I just can't eat it.

One of the most common questions I get asked by students or people I meet for the first time over here is "What is your favourite food?". They are almost always referring to Japanese food, but I can't help disappointing them with answers like watermelon or fettucine Genovese or a fresh baguette. They really are some of my favourite foods, but they just want me to say something Japanese to start a conversation on food.

If you have never been to Japan, be prepared to be inundated with a culture obsessed with food. There are a ridiculous number of magazines, cookbooks and apps. If you turn on the TV at any hour of the day, you are almost guaranteed to see a food-related show. If you engage in a conversation with someone, you are almost always going to verve towards the topic of food. It is everwhere.Now, there is nothing wrong with that if you are a food lover. In fact, if you are budding chef I couldn't recommend coming over here highly enough.

Back to the commonly asked questions though, invariably the next question they are dying to ask me is "What Japanese food do you not like?". If you say "nothing, it is all good", then you will be loved forever but I am sure they will treat your answer with a little suspicion, or test you out with a few of the commonly disliked foods.

Here is one I cannot eat - nattou (納豆, なっとう) which are fermented soy beans. The smell is incredibly strong and reminiscent of smelly wet socks. It has a "snotty" consistency with strings that must be twirled out before putting the beans in your mouth. Now, I have eaten it before. In fact, I have had it a few times and really tried to like it, but I can't. I just can't.

Another one that surprises people is pilchards - iwashi (いわし). My kids and wife love them, and I have to say that the smell of them cooking is really mouth-watering. I love that. But, I can't eat them. Why? Because they're bait. I have used so many pilchards in my time as bait for fishing in Australia that I cannot associate them with anything else. I cannot see them as food for my stomach, rather as a lure for something bigger that I would like to catch. So it is only a mental hurdle that I have to overcome.

There are more things that I am not that keen on, but these two stick out for me. I think over time I will probably grow to like pilchards, but I cannot see that happening with nattou.