Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Western Foods Are Popular In Japan?
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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No, the translation is fine and in fact correct for an American audience. It's extremely similar to the much more common in America Salisbury steak, and it's not exactly the same as a European Hamburg steak either, being a part of 洋食 long enough that it's been entirely adapted for Japanese palates. Just "Hamburg steak" itself would be inaccurate in your sense; if accuracy is really desired you can write "Japanese-style Hamburg steak" (just as in certain cases it can be appropriate to write "Japanese-style pasta/Italian" but in the vast majority of cases Salisbury steak is as accurate as Hamburg steak. It's not a matter of being "dumb" to say Salisbury steak in a translation any more than it is to say "spaghetti with meat sauce" (as done in the USA) instead of "spaghetti bolognese" in other English speaking countries. Next you're going to tell me that the Japanese language is stupid when it translates horseradish as 西洋山葵 (literally "Western wasabi") or even just 山葵 instead of ホースラディッシュ. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4534 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Is there any substantial difference between the Mega Mac in Japan and the Double Big Mac we have in Canada? I seem to recall that they also had the Double Big Mac in Britain in the late 1990s actually marketed as the "Mega Mac". |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2246 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Well, the problem with using Salisbury Steak and why despite it maybe being the closest thing to the Japanese dish is that Salisbury Steak is quite regionally specific to the US. I'm not sure people in the UK or perhaps AUS would know what a salisbury steak is, whereas pretty much any english speaker will get a pretty close idea of what it is from "hamburg(er) steak" even if that's technically less true to the actual ingredients. Honestly once you start getting picky about the specifics of the dish you run into trouble even with the accuracy of salisbury steak: in the us it's traditionally with a brown gravy/sauce and served with potatoes, while in Japan it's normally with a demiglaze sauce and served with corn. It's a slightly different dish no matter how you splice it, so my stance is go with the closest equivalent which is most widely understood by english speakers OR don't attempt to translate it at all. A perfect example is Japan's "signature" pasta dish, Spaghetti Napolitan. It's a purely Japanese invention... http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/01/20/food/spaghetti-napolitan-japans-unique-take-pasta/#.V4P1Rbh97AQ |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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Yeah, the Mega Mac doesn't appear to be Japan only. I was planning on commenting on it myself. Per Wikipedia Available in Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia (during promotional periods only), Turkey, Singapore, Pakistan, South Korea, and Thailand. Discontinued in New Zealand. Plus you could just get extra meat if you wanted it elsewhere, for an extra charge of course. |
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Darthtabby
Posts: 21 |
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I kind of wish the article had gone into more detail about Japan's KFC Christmas tradition. My understanding is that it got its start when an expat couldn't find Turkey and decided to settle for KFC instead. That gave a manager the idea of starting a Christmas promotion aimed at foreigners. Somewhere along the line, it became a Christmas tradition for the Japanese themselves (who apparently believe Americans do it
 ). Supposedly Christmas accounts for something like a quarter of KFC's yearly sales in Japan. The restaurants get so busy people make reservations in advance and even the corporate executives go to the front lines to help out!
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4618 |
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The bit about KFC as a Christmas tradition, and the significantly better Denny's helps explain a couple of questions I've had recently. I saw fried chicken as a "must have" for Christmas come up recently, and while confused, I mostly chalked it up to Christmas being pretty different in Japan compared to America. I've seen lots of anime involving meals or snacks at what amounts to Denny's and found it strange since the restaurant seems to be joke material in America.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Heavens, there is nothing imparfait about that. Save perhaps for those star decorations—are they some sort of boiled confectionery items?
Correct! At the time I recall being struck with awe that such a sandwich could exist. Presumably each patty is somewhat thin to compensate for their quantity. |
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ly000001
 Posts: 76 |
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If I understood the TV show I watched in Japan correctly in 2006, KFC was doing poorly during its first few years in Japan. However, someone came up with the idea of promoting it to the Japanese as a food that Americans traditionally ate at Christmas time, and that popularized it since the Japanese were still keen at the time on emulating American pop culture. In other words, they lied their way to success 
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Lenks
Posts: 139 |
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I went to Japan a few years ago; stayed in Omagari. I went to the mall with my friends, and we decided on ramen. As we were waiting for our table, I looled up, and saw a Big Boy. Never in a million years did I think I'd see one there.
