Apparently, the most popular dish for gaijin (foreigners) is the cream cheese and anago tempura — which I enjoyed very much — and the most popular dish for Japanese is the kakuni — pork belly. It never occurred to me that people might be afraid of the fat on the pork belly, but a friend said she got to eat all of the kakuni because her dinner-mates wouldn’t touch it. Lucky her!

Slow-cooked fatty meats like kakuni, which is actually a Chinese dish well loved by the Japanese, are actually not that fattening because the slow process of cooking melts off the grease. The remaining fat just tastes good as it glides across your tongue and down the hatch. Don’t forget to put a little Chinese mustard on the meat for a subtle but pungent extra kick.