kanpyo? more like... kanpNO more left because people aren't eating it and no one wants to make it but whose job is it to make it and eat it???

As Japan ages, its old traditional foods are starting to go out of fashion with Japanese youngsters. The ones who are here to save Japan’s traditions are foreigners. The article talks about on the foreign students who study at Tokyo College of Sushi and Washoku, the only culinary school in Japan that teaches only Japanese cuisine. More than half the students at the school are from abroad. The article seems to have a positive view on these students, since they promote Japanese cuisine in their home countries and will be helpful for tourism.

Also, I think this quote is funny: “‘He really loved sushi. You could even call him a sushi nerd,’ Sushiko head Mamoru Sugiyama said [about his Singaporean student].”

The article ends with a lament that some of Japan’s oldest foods that are difficult to make have been losing popularity. One such food is kanpyo, strips of dried gourd often used in sushi. Its production has dropped from 5000 tons to 260 tons since 1978. It is labor intensive to make, and popularity is dwindling. Now, kanpyo producers are looking to foreign countries to rally popularity for their food products.

It’s very well known that Japan is a small country with limited resources and an aging population, but I am not sure if it is up to foreigners to keep Japan’s culture alive. It seems a bit hypocritical for Japan to want foreigners to pick up the slack of its own population in terms of eating the traditional Japanese food that few people want to eat, since most of the articles we have read so far are about Japan’s reluctance to let foreigners live in Japan and partake in the culture while living there. Even this article states that the foreign chefs who come to Japan to learn how to make Japanese cuisine must return home after five years. Another section of the article states that, “Despite becoming one of the world's largest export economies, Japan has always struggled to find a market overseas for its lesser-known foods. But cultivating foreign interest is critical as the domestic market shrinks.”

Japan doesn’t want these foreigners to stay in their country, but they want the people living in other countries to keep Japan’s culture and traditional foods alive. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it’s not a foreign country’s fault that Japanese youths don’t want to eat kanpyo!