Luke Michio de la Peña

 After watching the YouTube video of chef Tomonori Nagai, it was clear that making sushi to him was more than just cooking. Chef Tomonori Nagai touched on his passion of sushi making, and how the love for fishing and cook was passed down from his father who got it from his father. The video showed how sushi making was more of an art than anything else. And overall I feel like I could relate to Chef Tomonori Nagai, because I myself was taught at a young age how to catch and clean fish. And I think when I get back home that I’ll try preparing tako (octopus) the same way as Chef Tomonori Nagai did. https://youtu.be/89wwP--bHMg Another interesting thing I noticed in the video is how Chef Tomonori Nagai touches on the fact that tako is a very labored task to do, and I too share that experience. If done by hand the process can take well over  half an hour.

 Being from Hawai’i it is easy to see that there is a lot of Japanese influence on the “local” culture. I myself am of Japanese descent, my earliest Japanese ancestors immigrated to Hawai’i in the mid to late 1800s. And over time, the language has disappeared in the family. Which is one of the reasons why I want to learn Japanese, to better understand who I am. Also, as I said before the Japanese culture has found a place within these islands. You can see it through many unique customs, foods, cultural events, and even the local language which is a mix of many languages including Hawaiian, Filipino, English, and Portuguese. This is called pidgin English. One of my favorite examples of such cultural mixing is Tako Pokè which is a food of both Japanese and Hawaiian descent. Tako is octopus in Japanese, and Pokè is a Hawaiian staple food.