Recently Ito Yokado had a promotion at their store next to my house selling what they called “ekiben”. I didn’t know the word, but Kuniko explained to me that it means a boxed lunch available from a train station. Why was a big supermarket like Ito Yokado selling lunches that were supposed to be sold at train stations? Why would anybody want to eat them?
They were actually selling ekiben from different stations all over Japan. You could look through them and pick a lunch from a train station hundreds of miles away, and taste the flavor of that region.
This was really interesting to me. Japan is an isolated country – being an island will do that to you. Also, to some extent Japanese people are isolated from others because of their language. Whereas an English speaker can travel freely and exchange topics with people from Australia, Scotland, Singapore, Guam, South Africa, etc., Japanese people generally can only interact with other Japanese. Maybe that explains why English language instruction is so popular here.
Within Japan people love to travel. One thing I hear about different parts of Japan is that such-and-such town is “famous” for their noodles, or “famous” for their rice balls. Sometimes the towns are as close as only a couple miles away, but this “fame” is held on to and prized – it gives the town or area something to boast about, and brings in tourists from other parts of Japan. Sometimes it seems that every town in “famous” for something.
“Ekiben” was a good example for me of how people in an isolated culture can strive for diversity, even if it’s something as simple as what you eat.
