Strangely enough, curry has followed me a good portion of my adult life. I had roommates from India who pretty much gave me a crash course in Indian cooking and, according to my friends, pretty much made me smell as if I lived in a curry restaurant.

Then, soon after I arrived in Japan, I was invited to an Indian cooking lesson. The couple from India taught the gathered group how to make authentic curry by first cooking down onions and then adding lots of other tasty stuff (my apologies for the technical terms) and eventually producing curry. I asked the man, who had done the bulk of the cooking, where the best curry restaurant in Japan was. He said there wasn’t one. He was from northern India and most of the curry restaurants in Japan served Southern, coconut milk based curry.

The Japanese have their own version of curry which is basically a curry flavored demi-glace served on rice and which is traditionally considered an abomination by those who come from countries famous for traditional curry (England, Scotland, large parts of Europe, for example). Yet, a few years ago, a Japanese TV show sent expatriates from curry producing countries such as India, Pakistan, Thailand etcetera around Japan to find the most authentic curry. They returned with curry omurice, which is rice covered with an omelet covered in Japanese curry sauce. (Omurice is short for “omelet rice”). The Japanese panel was underwhelmed and pointed out that purpose of the exercise was to find the best example authentic curry in Japan and the entire expatriate panel basically said there wasn’t one but they liked the (to them) unusual flavors of the curry omurice.

This is an experience that I’ve mostly got used to in my travels. Somethings are just wrong (eggs, tuna, mayonnaise, and shrimp on pizza, for example) and somethings miss the point (the Japanese referring to “hamburger steak” as a “hamburger) and somethings are adventurous at first then normal (using leftover Japanese curry to make curry udon, for example).

The rest of the world gets revenge when the Japanese go abroad. What has been done to sushi so upset the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture that in 2006 they started sending undercover agents to Japanese restaurants around the world to test the authenticity of the cuisine and give a rating. (What a great scam; how can I get a government job that sends me around the world eating things? I fear the authenticity of Kansas City Strips in steak restaurants. Please send me around the world to test and rate them.)

The bad press from the sushi police and, I suspect, the tastiness of the international variations caused the Ministry to backtrack and say the focus was on safe preparation and, dammit, we should be able to build a school to teach locals how to do it right, whilst considering local tastes.

Once again, how do I get that job?