Culture shock
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Choose to Move. Aloita harjoittelu kuntakeskus Eliksiassa ja saa treenit lupakuun loppuun sekä liittymismaksun veloituksetta. TT-tapaaminen sisältyy jäsenyyteen. Katso kampanjaehdot ja liity jäseneksi osoitteessa eliksia.fi. Motivation Included.
Tavallinen tiistai tammikuussa Järborin lomahotellin uima-altaalla.
Etpä sama kimi! Tulehan pois Altaasta! Nyt pitää oikeasti lähteä kotiin.
Varaan lämmin talviloma. Cärbor. Lomia, joiden etsoisi loppuvan.
Imagine walking into a supermarket and recognizing nothing on the shelves. Not being able to feed myself was incredibly overwhelming. Or being unable to make your favorite meal because there's no way you could get hold of the ingredients.
You were unable to find even the most common of things.
If you've ever moved country, this might sound familiar. Welcome to the food chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander. In this week's programme, we're talking about how going to live abroad can force you to change how you cook and have a profound and lasting effect on your relationship with food, even long after you've returned home.
Food is kind of related to
who you are. I think people will be familiar with culture shock, but reverse culture shock rarely gets talked about, and I suffered from that really badly.
This is all something that's been on the mind of listener Juanita Reese, a Columbian chef living and working in Revelstoke, a small ski town in British Columbia, Canada.
I moved here from Bogota with my husband about four years ago. Revelstoke is a beautiful place but being a small mountain town also means that getting certain foods can be difficult. Some of the foods I really miss are actually the foods that don't travel very well. For example tamales and bananas. Tamales are made with dough. meat and vegetables and they are grabbed in a banana leaf and they are steam. And bananas are fried corn dough Pastries? Usually filled with meat and potatoes. The thing with this type of foods is that bringing them From Colombia isn't really practical. The trip can take two or three days, depending on the route. So it's not like you can buy fresh empanadas on the street in Vogota and put them in your suitcase.
And making them here is a completely different story. They don't taste the same as the ones you can get in Colombia.
Juanita in Canada. Well, I'm joined by three people who no doubt can relate to all of that Calvin Chung, a Chinese Canadian chef who's lived in India, Belgium, and now Dubai. Also Miwakishi, a cookery teacher from Japan, who's now in the Netherlands, and Jen Ballantine, a teacher in the UK, who's lived in Japan, Tanzania, Brunei, and Azerbaijan. Am I right, Jen? Could you relate?
Definitely.
What does it feel like to walk into a foreign supermarket and not recognize any food?
I know when I lived in Japan, my Japanese friends would often want to take me to foreign restaurants so I could have a taste of home. And we would sometimes drive many hours to visit these fabled restaurants only to turn up. And the dishes that I was given and told were traditionally English. were completely different to what I knew from home. And I I quickly learnt embrace the local food because it's far, far better.
Mm. And Jen, it was you who suggested we make this programme in the first place, emailing us at the foodchain at bbc.co dot uk. Thinking back to when you first arrived in Japan. Do you remember a moment when it kinda hit you that actually cooking and eating was gonna be really quite different to how it was at home?
Yes, definitely. Prior to that I'd travelled but I'd never lived overseas and living in a very small village in Japan Where there is very, very little English spoken, I found myself in in a supermarket, staring at things and having no idea what anything was. And it may sound strange to listeners that haven't been in that situation. But obviously packets don't make sense because everything's in Japanese and packets look different, the branding is different. But even the vegetables and the fruit, they look different. There are things I'd never even seen before.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:31
2
What does it feel like to walk into a foreign supermarket and not recognize any food?
3:31–5:53
3
How did Juanita’s move from Bogotá to a small Canadian ski town change her everyday meals?
5:53–9:18
4
What cultural food challenges did Jen face while teaching in Japan, Tanzania and Brunei?
9:18–24:57
5
How does Miwa adapt Japanese cookery techniques while living in the Netherlands?
24:57–28:24