Japanese Athletes Train Their Taste Buds at Pre-Olympics ‘Food Camp’

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  06.27.08 | 10:07 AM ET

imageThe Games are all about cultures coming together, but unity’s hard to come by when it comes to food. Especially when you’re from Michelin-starred Japan, home to some of the choosiest eaters in the world. To prepare for three weeks of food in Beijing, Japanese Olympians are attending food training programs to get used to eating Chinese staples like cold spring rolls, fried catfish and noodles—and not with chopsticks but with the plastic cutlery that will be available at the Olympic village, Reuters reports.

So far, Peking duck seems to be a hit, but other dishes haven’t fared so well. Weight lifter Hiromi Miyake complained of a lack of taste, while her father and coach Yoshiyuki said: “We’ll have to pack some soy sauce and chopsticks when we go to Beijing!”

Photo by thoughtforfood via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Food, Asia, China, Japan, News and Briefs

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


2 Comments for Japanese Athletes Train Their Taste Buds at Pre-Olympics ‘Food Camp’

elizabeth kiderlen 06.29.08 | 8:17 AM ET

What a rediculous and inflammatory statement: “We’ll have to pack some soy sauce and chopsticks when we go to Beijing!” Aren’t relations between China and Japan strained enough without this sort of non-news making it into print?

tyler 07.01.08 | 2:53 AM ET

“We’ll have to pack some soy sauce and chopsticks when we go to Beijing!”

Typical xenophobic statement that unfortunately is too prevalent in Japan.  Because, yes, China certainly has no chopsticks.

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