My friend Erika Urushiyama, or, Erika-san, as I normally address her, hails from the verdantly green Gifu prefecture, located in the center of the Japanese mainland. Known for its quaint recreations of ancient farming villages, Gifu has always served as a picturesque home for Japanese agriculture and food history. I spoke to her over Skype…

Can you explain the region you’re from in Japan?

“I come from a city called Takayama. When I was in elementary school, several cities decided to merge into a larger one, creating my hometown.” Erika explained that the central kernel of Gifu food culture lies in the production of both rice and spinach (gohan and hōrenzo); you can find Gifuan spinach in markets across the country, including in Erika’s current city of residence, Osaka.

Does Gifu have a distinct food culture?

“There are many foods local to Gifu…pickles, especially pickles (tsukemono). We ones made from cucumber chilled; however, in Takayama, we usually fry pickles in egg, soy sauce, and fish flakes (katsuobushi), ‘fried pickle’. Sometimes, we’ll serve the fried pickles with pickled Chinese cabbage; it’s a pretty sour dinner.”

Erika went on to say that in terms of a Gifu-only dish, something regionally landlocked, the prefecture is home to a unique, sponge-like tofu called komodofu. Not traditionally found in the surrounding prefectures, komodofu possesses a special airy quality due to the rare processing method that leaves the interior riddled with small holes that help soak up the soy sauce used in its production, lending a slight salty, fermented taste to the tofu: “The flavor isn’t too strong, but it is more…savory than normal tofu. It reminds me of home.”

What was your favorite food to eat growing up? What food most reminds you of Gifu?

According to Erika, dagashi, an umbrella term for all things parents would desire their kids to avoid, i.e. sweets and sugary snacks, holds a special place in many Japanese hearts, rekindling memories of carefree summers, afterschool munchies, and treats for special occasions. One treat in particular, dango, a sort-of balled dumpling, is made from sweetened rice flour (mochiko) and covered in toasted soybean flour (kinako). “The texture is like a very chewy jelly—a soft candy. Kinako, soybean powder, has a taste similar to peanut butter, which is both sweet and dry; I get thirsty a lot when eating these!”

But when Erika wasn’t chowing down on sweets, her mother was busy making a country- style miso donburi (meat served over rice). Replete with fresh cut green onion, miso roasted beef (or chicken), and warm scrambled eggs, donburi highlights the superior quality of Gifuan rice, as all the accouterment are served atop a mound of the steamed national starch. “I think our recipe was one that my mother invented, but whenever I think of home I try to recreate it. It’s a nice comfort food that can take me back to my kitchen in Gifu.”

How do you view/explain Japanese cuisine? Its hallmarks and/or what makes it unique?

“Rice and miso soup.” We laughed, but it was true. “Rice, miso soup, beef (sometimes chicken) …” The almost stereotypical hallmarks of Japanese cuisine are not stereotypes at all, but national standards and expectations. Neatly (correct to pristinely) placed on every Japanese counter/table-top sits a rice cooker; every meal exists with rice as its conduit, the skeleton key to all Japanese cookery, its cornerstone. When asked, Japanese people will tell you that rice is always the main dish, everything served alongside it, the supporting cast. Miso soup, too, finds a home on all dining tables—a hot, fermented reminder of an ancient and revered food history.

“But what makes Japanese food special, or different from every other type of cuisine, is its nuance. Other global cuisines usually have lots of flavorings and spices that cover the taste of the food. Japanese food is fresh—especially because of traditional farming methods—and has complexity in its needing to be simple and…honest.” In other words, other cultures’ foods hide behind walls of constructed taste; whereas, Japanese food promotes a sense of natural honesty in its simplicity, championing the shades of flavor in a freshly sliced and seared eggplant (versus covering it in sauce).

Do you have a favorite dish you like to eat out?

“I really love yakitori, like grilled meat skewers, especially chicken. But I can’t eat the skins like I used to; the fat is too much for me nowadays.” Familiar with the dish from my time in Japan, yakitori, the source of chicken specter, i.e. the delicious smelling call of the grill Sirens that floats with smoked vigor along the sides of crowded market streets, occupies much of the street-food category in Japanese cuisine. The oily, crispy skins (loved by many), didn’t suit Erika’s devotion to personal health, but she speaks for herself.

What do you see as the most important dish/food in Japan? Why?

“Vegetables and rice. Japanese vegetables, and all of our rice, is grown locally—in-country. We have a lot of national pride in our farm work, especially when related to fresh vegetables; we tend to not trust much foreign-grown produce as ours is really great quality. Without Japanese farms, we would not have a very developed national cuisine…maybe even culture.”

As Erika continued to say, visual evidence proves the superiority of native Japanese produce; supermarkets in Japan function as both places to buy food and palaces to perfectionist agriculture. The produce section is home to nearly-fake-looking examples of bunched grapes, peaches, eggplant, cucumber, and shitake. Thusly, in traditional Japanese cooking, the quality of the fresh food is allowed to shine through, without any intrusion from overpowering batters or seasonings. Additionally, this madness for culinary excellence and simplicity leads to a very fit (almost insultingly so) population.

What is your favorite food memory associated with Japanese cuisine?

“I think having dinner parties with friends where we all get together to make takoyaki (fried balls of octopus, batter, and some small, assorted veggies) in the special frying trays has to be one of my favorite memories. It reminds me of good times not at work and of getting to make food myself—I usually don’t have much free time.”

Erika said that the Japanese prepare takoyaki by first mixing a savory frying batter; then, using a specially- made frying tray that looks like it was molded around sliced-in-half golf balls (creating neat little, divots in the tray), they pour in the batter and add pieces of onion (sometimes carrot) and octopus. After a minute or two on the first side, they flip the frying dough in order to make perfectly brown little spheres that are then topped with mayo, katsuobushi, and a savory brown gravy. It’s the perfect comfort food and the most identifiably Japanese—different, delicious, and unlike anything else.