Food Cultures In Different Countries

Food cultures in different countries are also different. Each country has own food culture. Tomatina is a traditional harvest festival that people appreciate the harvest and celebrate to rich harvest each year in Spain. The festival occurs last Wednesday in August every year. During the festival, more than 100 metric tons of tomatoes are thrown. Bunol is the town where occurs the festival has about 9000 population, but more than 50000 people came over from all over the world and joined the festival this year. This festival is the world’s biggest annual food fight.

I was surprised that the Tomatina is the most unbelievable festival I have ever heard. The town is covered with bunch of Tomatoes, the streets changes to tomatoes’ river even a lake is made by tomatoes. Strangers throw tomatoes to each other. I expect that they have troubles to fight besides food fight, however they have only several simple rules such as tomatoes must be squished in the hand before thrown to avoid excessive injuries.

I would like to contrast between this festival and my culture’s festivals. There are many kinds of harvest festivals in Japan. I have known as the harvest festival is supposed to celebrate the harvest, and people must have the feeling to appropriate food, thus most of festivals are full of happiness and peaceful. Japanese style festival usually cook bunch of meals using the crops and share to eat everybody who join the festival. Thus people share the feeling that happiness of great harvest.

So, it is unbelievable that tons of tomatoes are thrown at the festival. Japanese feels that making light of food or waste. On the other hand, Spanish delight to crop as using tons of tomatoes and share their feelings that passion and happiness as fighting. This is the difference between each culture. Spanish incline to express their feelings emotionally and passionately. Japanese are more collectivism. Different nation eat different food , and they have own food culture. Besides it, Characteristics of each country influence to food cultures a lot to. I think food is the one of the most interest culture of human.