Japanese Cooking, The Traditions

Japan is known around the world as a producer of efficient, well-made automobiles, televisions, cameras, computers, and thousands of other useful machines and gadgets. Although Japanese technology is famous, other aspects of Japanese life may not be as well known to people in other parts of the world. Japan is also a country proud of its ancient cultural traditions. A distinctive style of cooking is one very important tradition that lives on in modern Japan.Like the cuisine of other countries with long histories, Japanese cooking has grown and changed over more than 2,000 years. Important developments in Japanese history, such as the first contact with Europeans in the 1500s, brought new foods and new cooking methods into Japanese life. Despite these changes, the basic elementsof Japanese cooking have remained the same for a very long time.