Every time I watch "Doraemon", I will recall my childhood and the various delicacies I saw in the cartoons at that time. Of course, my exposure to Japanese food as a child was also inspired by the cartoons and tokusatsu films I watched at that time. Especially, at that time when

Every time I watch "Doraemon", I will recall my childhood and the various delicacies I saw in the cartoons at that time.

Of course, my exposure to Japanese food as a child was also inspired by the cartoons and tokusatsu films I watched at that time. Especially, at that time when you really wanted to eat but couldn't, and then tried your best to make up for it -

at that time, the taste you gave them in your mind was the most delicious thing you had ever eaten in your life.

For example, Dorayaki taste.

I think back then, it was not sold in any supermarket, and how many children watched the animation every day, thinking and looking forward to it, but they just couldn't taste it. It can be called one of the most head-scratching dream foods in childhood.

There is no other reason. Fatty Blue really loves to eat Dorayaki - even the name "Doraemon", the homophony in Japanese is "Dorayaki Gate" .

According to statistics from the website "Doraemon Wiki", in the comics alone, Doraemon has eaten at least 186 and one-third Dorayaki. As in the animation, there are more whales to swallow.

▲There must be forty or fifty of them!

At that time, we were all thinking, what a delicious snack Dorayaki is! However, after thinking and looking forward to it, when I finally tasted this simple dessert of two slices of cake sandwiched with bean paste filling when I grew up, I silently walked to the door of the old Beijing snack:

Isn’t this just a toad spitting honey!

However, I didn’t understand the interesting talk about Dorayaki until I grew up.

Just like we always regard Qianlong Cixi as the inventors of Chinese snacks, the Japanese also say that the inventor of Dorayaki is a legendary figure called "Musashibo Benkei".

I didn’t understand it when I was a child, but I realized it when I grew up. In Japanese culture, this man is roughly synonymous with bravery - he was a retainer of the famous general Minamoto Yoshitsune. Legend has it that he was a highly skilled monk soldier who later died fighting to protect his master. , being hit by several arrows but not falling down, is about the same image as our Lu Zhishen or Dian Wei.

There is even a saying in Japanese called "Benkei's tears place" (Benkei's crying place), which is said to be the shin bone of a person's calf. Once it is hit, even a warrior like Benkei will cry in pain. It is used It is a metaphor for a person's vital pain, which is similar to the Westerner's " Achilles' heel".

▲ "Detective Conan: The Crossroads of the Labyrinth" also mentioned this

Legend has it that once, Benkei was injured in the battle and was taken in by an old farmer. Benkei used a general's gong in his collection as a In thanks for the gift, the old farmer used the dorayaki as a pancake pan, baked two pancakes and gave them to Benkei. This was how Dorayaki was born.

Although this legend has no scientific basis, and it is even said that Dorayaki was born in 1914, it has been widely circulated like the story of Zhu Yuanzhang and Pearl Jade White Jade Soup and has become a part of Japanese traditional culture. "A Dream" also played this joke -

In the 2009 New Year's Eve special animation "Tracking the Secret of Dorayaki", little Doraemon suddenly heard that the inventor of Dorayaki was Benkei, so he pulled Nobita Traveling back in time to the Heian period, I had to eat the Yuanzu version of Dorayaki, but due to a mess of manipulations, history was changed and Dorayaki ceased to exist.

After a lot of hard work, I finally tasted the first Dorayaki made by Benkei. Unexpectedly, it tasted almost like dough. He was so angry that Fatty Lan had a fever and passed out. The prepared dough stuck to it. The red-hot big round head was roasted, and Minamoto Yoshitsune had the idea to add bean paste...

So, Benkei, in order to thank Doraemon (Doraemon), named this snack after him: Dorayaki!

The animation authors of "Doraemon" seem to have thought of the "disillusionment" we have when we grow up:

Those legendary foods may not necessarily be delicious when you actually eat them.

Of course, there are also cases of the reverse. For example, in an episode of the comic "Mirror Advertisement", Nobita and Dora advertised a delicious but on the verge of closing down snack shop, praising the shop's steamed buns in other people's mirrors.

When I was a child, I scratched my head when I saw this: Japanese people are different from us. Can steamed buns be eaten as snacks?

Later I discovered that the pictures in it were dumplings and golden cakes. Probably because the book I read was "Doraemon" by People's Fine Arts Publishing House in 1989. Chinese children didn't know so many Japanese snacks at that time. Translator In order to facilitate understanding, I simply translated it as "steamed buns".

▲This is it. The word "小夫" in it was translated as "strong husband" at that time.

At that time, there were many "misunderstandings" caused by translation. The consequence was that it created countless beautiful fantasies about unknown foods.

I remember watching "Ultraman Taro" back then. In it, the Tie Hanhan Nanyuan team member stared at the monster's tail and suddenly said: "It would be great if there was a bowl of beef rice bowl ", which made his teammates angry. Transformation: "I told you to stop dreaming!"

Beef rice bowl? For me when I was a child, this thing was still relatively unfamiliar - there was very little way of eating vegetables on rice (except for feeding the elderly and children who have difficulty eating), and we rarely used "top rice" in our daily life. This word.

