When I first visited Japan in 2014, raw fish over vinegared rice wasn’t as much of a culinary shock as the sheer size of naan here. The bread, paired with an almost neon-red butter chicken curry, struck me as a strange take on my homeland’s cuisine.
The following year, I moved here to enroll in an undergraduate program and found my astonishment growing into disappointment.
Indian food, to me, was unrecognizable in the ensemble most commonly seen in Japan. At home, it was Ma’s weekday dinner where rice would be eaten in three parts: first with ghee and salt or stir-fried gourd skins (a vestige of British-manufactured famines in India during World War II); second with dal simmered with fish head alongside fried vegetables; third alongside a fish curry with rohu or catla, sweetened tomato chutney and finally a dessert.
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