From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Smell of Food (Was: What do most of Japanese ...)
Date: 25 Aug 92 16:25:00 GMT
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

yoichi@milton.u.washington.edu (Yoichi Ii) writes:

>In article <2470@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:
>>Miso-shiru smells? Hmmmm, news to me. Maybe my nose got burned out as
>>a kid eating all the garlic my mom put in the salads :-) 
>>
>>I can smell natto a bit (eat it every morning) and the pickels, dried
>>fishes, etc. but IMHO they don't compare to the smell of food from 
>>the countries I mentioned. 

>Perhaps by "smell" you mean something like a great aromatic quality,
>something that fills up a whole room or a house.  Natto has a smell 
>(a really strong, bad one IMO) but you can't smell it across a room.

Interesting. I know that natto has a (slight) smell but I like it.

>Some nabe-style dish (eg. sukiyaki) has this aromatic quality, but I
>guess it's not a every-day dish.  The only "daily" one I can think of
>is miso-shiru.  You don't think miso-shiru smells? Maybe you're becoming
>too accustomed to Japanese food :-).

The point is shifting here ever so slightly. I was saying that
Japanese food doesn't smell *as much as* food in some other
countries (confirmed in a mini-survey of 15 Japanese nationals today). 

But sure, miso-shiru smells, so does daikon, so do lots of things.
Not much, but they smell OK to me.

>>Maybe I'm missing something but how many times have you seen
>>somebody cooking Japanese food lean over, take a sniff, and say,
>>"Ahhhhh... just right!"

>Again, miso-shiru is the first thing that comes to my mind. In the
>old days, the smell of miso-shiru in the morning was something akin 
>to that of brewing coffee. Now-a-days you see such scenes only in a 
>miso-shiru commercials ("Okaa-saaan...! Maru-maru miso").

Ahhh, I see. Well, actually I didn't as I never watch TV :-)

>>... Hmmm, when I try and think of them I see that I don't have many
>>different words for good smells, just a list of things that smell good
>>to me: (some) people, cooking, newly cut grass, burning leaves, cinammon, 
>>coffee, new books (kinda weird, but I like the smell of the ink), the
>>sea, flowers of all kinds ("Don't forget to smell the roses"), brandy,
>>rum, cognac, wine, and so on...

> o dried hay, new tatami mats
> o smell after a shower (as in rain)  What is that smell anyway?
> o forest
> o new shoes 
> o taiyaki (stuffed pastry that's shaped like a fish :-)
> o tea

>As the Helen Keller's writing (posted by Chay, Terrence Y.) suggests, smell
>evokes strong emotion.  Does anyone know of famous haiku or tanka which 
>includes olfactory elements?  I can think of only those with elements of 
>sights, sounds, and touch. But then I know very few haiku's.

Even without the haiku's I understand what you're saying (I think):
Japanse food smells (maybe not as much as the food in some other
countries, but it smells), and some things are thought to smell nice. 

Maybe it's just that what smells good in one place, doesn't smell
good in another? 

Can anybody from Korea, Land of Kimchee, tell us if people there
think it smells good? 

Dave

--
Dave McLane 
JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087