I’m sure there are other people out there who are interested in knowing more. That’s going above and beyond what is already out there. She interviewed someone who has been serving coffee for more than 70 years here and went directly to the All Japan Coffee Association to talk to the spokespeople there about the history and culture of it. I like to use that one because I think that’s an example that people can relate to: “Oh, you went all the way to the Japanese NASA to find out about miso soup.” So that’s the kind of level that we’re talking about.Īnother example by the same writer is an article about the way coffee cups in Japan are served. Is it true that one of your writers went all the way to JAXA (The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) to find out why miso soup moves the way it does ? Do you have more stories like that? So, I think it’s the type of topics that are covered and also who is covering them. They have the language and cultural abilities to be able to tap into a lot of information that I haven’t seen elsewhere. The contributors on the website are all women or female-identifying who have had extensive lived experiences in Japan. I think we’re not afraid to go deep into very cultural topics. Whatever happens in terms of travel, we’re all going to still be eating.Ī post shared by Jessica | Japanese Food Guide can readers learn from Japanese Food Guide that they can’t learn anywhere else? What I was seeing were the trends from food content creators and how we’ve all kind of rallied around food during the pandemic. I felt there was a gap I could fill by telling very specific cultural stories and providing cultural information that is not always included on websites or in articles because it gets quite niche. I want to tell those things, but sometimes they don’t always appeal to everyone. But I felt that there were stories that I wanted to tell. I think that some websites don’t want to get too culturally specific because it doesn’t appeal to a mass audience, especially internationally. I had more to say about the country and I knew there was much more of the story that wasn’t being told. We didn’t know when we were going to emerge out of this pandemic, but I knew that I desperately wanted to share more about Japan. I’d never really had anything that was focused solely on Japan only. Could you tell me about the inception of the Japanese Food Guide website? I feel like I’ll never, ever run out of material. You can go from one prefecture to the next and there’s something completely different. As a writer, it’s an infinitely fascinating place to live. I’ve never felt more at home in another country than I have in Japan. It was the one place on that trip that we felt we could actually live. And after that, we both agreed that we loved it and didn’t want to leave. He said he was fascinated with the culture. When we decided to take a round-the-world trip together, my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I were deciding on destinations and one of the places he said he wanted to go from the very beginning was Japan. Why did you come to Japan? What was it about the country that first caught your eye?Īctually, in the beginning, that wasn’t my decision (well, not one that I came to myself). At the same time, I’ve always been interested in writing. I was drawn to National Geographic and all of the books and magazines that my parents could pick up from yard sales. Brought up in the countryside of Victoria in Australia, I didn’t have many opportunities to travel when I was younger, but was always fascinated by it. Mount Fuji with snow and flower garden along the wooden bridge at Kawaguchiko in Japan (Source: Shutterstock) You’ve visited 50 countries, where does the drive to travel come from? And then, of course, there are so many stories to be told in Japan. One way that I thought I could contribute was by sharing stories of the people on the ground and what was going on from a volunteer perspective. I felt that it was important to communicate that disaster recovery is long-term. It stemmed out of a frustration that after a couple of weeks the international media had moved on to other things and knowing that there was still so much that was going on in Tohoku and so many stories that still needed to be told. The impetus was the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. How did you get started writing and blogging? It’s not just another website about the top ten ramen joints, it focuses on the deep cultural insights of food, covers trends in an enlightening way and gives a pedestal for female writers to shine. In the midst of the pandemic, she decided to start a third: Japanese Food Guide. Jessica Korteman is a well-seasoned writer in the travel community having run two successful blogs: Notes of Nomads with husband Hai and Travel Solo Anyway about traveling independently while married.
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