Japan Making a Mess of Its Dietary Habits

I love going through the book offerings at Japanese shrines, where you are almost guaranteed to get some gems. At Kasuga Taisha (春日大社) in Nara, I found a series of childrens’ books entitled “Japan: A Good Country” (『日本いい国に』). Each chapter was designed to give children a lesson in how to be a good Japanese or on how wonderful Japan is. I opened to a random page which came from a chapter on the “Japanese Diet” and found the following passage (running short on time so I’ll just post my English translation):

In France, the French eat mainly French food, in China they eat mainly Chinese food. This is a pretty obvious fact (当たり前) but in each country they primarily eat that country’s food. And yet, in Japan’s case, we are importing all kinds of food from many different foreign lands and eating all kinds of different things. There isn’t any other country which has made such a mess of (バラバラになった) even their own dietary habits (自分たちの主食までも).