Goop

It seems Japanese love eating goop. Doesn't matter if it's rice based goop or bean based goop, if it's sticky and sweet (or even sticky and savoury) they just can't wait to eat it. These guys are bashing rice goop at Nara - whack some rice, add some green colouring, roll it into balls, and the people are queuing to buy it and eat it. Road test results: almost too tough to chew, sickly sweet and generally undesirable. Other goop varieties reside in large buckets, and you can buy them by the sticky scoopful to use in your cooking at home. Interestingly, bean paste is the secret ingedient of the delicious okonomiake, the fantastic omelette dish served with lashings of bbq sauce and mayonnaise. When you think about it, lots of our own food features soy bean meal or 'filler' - it's just that it's disguised under labels like 'ingredient R58.' I suspect that's because we prefer to be protected from the truth. (Another interesting fact... did you know that the flavour base for Marmite is MSG? It's the reason Japanese mayonaise is so delicious too!)