Good A Comparison Of The Japanese Restaurants In Japan AND Vancouver, Canada Essay Example

A comparison of the Japanese restaurants in Japan and Vancouver, Canada

Introduction
Japanese restaurants dish up Japanese cuisine that founded on combining steamed rice (which is Japan’s staple food) with one or moreokazu or side dishes. Such a dish may go with an accompaniment such asmiso soup and tsukemono (pickles).
Presentation of the steamed rice is done in a small bowl (called chawan), and eachcourse element placed on its small plate (called sara) or bowl (called hachi) for every individual portion.This method of presentationdiffers with the Western dinners at home, in which every person picks helpings from the big dishes of food presented at the center of the dining table.

Similarities and differences

Because of the strict Japanese cultures that forbid differently flavoured foods from touching, there is a common feature of the Japanese restaurants in Japan and the Canadian city of Vancouver. The Japanese restaurants in the two spatially distant locations are both keen on hiring very skilled Japanese chefs to prepare their meals. In the restaurants located in Japan, it is very rare to find chefs who oversee cooking in the restaurants being aged less than 55. The restaurant owners in Japan are keen to ensure that the food offered is of the highest quality, and they, therefore, view experience as the key asset to have in the kitchen. The manner in which experience is highly revered in Japan’s restaurants is such that the chefs themselves have not worked in a setting other than the kitchen in all of their lives.
In the Japanese restaurants in the Canadian city of Vancouver, the chefs involved in the preparation of the meals are not as old and as experienced as those in Japan’s restaurants. One Japanese restaurant in the city has as its head chef a 39-year-old Asian-American male. The reason for the difference between the ages of the chef in the two regions touches on the clientele being served.The wider population of Canada is not that knowledgeable about Japanese culture and heritage to the point where they can identify something done incorrectly in the preparation of their meals. There are Japanese expatriates living in Vancouver, but these tend to visit the most high-end of the Japanese restaurants in the city. In these restaurants the chefs employed are as skilled and experienced as those in Japan’s restaurants.
One difference between the operations of the Japanese restaurants in Japan and Vancouver deals with the ingredients used in the preparation of the Japanese cuisine sold in the respective restaurants. In Japan, the restaurants use genuine ingredients. For instance, Japan’s restaurants use genuine Wasabi paste in their meals. The Wasabi paste is also called Japanese horseradish and is derived from plants that grow along stream beds in Japan’s mountain river valleys. Because of the ease of finding this ingredient in Japan, all the restaurants in the country use it in their meals whenever needed.
In the Japanese restaurants located in Vancouver, however, the use of genuine Wasabi paste is rare. This is because it is expensive and time-consuming to import genuine Wasabi paste from Japan. Those restaurants that are successful in importing it in turn transfer the costs incurred in the importation directly to the customers, translating into very high prices for foods made with the genuine Wasabi. Japanese restaurants in Vancouver present foods that contain 50% or more of genuine Wasabi as having been made using genuine Wasabi. The restaurants present those foods made with less than 50% genuine Wasabias having genuine and authentic Wasabi included.
The same also applies to the fish used in the preparation of various Japanese dishes. In one unifying instance in the operations in the restaurants located in the two places, the use of fish in Japanese cuisine between the two places is common. In Japan’s restaurants,for instance, sushi is prepared by using tuna, Japanese amberjack, snapper, salmon, and mackerel. The use of these many fish is encouraged by the fact that Japan is a country made up of several islands surrounded by the expansive Pacific Ocean. The proximity of most of the county to the coastline makes it cheap and easier for suppliers and fishermen to bring in their freshly caught fish into the restaurants.
The same also applies to Vancouver; the city being located on the western coastline of Canada makes it easily accessible to the fishing vessels that bring in fish from the Pacific Ocean. The ease of access to the coastline for restaurants in both Vancouver and Japan makes the restaurants equally capable of sourcing fresh fish for use in their meals.
One challenge facing restaurants in the two distant locations is the different work conditions. In the Canadian city of Vancouver, the Japanese restaurants borrow from their Western-themed restaurants that are normally served by waiters and waitresses. Several people regularly visit the restaurants, but since there is an equally huge number of people working in the restaurants there is no shortage of personnel to deliver meals to the customers. In Japan, however, most restaurant owners face challenges when it comes to staffing their restaurants, and, as a result,many have implemented the ingeniously designed conveyor belt sushi. The conveyor belt sushi eliminates the need to have waiters and waitresses picking food from the kitchen window and delivering them to the customers on the tables
The conveyor belt used in the operation is made up of a narrow, thin conveyor made tofit within the tight boundaries of a sushi restaurant. A standard conveyor used in such an operation employs a particularly designed plastic crescent-shaped top chain. The shape of the chain makes it possible for the belt to make tight turns around small sushi restaurants. The plates onto which the sushi and other foods are placed are put on top of the belt, where they go around the restaurant waiting to be picked up by a customer.
The design of the conveyor belts means that customers have to sit facing the conveyor belt. This makes it an unfeasible implementation for use with huge groups of people. Japanese restaurants in the city of Vancouver in Canada face no such problems because they serve their customers using normal restaurant tables.

Conclusion

For the Japanese restaurants in Japan and Vancouver, the differences outweigh the similarities. The restaurants in both locations use the same kinds of fish for the Japanese meals. Japanese restaurants in Canada substitute Wasabi paste with horseradish while Japan’s restaurants do not. The only similarity is that Japan’s and Vancouver’s restaurants use the same fish for their Japanese cuisine.

References

Corson, T. (2009). The Story of Sushi. HarperCollins.
Gollom, M. (2014, 4 25). Temporary foreign worker moratorium: 'We will see some restaurants close'. CBS News, pp. 1-3.
Matsumoto, H. (2007). The Internationalization of Sushi. Noda: Kikkoman.
Satterwhite, R. (2006). Tokyo. Marshall Cavendish.