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3970 |
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I counted about 13 crepe stands on Harajuku's Takeshita Street when I was there last year! One thing that I found interesting about Denny's in Japan is that it's owned by the company Seven & I Holdings, the same company that owns 7-Eleven in both the Japan and the US. |
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nargun
Posts: 930 |
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I certainly don't [australian]. By looks and description -- pan-fried mincemeat-with-stuff -- I'd call it a "rissole"... which is apparently [checks] only a common dish/name in australia, so that's no good. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Absolutely. That is why I said "for an American audience," and also offered the spaghetti with meat sauce example. The best translation for an audience with one dialect of English is absolutely not necessarily the best for a different audience. An American audience would not likely know spaghetti Bolognese. There's often no correct translation independent of the audience. Many anime translations are primarily for a North American audience, which does create some challenges. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2417 |
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Samuelp already beat me to pointing it out that it isn't really the same dish as salisbury steak either so I don't really have much to add on that. It seems like you know at least some Japanese so I'm not sure how you missed this little tid bit... kanji have meanings. If you read 西洋山葵 and don't really know what it is, you will still have an idea. If you read ホースラディッシュ and don't know what it is, you're out of luck. So no, I'm not going to tell you that using kanji for something foreign is stupid. Funny you should mention that though because that is also one of the reasons hamburg steak is a better translation. As Samuelp also pointed out, even if you didn't know exactly what it was, you could get the gist of it from the hamburg[er] part. If you don't know what a salisbury steak is, the name alone isn't going to help you. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4630 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Let's not forget Asobi Ni Iku (Cat Planet Cuties) and their all encompassing love of A&W. Although I think that might be an Okinawan thing, possibly influenced by the U.S. military bases. IIRC, most of the time, the person eating the A&W was the stereotypical busty blonde female CIA agent- talking on the phone- chomping on a Burger and downing a root beer.
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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One thing I've always been quite interested in learning is how cuisine from one place gets adapted somewhere else. The taco al pastor is one example, a result of Arabs immigrating to Mexico and talking their vertical shawarma spits with them.
I don't know how the situation is in Thailand, but when I last went some time ago, McDonald's was also considered a hangout spot by teenagets and young adults, as the cool place to be (and partially as an act of rebellion against their parents, many of whom didn't like the presence of McDonald's--not because of the quality of their food or their history or anything, but because it was foreign). Recently, Taco Bell had popped up in large urban areas of Thailand too to great success. If Eiichiro Oda getting super-excited over a Taco Bell near Shueisha is any indication (buying fifty tacos, I believe, to share with his assistants and editors), I'm guessing Tex-Mex is now catching on in Asia. Anyone know the situation with Starbucks in Japan? In Thailand, based on reports from people I know there, Starbucks is a distant third in coffee behind 7-Eleven and Mr. Donut. Starbucks's pricing is out of a normal person's budget there, and it mainly serves American tourists from what they tell me.
And, with a different show, their subsequent crushing and demoralization! 
There is a character in One Piece (Vergo) whose favorite food is "hamburger," though it has no bun, he eats it with a fork and knife, and for some reason, he prefers to eat it for breakfast. Every translation I've seen, however, official and otherwise, calls it a hamburger. I've seen bunless hamburgers served in the United States, but they are always referred to as a "hamburger steak." Considering hamburgers with buns are so ubiquitous in the United States, I think that's the standard term when it lacks one.
At least where I live, sushi joints are everywhere (and oddly, run mostly by Koreans). Ramen, however, is far less common. I take it it's because a lot of people think they're just taking dried noodles in styrofoam cups and adding hot water to them. Carl's Jr./Hardee's has had successful teriyaki burgers added to the menu though. There is a teriyaki hamburger, a teriyaki chicken burger, and at one point a teriyaki turkey burger. That being said, these sandwiches are a bit different in that they have slices of pineapple within them. For some reason, even though Jack in the Box has a teriyaki chicken bowl as a menu item, I've never seen their teriyaki sauce used in anything else they make. Maybe McDonald's here will eventually have them...or maybe they did but they didn't sell. I've been seeing a rise in local teriyaki chicken chains though. For the longest time, it was just Yoshinoy. But now, I'm seeing Flame Broilers, Waba Grills, and more recently Yaki's popping up everywhere. They're restricted to the American southwest for now, but they're now so easy to find in this region that they are practically a new type of fast food to rival fried chicken and pizza.
Perhaps these restaurants would get struck with complaints of false advertising when the food they receive don't look exactly like the ideal-looking models. Then again, they already do that in commercials and on those menus that are rows of flat-screen TVs. Maybe it costs too much.
The regular Big Mac already has two patties. Does the Double Big Mac have four?
Well, Denny's is open 24 hours, so you got that if you're wandering somewhere at 2 AM and everywhere else is closed. Or you work a graveyard shift. This was a big deal when I was in Santa Cruz, CA, as most restaurants closed at 9 PM, even the drive-thrus. Only two restaurants were open 24 hours, and the other one was the Santa Cruz Diner, whose food WAS good, a lot better than Denny's, but was a great deal more expensive. |
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