Free Announcer Aika Kanda “Foods I Hate and Why I Hate Them

My Mother’s Likes and Dislikes” that I Discovered as an Adult

Since childhood, I was raised to be an adult without likes and dislikes. I never once felt that way about carrots, green peppers, and other typical foods that children dislike. This is because there was no room for it. Even if I did taste bitterness, I would just say, “That’s just the way it is. They didn’t offer me any alternatives, so I had no choice but to eat them. So, at that time, I had no idea that “I don’t like the taste, so I won’t eat it! I had no idea that I would not eat it because I did not like the taste.

However, when I became an adult and traveled with my mother, I found out that she herself had many likes and dislikes. She was not fond of mushrooms in general, garlic, kimchi, and other unique flavors, and several kinds of fish.

Thinking back, not once did I find any of those things in my mother’s cooking. I guess because if people knew that my parents also disliked some of these foods, it would be less convincing to say, “Don’t like them. So they have spent their time with those foods as if they were not in this world.

Every time we often had grilled yellowtail for dinner, my mother would pick up the hemelytized part with chopsticks and eat it, saying, “This part is nutritious and delicious! She would say, “This is where the nutrition is and it’s delicious! However, as soon as I became an adult, my mother left the yellowtail part out at the inn where we were traveling. She said, “Oh, that!　You liked it, didn’t you?” She replied, “Of course I didn’t like it!　This place is disgusting. I had to hold back and eat it on purpose so you wouldn’t stop eating it. Thanks to you, I can eat it now, can’t I?” He said. I was astonished that he went that far and that it was a part of the body that I should be able to eat.

And so now, the only things I think, “I don’t like this and don’t want to eat it,” are things I encountered as an adult. Examples are …… hokke, saba (mackerel), and conger eel.

I first learned about hokke at an izakaya I went to in college. My friend said, “Delicious! but for me, it was a fish I didn’t know. I was afraid to go home that day without eating even a bite, so I asked my mother, “Do you know that hokke was served today? I asked my mother, “Do you know a fish called hokke today? She replied, “Hockey?　My grandfather told me not to eat such a big fish because it was vulgar.

My mother grew up as a young lady. She had been taught that “big, inexpensive fish = vulgar,” and she did not allow me to eat it either. In fact, that is not true, but the impression is so strongly etched in my mind that I still don’t order it myself. If someone asks for it, I take a bite to get used to it.

I first learned about saba (mackerel) at a breakfast prepared for me after an overnight shift in Fukuoka, my first post at NHK. I asked the vendor who brought it to me, “What kind of fish is this? He replied, “I don’t know!　Mackerel! I was like, “? I was like, “I don’t know!