From: hank@westford.ccur.com (Hank Cohen)
Subject: Re: Fortune cookies, sushis, eggrolls etc.
Organization: Concurrent Nippon Corp. Tokyo  Japan.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 03:28:06 GMT

In article <19521@optima.cs.arizona.edu> bsou@cs.arizona.edu (Brandon S. Ou) writes:
>Hi guys,
>
>   I just thought of a very interesting question, at least to me...
>   Where in the world did FORTUNE COOKIES come from??????????
>   In all of my living life in Taiwan, HongKong, and Japan, I have
>   never seen anything like what we call the "fortune cookie" here!

Well they all must come from the factory I visited in San Francisco's
China Town when I was a kid. :^)
Seriously they could be Cantonese.  Most of what peope in the US think
of as Chinese food is Cantonese.  It's not unususal for a kind of
Chinese food familiar in one area to be completelyt unknown in
another.

>   I am also wondering why the people here define "sushi" as raw
>   fish?  I've had so many sushis in my life and never once did
>   I see any sign of fish in my sushis!  (well, maybe dried fish
>   or something like that)

This is an interesting question.  If you ate all that sushi and never
saw any fish what kind of sushi were you eating?  People who define
sushi as raw fish don't know what they are talking about but lots of
sushi has raw fish in it. Sushi refers to the rice used in making
various varities of finger foods.  All are made with a sweet and sour
rice usually flavored with vinigar and mirin but variations are
possible.  Raw fish all by itself is sashimi.  The kind of sushi that
most people think of with raw fish in it is nigiri sushi, a lozenge of
rice with a slice of fish or something on top.  Other types of sushi
that can have raw fish are maki sushi made with nori (a thin paperlike
seaweed), and chirashi sushi which is usually sushi rice in a bowl
with slices of fish and other stuff on top.  Chirashi sushi also
refers to a dish made with sushi rice and little bits of other stuff
all mixed in together, not just layered on top.  Then there is inari
sushi which is the only kind that never has raw fish.  Inari sushi is
a little pouch made from abura age, fried tofu, filled with sushi
rice.
>
>   Finally, where did the name Eggroll come from?  In Taiwan we call
>   them "Spring Roll", since we eat them during the spring on the
>   "Tomb Sweeping" day in April, and eventually it grew so popular
>   that people just eat them anytime.  But that still doesn't
>   explain where the EGG comes from!  :-)  What I know as an eggroll
>   is like a fruit rollup made of egg!

No Idea maybe the name came from the same place as Chop Suey.

Now I have a question.
In Japanese  nigiri is a kind of sushi but O nigiri is a "rice ball"
actually usually rather triangular.  Does anyone know of any other
examples where the use of O before a noun completely changes the
object described?  Usually the O is te ne go, language of politeness,
but I think that there are other cases besides this nigiri  case where
the meaning actually changes.
Thanks
-- 
Hank Cohen
Concurrent Nippon Corp.  	Shuwa yanagibashi Bldg. 5F
Yanagibashi 2-19-6 Taito-ku 	Tokyo 111, Japan
Denwa: 03-3864-5714 	Fax: 03-3864-0898
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan