A rasher, a rasher, my Kingdom for a rasher….. of ‘real’ bacon

It has been five months since  I moved back to Japan. This time it is for good and I am perfectly happy about the prospect. But, there is one small thing missing: bacon. In fact, it is in danger of becoming a big thing if I don’t find some real bacon soon.

Japanese food is great and whilst I wouldn’t expect to order the greatest sashimi in the world back in Wales, neither would I expect to find the best bacon in the world here in Japan.

But for a country that has far more foreigners in residence than it ever used to, and that is close enough to Australia to import decent bacon from there, I really don’t see why I cannot find one decent rasher of the stuff here. Especially in a city as big as Tokyo.

Belly pork masquerading as bacon

The Japanese bacon is really just belly-pork by another name. The Koreans and Japanese both love pork belly, especially the Koreans and a bit of pork belly served up on a Korean barbecue right at the dinner table is gorgeous.

Here in Japan belly pork usually gets used for shabu-shabu: cooking meat in boiling water and then dipping it in various items, such as ponzu, a citrus-flavoured light soy sauce. This pork may vaguely resemble real bacon and the slabs of it I have found in the shops here certainly look like pancetta or streaky that has not been sliced. But honestly, the taste of it when used for anything other than Japanese disses - where it performs perfectly well. Bad. Wrong. Most wrong indeed.

Pre-cooked?

I understand that a lot of Japanese bacon is pre-cooked, because some years ago - in a time when they had real bacon here - people didn’t cook it properly and poisoned themselves. ??? Can that be true?

So the bacon here now is in some way sanitized against such consumer idiocy. Whatever the reason for it being the way it is, I think it is time to somehow re-introduce the concept of proper bacon to Japan.

If the Japanese penchant for eating raw food has attracted to them to the idea of eating raw bacon, then maybe this is why they pre-cook it. But then it wouldn’t be ‘raw’, would it? However, yes does mean no here a lot of the time, so why shouldn’t pre-cooked mean raw?

I like raw food too. Fish, obviously, but I first had deer sashimi here in Japan and I can tell you it was amazing. However, back to the back. If you catch my drift.

British Council: come on, let’s have “Bacon Week” here in Tokyo…..

I think that overall the British Council and the team charged with promoting Team GB overseas do a pretty good job. But can we please temporarily scale back on promoting the arts, engineering, weapons sales and the like for just a week and get some bacon promotion going on?

What is better and more deserving of a punt than the classic British breakfast, complete with some crispy, dry, pan-fried bacon? Not just that, but cooking a roast chicken just would not be the same without draping a few rashers of smoked back bacon over its breasts.

Then we must not forget the humble but monumentally intrinsic, king of the snack section and student staple diet; the bacon sandwich. These, my friends, are truly great British things which need celebrating and introducing to a public whose only bacon is tasteless.

But perhaps therein lies the rub as Japanese food is delicately flavoured. Maybe the saltiness and smoky flavours of good British bacon are not remotely interesting or just too poweful for the Japanese palette. More testing needs to be done, I would wager.

The search continues

So, whilst I negotiate the importation of some really real bacon, I need your help. The search is on for it here in Japan. I don’t care if this search turns up nothing more than a single pack or a single rasher of the stuff. Proper bacon must be found.

Your frying-pan needs you. Get out there amongst the Costcos and import stores. See what you can turn up.
Ladies and gentlemen, there must and shall be real bacon!

Some links for you to enjoy and/or salivate over:

• Love Bacon - home of the British Bacon week.
• Save The Bacon - organic UK farm-reared meat delivered to your door. Sadly they don’t come this far out.
• BBC Food programme’s guide to making the best bacon sarnie [sandwich], served up by the equally delicious, Jo Pratt.
• The Pig Site - selection of pork, bacon and gammon recipes. [Bugger, I had forgotten about gammon and how good it tastes. Now I really must find some real bacon...]
• Wikipedia on bacon - loads of bacon-related info.