Yoroshiku!

My name is Jacqui. I’m a South African who’s just returned to her native Gauteng after living in Japan for five years. While applying for jobs and spending a few hours a week tutoring, I have plenty of free time to spend experimenting in the kitchen. Thus this blog was born, through that experimentation, my love of hearing myself speak, and my passion for photography.

The name of this blog comes from the two identities with which I associate. The first is South African. “Lekker”, in the Afrikaans language, means “nice”, or “good”. Having lived in South Africa for most of my life, I have grown up eating and loving South African food, whether it be Sunday milk tarts on the farm, or a bunny-chow made in a hollowed-out loaf of fresh bread. 

The second part of the blog name, “Oishii”, means “delicious” in Japanese. I spent five years teaching English in Okinawa, a tiny Japanese island closer to Taiwan than Tokyo. There is disappointingly little written about Okinawan food on the net (in English anyway), and I hope to rectify that slightly. Okinawa has a very different culture, including food culture, from the mainland of Japan. Having originally been an independent kingdom with strong trade alliances with China, there is a lot of food similar to Chinese, like the delicious, soft pork-belly dish called rafute. Since the Second World War, there has also been a strong American military presence on the island, giving rise to the innumerable steak houses in existence, and dishes like taco rice.

I currently live with my Japanese partner. Hailing from Tokyo, he has taught me a lot about mainland Japanese food, and is for the moment credited with having made me the best ramen I’ve ever tasted. Together we go rummaging through stores in Chinatown, Johannesburg looking for ingredients we both know and love, or the closest approximations thereof. He has also been known to send me to one tiny shop in Pretoria to buy the specific brand of rice he likes.

In writing this blog I hope to blend all of these cultures and foods (and more if I make/find something particularly good) by writing about both South African and Japanese recipes and ingredients, and the stores and restaurants in South Africa where you can partake in them.

I hope you find my posts informative and enticing or, at the very least, somewhat entertaining.

Here’s to delicious food from ALL cultures!