A2 · Elementary
9 min
food culturejapancultural heritageregional identity
Every Sacred Island Has Its Cake
Mil doscientos años y un pastel de arce
Fire destroys the 1,200-year-old Reikado Hall at the Daishō-in temple complex on the island of Itsukushima in Hiroshima Prefecture. Fletcher and Octavio use the loss as a doorway into something bigger: the deep, almost spiritual connection between place, identity, and food in Japan.
Un incendio destruye completamente el Salón Reikado del templo Daishō-in en Itsukushima, Japón, un edificio de 1.200 años de antigüedad. Fletcher y Octavio usan esta pérdida como punto de partida para explorar algo más amplio: la conexión profunda entre el lugar, la identidad y la comida en Japón.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| famoso | famous | Miyajima es una isla muy famosa en Japón. |
| saber | to know / to taste | Este pastel sabe bien. Sé que es de Miyajima. |
| dulce | sweet | Los pasteles son muy dulces. |
| capa | layer | El okonomiyaki de Hiroshima tiene muchas capas. |
| relleno | filling | El pastel tiene un relleno de pasta de judías. |
| sencillo | simple | La comida sencilla es muy buena. |
A building burned down in Japan yesterday that was twelve hundred years old.
Not a famous palace, not a castle on a postcard.
A Buddhist hall on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea called Itsukushima.
And it's completely gone.
Sí, conozco Itsukushima.
Yes, I know Itsukushima.
Es una isla muy famosa.
It's a very famous island.
Hay un torii en el agua.
There's a torii gate in the water.
Es muy bonito.
It's very beautiful.
Right, the floating gate.
It's one of those images that somehow survives every overexposed travel magazine and still manages to stop you.
UNESCO World Heritage site, the whole thing.
And now one of the oldest structures in that complex is ash.
Es una isla especial.
It's a special island.
No hay coches.
There are no cars.
No hay mucho ruido.
There's not much noise.
Hay ciervos en la calle.
There are deer in the street.
Deer in the street, yes.
And also, famously, a very particular kind of cake.
Which is where I want to start, actually, because this episode is supposed to be about food, and I think there's a real thread here.
¡Los momiji manjū!
The momiji manju!
Sí, claro.
Yes, of course.
Son pasteles pequeños.
They're little cakes.
Tienen forma de hoja.
They're shaped like leaves.
Son muy dulces.
They're very sweet.
Momiji, maple leaf.
The island has this extraordinary autumn foliage, and at some point, probably in the early twentieth century, someone decided the shape of the maple leaf needed to become a food.
And now every single visitor leaves with a box of them.
Son pequeños.
They're small.
Tienen relleno de pasta de judías.
They have a filling of bean paste.
A veces tienen chocolate.
Sometimes they have chocolate.
O queso.
Or cheese.
Cheese momiji manju.
I have questions.
But here's what strikes me about this: every sacred or significant place in Japan seems to have exactly one food that belongs to it.
Not just associated with it.
Belongs to it.
You can't separate the place from the thing you eat there.
Sí, en Japón la comida es muy local.
Yes, in Japan food is very local.
Cada ciudad tiene su plato especial.
Each city has its special dish.
Es muy importante para la gente.
It's very important to the people.
And Itsukushima is in Hiroshima Prefecture, which opens up the much bigger conversation.
Because Hiroshima has arguably the most passionate, most contested food identity in Japan.
El okonomiyaki de Hiroshima.
The okonomiyaki of Hiroshima.
Sí.
Yes.
Es diferente.
It's different.
No es como el de Osaka.
It's not like the one from Osaka.
Walk me through that.
Because I've eaten okonomiyaki in both cities and I honestly couldn't have explained the difference to anyone who asked.
En Osaka todo está mezclado.
In Osaka everything is mixed together.
La masa, las verduras, todo junto.
The batter, the vegetables, everything together.
En Hiroshima todo está en capas.
In Hiroshima everything is in layers.
Primero la masa, luego los fideos, luego el huevo.
First the batter, then the noodles, then the egg.
Es diferente.
It's different.
Layers versus mixed.
And the noodles are specific to Hiroshima's version, which actually dates the dish to the postwar period, because Hiroshima was rebuilding from nothing after 1945 and flour and noodles were some of the cheapest, most available things.
The food you eat in Hiroshima carries that history in its structure.
Sí, es comida de la calle.
Yes, it's street food.
Comida sencilla.
Simple food.
Pero la gente de Hiroshima dice: es mejor.
But the people of Hiroshima say: it's better.
Es la mejor.
It's the best.
And Osaka disagrees loudly.
I once made the mistake of mentioning to a chef in Dotonbori that I preferred the Hiroshima style, and the look I got would have curdled milk.
En Japón no dices eso.
In Japan you don't say that.
Es como en España.
It's like in Spain.
No dices que la tortilla de Madrid es mejor que la de Bilbao.
You don't say that the tortilla from Madrid is better than the one from Bilbao.
There it is.
Every country has this.
The food pride that isn't just pride, it's identity, it's almost political.
You're not just defending a recipe, you're defending where you come from.
En Japón hay una palabra: kodawari.
In Japan there's a word: kodawari.
Es difícil de traducir.
It's hard to translate.
Significa...
It means...
una obsesión buena.
a good obsession.
Una obsesión por la calidad.
An obsession with quality.
Kodawari.
That is such a useful concept.
Because what it describes is the Japanese chef who has been making the same bowl of ramen for thirty years, the same broth, the same noodle thickness, the same timing, not because he's stuck but because he's decided this is what he does and he will do it perfectly.
