Moriyama also enfolds some priceless Japanese history in her pages, including the stories of some kick-ass Japanese women in ancient times: Queen Himiko and Tomoe Gozen. (I need to learn more about these two!)

This book made me miss Japan and Japanese food so much! I love the way Moriyama gives tribute to her mom's own Tokyo kitchen...and I definitely want to incorporate more Japanese cooking into our own kitchen. But the truth is that cooking Japanese does take a great deal more time, and we don't all have Japanese housewives in our families!

I made one of the recipes in the book the other night--Eggplant Sauteed with Miso--and it was oishii (delicious)! This book inspired me to do more Japanese cooking and think more about what I'm eating--is it fresh? Is it processed? Has it been made with love? And I'm longing for Japan!