As open minded as I try to be, I am just not a fan of essays, or any writing at all, that use so much foreign vocabulary that it's hard to figure out what they're talking about. And that was pretty much the case with this piece. Practically every other word was in Japanese or Brazilian, and although it did add a strong sense of culture to the writing, it was largely overwhelming. Having to stop two or three times per sentence to unscramble those foreign words was a huge turnoff to me.
But getting past the major set backs, I thought Yamashita's writing style was very colorful and informative. She incorporated foods into the make up of entire culture's and showed how such foods can literally shape a peoples' way of life. I like how she pointed out that no recipe is completely original, that most everything has derived from another recipe, most likely from somewhere on the other side of the world. I also though it was interesting how attached people are to their homeland's food, which she exemplified in the Brazilian workers who were losing significant weight when they lived and worked in Japan.
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