I found out later that the translation was not wrong, but it was just localized.

When the Ultraman series of tokusatsu dramas were introduced to the Mainland in the 1990s, the translation and production units were mainly in Shanghai. For Shanghainese, rice bowls are not unfamiliar at all -

The modernization process of old Shanghai was early, and the pace of life before liberation was not slow. It is said that rice bowls have become popular in Shanghai since the establishment of foreign banks after the Opium War. This is mainly due to the popularity of Chinese employees in foreign banks - their working hours are the same as those of foreigners, and they also have lunch time, unlike many Chinese employees in the past. Two meals a day for humans. But this extra meal is limited by meal time, and it is not easy to spend too much, so the meal is combined into one.

As a result, over a period of time, the rice bowl has become a Shanghai specialty. For example, the writer and translator Xiao Qian recalled that when he was working in Shanghai in the 1930s, he mentioned: "I like to eat Shanghai's rice bowl." , because it saves trouble, money and time."

Compared with Shanghai, where rice bowls are popular, it can be said that until the 1990s, everyone was not busy enough to eat rice bowls. When my family goes to work, they carry two aluminum lunch boxes (later plastic ones) in their bags. They either bring their own "lunch boxes" or arrange them in the canteen. Even the lunch boxes on the roadside are served in a leisurely manner. There are no restaurants that sell lunch boxes. Food! No wonder I don't recognize him.

▲ In the 1990s, in front of Shanghai restaurants, there was an advertisement for rice bowl with rice bowl for five yuan per customer.

As for the "Beef Rice Bowl" served by the Minamihara team members, there is nothing mysterious about it. Yoshinoya The so-called " Gyudon " .When I grew up, not only did I get what I wanted, but I almost felt sick to my stomach after eating it. In the end, we also reached the age where we can eat rice every meal.

When I was watching TV at that time, I was more interested in unfamiliar foods, but less likely to resonate with foreign food customs.

The only exception is probably " Crayon Shin-chan " - because we didn't like to eat green peppers when we were children! !

Shinnosuke’s dislike of green peppers can be said to be persistent and unwavering, and has become a kind of soul torture with obsession.

It is said that this point also represents the aspirations of many Japanese viewers. Many people have been friends with Qingjiao since they were young, and they can't avoid it until they grow up.

There are different opinions on the reasons. Some people say that Japanese green peppers are bitter but not spicy, and the variety tastes bad; some say that Japanese people do not know how to eat them and only know how to boil them whole, which is naturally difficult to swallow; others say that green peppers are commonly found in Japanese kindergartens and elementary schools. , but in order to ensure that nutrients are not lost, they are also boiled directly, leaving a deep shadow on Neon Jin’s childhood...

Regardless of the reason, there seem to be many people like Xiaoxin who swear not to eat green peppers.

However, it is said that the Japanese do not hate at least one green pepper dish - shredded pork with green pepper!

Shredded pork with green pepper is indeed a Chinese dish that is very popular among Japanese. After all, there are not many traditional stir-fry dishes in Japan, and the common people's meat-eating custom started only after the Meiji Restoration. This kind of seasoning has an outstanding taste, and it can turn the decay of green pepper into a magical Chinese dish. It is difficult to resist.

However, the popular shredded pork with green pepper in Japan today has also been modified. Not only does it add shredded bamboo shoots, but it also thickens it, sometimes making it look like a paste. This is something that Mr. Tang Lusun, who has been using shredded green pepper pork to test the cook's cooking since he was a child, knows that he is afraid of opening the coffin board and scolding: "Dip the candied haws in braised shrimp and eat it for two hundred and eighty yuan."

▲ Tomohiro Yamashita Stir-fried shredded green pepper pork I always love to add starch

Naturally, Japanese people’s love for green peppers has also seeped into animation together with their hatred -

In "Cowboy Bebop", like Chu Liuxiang, he lives on a (flying) ship and always spends his money after taking action. Spike, who was naked, was woken up by his partner's green pepper and shredded pork rice bowl when he appeared on the stage.

Chu Xiangshuai ran out of money, but Song Tian'er still gave him a meal of squab, white chicken, steamed fish and cured meat, so Spike could only eat the green pepper and pork rice bowl without shredded pork, only green peppers and bamboo shoots.

▲ "You can call me like this when you have no money!"

However, when I saw this scene, I had already passed the time when I was dreaming in front of the TV. Instead, I felt the kindness of meeting old friends in a foreign land, and the addition of strange knowledge. surprise.

As adults, childhood fantasies have been fulfilled one by one. However, no matter how satisfying the taste is at this moment, it seems that it is not as delicious as the food we imagined when we were unable to eat it when we were children. At that time, when it comes to legendary delicacies, we always regard them as the best we have ever tasted. You have to imagine what you are eating. Even though the real appearance of Lushan Mountain is so beautiful, it cannot be as good as the taste you expect.

However, we are not willing to let our fantasies end in disappointment, and we always have to find some fun for ourselves. So we followed the taste of curiosity back then and explored all the way. Our appetite for knowledge was far stronger than our appetite. We still felt that we still had appetite and could swallow more.

From this perspective, the happiness of childhood is not far away from us.

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