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I've decided to be more selective about the links I post here, so instead of relying on del.icio.us auto-posting, I'll be doing it manually and less frequently. This allows me to be more verbose in my comments than 255 characters, and you all to comment if you want too.

So, here we go for this snowy Saturday morning:

Early last year, a movement to set up an authentification program for Japanese restaurant was proposed, to mixed reactions. Now it seems the people behind it are getting going: the inspectors are already in Bangkok, Shanghai and Taipei, and this year they'll be invading, er researching London, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Paris.

Chocolate. It's such a lovely, malleable substance. It can be shaped into anything really. Anything.

But, one wonders what kind of twisted mind came up with this idea...chocolate truffles shaped like kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle) larvae!

Avert your eyes if you are squeamish. You may not want to read this while you're eating.

(If you're getting here from the front page, pause and breathe in deeply before clicking that 'continue reading'.

Tuna with a side of mercury, and all that.

I should have done this a long time ago, but hey, better late than ever. I'm going to try to assemble a list of Japanese grocery stores worldwide, that people can refer to. Obviously I cannot do this without your help! I can list info for places I've lived, and there have been some great comment posts in the past here that have included such info, but I'll try to put it all in one place.

So, please head on over to to this constantly updated page and add any information you have about in the comments!

I've added the categories Food related shopping places you shouldn't miss in Japan and Places that ship Japanese food-related things worldwide.

[Update:] Of course this turned out to be a way bigger job than I thought :) But I'll try to add as much as possible over the weekend. I've found that there are quite a lot of Japanese pages that list stores and so on, for expats obviously. I'm collecting those and adding them, together with your suggestions in the comments.

• Japanese grocery store list top page

The UK government is instituting an interesting school policy. Starting in September, cooking courses will be compulsory at schools in England. (I guess it's not for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland yet?) It's part of their campaign against childhood obesity. (Read more about it on the Guardian Word Of Mouth blog.) It's a very appealing idea, though I'm not sure if it will accomplish their goals, if they aren't eating right elsewhere. But we shall see.

I had to take what were called kateika (domestic science) courses in Japan, in the 5th and 6th grades in elementary school and the first 2 years of junior high school. (In junior high it was for girls only; the boys got to do gijutsuka, which meant mostly building fun things. I wanted to do that more than the cooking and sewing!) I don't think we did a whole lot of cooking (I remember doing more sewing for some reason) but I do remember some of the things we made.

• A basic vegetable soup - though bacon was used for the "dashi".
• Rice with green peas (mame gohan)
• Sweet potato paste with chestnuts (kuri kinton), a standard osechi (New Year's feast) item...except that the teacher couldn't get a hold of chestnuts so we had to use apples instead...so that was actually ringo kinton...
• Some sort of freeform rock cakes or such
• Pork and ginger buta no sho-ga yaki
• For some reason, a fancy sole meunière
• Sandwiches, the Japanese way - with soft white bread, mustard butter, the crusts cut off neatly, and the whole thing kept nice and moist (shittori) with moist kitchen towels!

I'm not sure if any of that was very useful - we never learned fundamental skills like how to wash rice, how to make a dashi, and so on. The only one that was useful was the sandwich class, so if I want to hold a tea party I'm all set! There were time constraints of course, which prevented the teacher from doing anything too complicated. I do remember that the classes were always chaotic - and we're talking about fairly well-behaved Japanese schoolkids! I wonder how the British teachers will fare.

Did you take cooking classes in school? If so, what did you learn? Do you think cooking classes are a good idea?

Thank you to everyone to participated in the cloned meat poll! Here are the somewhat surprising results.

To my post about why Japanese people in Japan don't get that fat, Kim left this terrific comment:

I’m not Japanese (I’m Korean). I was adopted and grew up in America. I didn’t have a weight problem growing up, my weight happened when I hit high school and beyond. When I was in college, I had a chance to go back to Korea for 3 months. I was just a little overweight, maybe around 10-15 pounds. While there, I ate everything in sight, but I also walked everywhere. I also ate more veggies, and more rice, and again, I walked everywhere…usually in atypical day I was walking close to 3-5 miles. When I came back to the states, my Mom automatically thought that I had been starving because I was so slim. Sure enough,1 month later I had gained back all my weight.

There was a big diet trend a little while back that spoke to that. It had people focusing on what their heritage is and then eating and being like the people from their heritage. Now whenever i feel the need to drop some weight, I heavily go back to my Korean roots and the weight just seems to come off. I usually have more energy and just feel more at peace. But it takes so much time, and that is a premium these days.

I must have missed that diet trend Kim mentioned somehow, but it resonates a lot with me. I do enjoy eating a wide variety of cuisines, but when I want to get back into balance and feel good physically and mentally, I always go back to Japanese cooking. I know that Japanese food is generally held to be quite healthy and things like that, but maybe there is more to that.

What do you think? Does going back to your own food heritage help you to feel better and healthier?

You may have noticed that you can now comment here and on Just Bento without moderation. I'm seeing if it works out - so far the anti-spam measures seem to be holding up. (You do still have to pass at terribly difficult math test...) I hate comment spam - to me it's the interweb equivalent of someone walking their dog on your lawn and leaving a poop. But on the other hand I know it can be a bit frustrating to see your comment not be displayed immediately. So, we'll see how it goes...if problems arise I'll turn moderation back on.

The first poll about chickens (the original question, the actual poll, and the results summarized) was so interesting to me, that I'd like to make polls a semi-regular feature on Just Hungry. I think that polls and the answers to them on difficult issues can help qualify one's thinking on the subject. So, here is another one for you about on the subject of the ethics of eating. The subject is cloned animals.

Yesterday the The U.S. government</> approved the sale of food from cloned animals. Here is the Food and Drug Administration's report. The European Union issued a public call for consultation on the scientific issues regarding food derived from cloned animals. The draft opinion of the agency (link, PDF) is that such food is safe for human consumption.

How do you feel about this? Remember that food from cloned animals would include eggs, milk and milk products as well as meat. Please include your opinions in the comments to the poll too.

• Link to poll page