Sí, y en Japón hay un concepto similar para los lugares.
Yes, and in Japan there's a similar concept for places.
Hay 'meibutsu'.
There's 'meibutsu'.
Es el producto famoso de un lugar.
It's the famous product of a place.
El pastel de arce es el meibutsu de Miyajima.
The maple cake is the meibutsu of Miyajima.
Meibutsu.
Famous thing.
And every train station in Japan has a display of the local meibutsu from whatever region you're passing through.
I spent two weeks riding the Shinkansen once and I ate my way across the country through those station displays.
It's a whole parallel food geography.
En España también hay esto.
In Spain there's this too.
Cada ciudad tiene su dulce, su queso, su jamón.
Every city has its sweet, its cheese, its ham.
Pero en Japón es más...
But in Japan it's more...
formal.
formal.
Es más serio.
It's more serious.
More institutionalized, maybe.
Japan has this government-endorsed ranking system for regional foods.
There's even a whole B-kyū gurume culture, basically celebrating everyday, unglamorous regional dishes.
A national competition.
The winner gets genuine fame.
¿Una competición para la mejor comida sencilla?
A competition for the best simple food?
Me parece bien.
I think that's great.
La comida sencilla es la mejor comida.
Simple food is the best food.
Coming from the man who once spent twenty minutes explaining to me why the only correct olive oil for a salmorejo is from Jaén, I find that interesting.
Eso es diferente.
That's different.
El aceite de Jaén es un hecho.
The oil from Jaén is a fact.
No es una opinión.
It's not an opinion.
Back to Itsukushima for a second.
Because what strikes me about the fire, beyond the obvious cultural loss, is what happens to the food around a place when the place itself is damaged.
The temple draws pilgrims, pilgrims buy momiji manju, vendors build their lives around the flow of visitors.
It's all connected.
Sí.
Yes.
Los turistas van a Miyajima por el torii y el templo.
Tourists go to Miyajima for the torii and the temple.
Pero comen el pastel.
But they eat the cake.
La comida es parte del viaje.
The food is part of the journey.
And Itsukushima has another food angle that most people don't know.
The island is surrounded by oyster farms.
The Seto Inland Sea produces something like sixty percent of Japan's oysters, and Hiroshima Prefecture is the heart of that.
The island of sacred gates and floating shrines is also sitting in the middle of one of the great shellfish waters of the world.
Las ostras de Hiroshima son muy buenas.
The oysters from Hiroshima are very good.
Son grandes.
They're big.
Son cremosas.
They're creamy.
Son diferentes de las ostras de Europa.
They're different from European oysters.
There's something almost poetic about that.
One of the most devastated cities of the twentieth century, rebuilt around a food culture of extraordinary depth and specificity.
The okonomiyaki that grew out of postwar scarcity.
The oysters that have been farmed in those waters for five hundred years.
Food as evidence that a place survived.
Sí.
Yes.
La comida dice: estamos aquí.
The food says: we are here.
Seguimos aquí.
We are still here.
Es importante.
It's important.
When I was in Hiroshima years ago, I went to a restaurant that had been there since 1950.
Five years after the bomb.
The owner's grandmother had opened it.
The menu was handwritten and hadn't changed much.
I ate okonomiyaki and felt the weight of that completely.
Eso es lo que hace la comida.
That's what food does.
Te conecta con el pasado.
It connects you to the past.
Más que un museo, más que un libro.
More than a museum, more than a book.
And now I'm thinking about the Reikado Hall.
Twelve hundred years old, gone in one night.
That's irreplaceable in any direct sense.
But the cakes shaped like maple leaves, the oyster beds, the layered pancake with noodles, those keep going.
There's a continuity in the food that the fire can't touch.
Pero el templo es importante también.
But the temple is important too.
El templo y el pastel están juntos.
The temple and the cake are together.
Son los dos parte del mismo lugar.
They're both part of the same place.
You're right, it's not either/or.
The physical place and the food are in a relationship.
Neither is complete without the other.
That's probably what makes the loss of the hall feel so specific, even to people who've never been there.
Oye, quiero decir una cosa.
Hey, I want to say something.
Usaste la palabra 'saber' antes.
You used the word 'feel' earlier.
'Sentí el peso de eso.' En español también usamos 'saber' para dos cosas diferentes.
'I felt the weight of that.' In Spanish we also use 'saber' for two different things.
Wait, saber.
I know that verb.
It means to know, right?
As in, yo sé, tú sabes.
Sí.
Yes.
'Saber' es conocer algo.
'Saber' means to know something.
Pero también es el sabor.
But it's also flavor.
'Sabe bien' significa 'tiene buen sabor'.
'Sabe bien' means 'it tastes good'.
Es el mismo verbo.
It's the same verb.
The same verb covers knowing and tasting.
That's not an accident, is it.
In English we have 'savour' and 'savant' from the same Latin root.
There's this old idea that to truly taste something, you have to know it.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Esta sopa sabe a mar.' Pero también puedes decir 'sé lo que es el mar.' Los dos usos son naturales.
'This soup tastes of the sea.' But you can also say 'I know what the sea is.' Both uses are natural.
So when you eat those momiji manju on Miyajima, properly, with some knowledge of where you are, the verb that covers both knowing and tasting is doing double duty.
You're not just eating a cake.
You're eating a place you know.
Sí.
Yes.
Y ahora el templo no está.
And now the temple is gone.
Pero el sabor sigue.
But the flavor remains.
El pastel sigue.
The cake remains.
'Sabe a Miyajima.' Siempre.
'It tastes of Miyajima.' Always.