• Lamb chops
You may have seen lamb chops in Japan recently. They are a cut from the lamb loin with the bone-in, they have no unpleasant smell, they’re juicy, tender, tasty, and popular in Australia. You can usually get them at a supermarket here. Recently the price of lamb chops has steadily been going up and now they fetch a fairly high price.
• Automated trash trucks
When I first saw one of these trash trucks after coming to Australia, I thought they were really groundbreaking. There is no need for trash collectors to manually collect each trash can one by one because the trash trucks do it for them instead. A kind of robotic hand like a lever comes out from the trash truck, lifts up the trash can, and throws the trash inside it onto the trash inside the trash truck with a bang.
• Yellow vegetables (Squash)
The yellow vegetables in the photo are called “squashes”. They are a favorite vegetable in Australia and are always available at supermarkets and vegetable stores. Squash is a vegetable in the gourd family and has a texture like zucchini. Rather than eating squash raw, it is most often fried or eaten cooked. It’s a vegetable you see served with meat dishes like roast chicken or pork.
• Drive-through liquor stores
Australia is a car society and has many liquor stores with drive-through lanes. If you’re buying a carton of beer (a box with 24 cans or bottles) you can order it from the store assistant and then they bring it to you. It’s very convenient when you’re buying a lot because they can load it straight into the car.
• Licorice
The first time I ate licorice (“liquorice” in UK English) was when I found some black jellybeans in among some colored jellybeans, I thought they were cola or chocolate flavored, but when I put them in my mouth, they had a shockingly bad taste, like Chinese medicine, and I automatically got rid of them out of my mouth. This confection contains licorice extract, which is also used in Chinese medicine, and has a unique taste with sweetness in among the bitterness, like throat candy containing Chinese medicine. It has long been a traditional candy in Europe and the US, apart from Australia, but it’s not a taste familiar to Japanese people, and this black licorice is sold as a kind of gummy candy, but this alone is still a flavor I don’t like, even though I have lived in Australia for a long time.
• Public barbecues in parks
Aussies love a barbecue anytime, anywhere and parks and campsites always have a free public barbecue for them. You press the button, the iron plate heats up, and you’re soon ready to cook.
• Wild ibis
This ibis is like the Japanese crested ibis and in Japan it wouldn’t be out of place in a zoo. It is a cute bird with a long beak, but it is attracted to people’s food and turns up at outdoor cafes and on the streets as well as parks, and it’s a trash can scavenger, so it has ended up being treated in Australia as a pest. If they didn’t breed in town, they would probably be beautiful birds of black and white, but I guess their white feathers get dirty and gray while they scavenge for the garbage that people throw out.
What do you think? Recently Japan has been taking up popular overseas trends and foods, so I guess the number of Australian things you can’t find in Japan is decreasing. In any case, I will bring you Part 2 next blog post.
