Japanese with anime voice: episode44
Hello, I’m Sachi.
May 2, today is 世界まぐろ (Sekai Maguro) Day! In international notation, it is called World Tuna Day. Tuna is a fish that is in high demand worldwide, but its population is small, so they are advocating the protection of tuna ecology by keeping the catch at a reasonable level.
In Japanese, the kanji for tuna is written 魚偏 (sakana hen) and 有る (aru). 有る (aru) means there is of there is and there isn’t. Tuna breathe through their gills with their mouths open and take in oxygen from the water, so it is said that they are constantly swimming through various currents to prevent suffocation and death. Therefore, it is said that the kanji character for 鮪 (maguro) came to mean “fish in various oceans.” This is an unimaginable way to write the kanji. This is the reason why I would not choose it even if this reason was in the choice question.
Tuna is delicious, isn’t it? Have you ever heard of シーチキン (seachicken)? It is a Japanese canned food. We thought “シーチキン (seachicken)” was an English word, but it is a Japanese word. I think the name “シーチキン (seachicken)” was chosen to express “chicken of the sea. Do you understand the feeling of this expression?
シーチキン (seachicken) is a very convenient canned food! It goes well with all kinds of vegetables, and of course it’s delicious just as it is. I’ve been addicted to eating it with penne for a while now. Just add some シーチキン (seachicken) to the boiled penne and season with salt and pepper. It’s so easy, so please give it a try.
I have been a picky eater for about 20 years. I could not eat any seafood, meat except chicken, I did not like mushrooms in general, and I did not like natto. So, I wouldn’t eat sushi or sashimi. I could only eat grilled fish. I often ate シーチキン (seachicken), though.
With such a picky eater, I often had opportunities to have home parties. At such occasions, it is impossible to cook unbalanced dishes just because I am a picky eater, isn’t it? So, I tried to be as unbalanced as possible and made dishes with seafood and other ingredients. One day, I decided to make a dish with tuna. I pan-fried some fresh tuna so that I could eat it myself. Then, for the first time, I looked at the cooked tuna and realized it was シーチキン (seachicken). Normally, everyone knows this. But I had not eaten sushi or sashimi for many years, and being a fool, I could not get it through my head that tuna and シーチキン (seachicken) were the same. It wasn’t until I tried grilling fresh tuna myself that it finally clicked. Tuna is シーチキン (seachicken). At that moment, many thoughts were running through my head, wondering why I could enjoy eating シーチキン (seachicken) but not sushi and sashimi. For a while after that, I spent a lot of time questioning my picky eater. But after 20 years of being a picky eater, I became stubborn. I stubbornly told myself that even if the tuna was シーチキン (seachicken), I could not eat sashimi because I was a picky eater. I continued to be a picky eater for several years after that. Well…I can only say that I was a fool. What do you mean by “continue to be picky eaters”? What do you mean by “tell yourself”?
Well, there was a time when that happened. That was a long time ago, and I am not a picky eater anymore. I eat sushi and sashimi, meat and mushrooms, and natto is healthy and delicious!
However. I still can’t eat crustaceans. Especially shrimp and crabs. I don’t like shellfish in general. I can’t eat shellfish at all. Every year, my partner and I stay at a hot spring ryokan in the summer. But the ryokan’s cuisine is basically seafood. The area where we go every year is rich in seafood. So, of course, the dinner served is seafood. So when we make a reservation, I always ask them to change the menu for one person because I am not fond of crustaceans. Even though seafood is the specialty of this ryokan.
Isn’t it strange that someone who doesn’t like seafood would stay at a ryokan that serves seafood? Even so, they are always very accommodating, and I am very grateful for that. By the way, I digress. When I was working part-time at McDonald’s in high school, I received an order for a chicken tatsuta without vegetables and meat. When the order came in, everyone there couldn’t believe their ears. What? Only bread? We thought.
