Yep. That video was just a joke. Funny even if you approach is correctly. Tom appears to have taken it the wrong way.

Relax…the video that Wangkong put up is not meant to be deriding the Japanese at all. It’s actually funny b/c it is implying that all us dumb gaijin foreigners who awe and worship sushi, sukiyaki, etc. are actually the ones getting fooled. Just grab a bottle of ima-jochu and chill out with a Miles Davis CD. I’ve told Pawirogi the same thing but something tells me that it will be harder to the message across to him than to you.:)

Isn’t there a Mongolian cuisine practice that closely resembles Teppanyaki? They heat the crap out of a large stone table, then cook stuff by pouring water on them (which evaporates immediately).

And next time, should you ever get to Japan, check out sukiyaki, shabu-shabu, as well as kushiyaki (on bamboo sticks, by the way– something I rarely see in Korea).

Incidentally, all of which, I gather date back to Meiji Period and most probably before a 19th century or early 20th century version of Hallyu hit Japan.

The only thing truly Korean-originated food I can attest from living in Japan some 14 years was the introduction of kimchi. With hundreds of years of living around hibachi and kotatsu, the Japanese didn’t have to be educated by Korean workers on how to cook food in a remarkably logical way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1cWe96ZK6g

jk!….

Sandwiches here are known as saendeu! Sausage as sosiji. Orange as orenji (that’s a topical one now, eh?). The list obviously goes on.

People seem to expect that you can perfectly transliterate and/or transcribe into other alphabets sounds that simply don’t exist and cannot be represented by them.

I guess my point is that it’s a lot more likely that marinated beef would be successful in the US then raw fish, but raw fish somehow became more popular at the end of the day

Marinated beef (or pork) is more successful in the US than raw fish — it’s just that that particular niche is already fairly saturated (by all the BBQ, rib, and steak houses out there), and so it’s quite a bit harder to stand out and gain a larger market share. Add that to the fact that Korean spices don’t stand out that much from the ones used in BBQ in the states (red pepper, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, etc…), and it’s really not surprising that when given the option of two foods that look and taste fairly close, people opt for the comfortable food.

Yakiniku (for which gene Gyu-Kaku belongs in) restaurants are not originally “Japanese” foods. It’s beef cooked in an open grill in the middle of your table. That’s not native to Japan Same thing with famous “teppenyaki” restaurants such as Benihana. What we know today as teppenyaki is the Japanese interpretation of American grilling and didn’t come into existence (as we know it today) until after 1945. Same thing with yakiniku. Didn’t really come into existence until I believe the 1920’s when sizable contingents of Koreans came to Japan. Anyways, I don’t believe it’s inaccurate to say that yakiniku is a Korean originated food that is evolving into a distinct Japanese dish.

As far as you saying that Korean food will never be globally accepted outside of the diaspora, let’s put things in perspective okay? It’s 1984. Would you have EVER thought of eating RAW fish??? Would you have EVER predicted that it would be popular globally? I’d say no. How did RAW FISH become popular? Well, in the mid to late 80’s it was the hey day of Japanese business expansion into the US (before the big Japanese real estate crash of ‘89) and to celebrate closed deals Japanese bosses took their American business partners to eat in sushi restaurants. I guess my point is that it’s a lot more likely that marinated beef would be successful in the US then raw fish, but raw fish somehow became more popular at the end of the day. We take the present for granted somehow and ignore the unlikelihood of what today looks like if we were living in the past. Thus, it’s beyond presumptuous to say that Korean food will forever be stuck only in the diaspora.