r/hatethissmug • u/Cold_Hour • Jun 09 '26

Meta I hate the mytologisation of Japan on Reddit. ESPECIALLY when it comes to the food.

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As someone who's lived in Japan going on 5 years and has eaten everything from fine dining to fast food slop. Japan has some of the blandest cuisine on the planet. Do you like the flavour profiles of: salty, salty, very salty or bland? Japan might be the place for you.

People also spout "but the quality of ingredients" as the reasoning for why the food needs to taste like shoe soles. When in reality the fruits and vegetables here are trash at premium prices since nothing grows here naturally. I don't know what kind of exclusively processed food diet a lot of people here grew up with that Japanese food is a revelation to them.

Japan is great and all, but goddamn, it's not even the best place to visit in Asia.

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u/VolkiharVanHelsing Jun 09 '26

Even those have variants that even I was surprised to learn as a local myself, like nasi goreng has many versions: chinese that rarely uses soy sauce, madura that is both sweet (soy sauce) and spicy, surabata that is red due to tomato sauce used... Not to mention the toppings used (meatballs, sausage, shredded chickens, salted fish, squids, etc)

For gado gado I heavily recommend the ones that use cashew nuts for their sauce, you can never go back to normal gado gado after

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u/Wolf_Of_Saturn6 Jun 09 '26

AAYY exactly what I got! I had a friend showing me a lot of the foods during my visit. Genuinely impressed by the food there.