THE TASTE OF MY CHILDHOOD

When you spend your childhood in any given country, you inevitably grow up with what I would call the 'taste of your childhood': Certain foods that are typical for that particular place, which will always remind you of the time when you were growing up, and which are not quite the same anywhere else, or may not be available at all.

So if you choose to make another country your permanent home, almost inevitably you will, at one point or another, crave that 'taste of your childhood', and do almost anything to get hold of it.

When my wife and I lived in my home country for the first couple of years of our marriage in the early 90s, it was difficult for me to comprehend why she would crave those very Japanese ingredients (such as miso paste, soy sauce, seaweed or tofu), when there was so much choice in European food readily available - and much cheaper too. But the trouble with that was, of course, that those European food items didn't invoke those childhood memories in her.

So we would quite regularly make a trip to the only Japanese supermarket in the whole of Zurich at the time, which was very small and crammed with Japanese goods, and where we would inevitably bump into other Japanese wives with their Swiss husbands in tow - the wives excited to find of items not available anywhere else, and the husbands not quite understanding what they were looking at, or how the items were supposed to be used in the kitchen, and at the same time worrying about getting bankrupted due to the astronomical prices...

It was only when we arrived in Japan a couple of years later that I started to understand her feelings, as I suddenly found myself in the exact same situation: Not having access to those quintessentially Swiss food items, and sure enough missing them after a while, despite all the (arguably healthier) Japanese delicacies that were readily available here. The difference was: There was no Swiss supermarket anywhere to be found...

The two things on the list that instantly come to mind are bread and cheese, an absolute staple in Swiss homes.

If you grew up in a place where village bakeries open as early as 6 a.m., enabling you to get freshly baked bread in dozens of variations first thing in the morning and in time for breakfast, and you suddenly find yourself in a country where - ironically - convenience stores stay open 24 hours a day, but you cannot find a bakery that opens before 10 a.m., and then only to find all kinds of fanciful buns, but nothing that resembles 'real' bread in the eyes of a Swiss person, then this can be quite a shock to the system. But it also shouldn't really be surprising, considering that bread is in fact a rather recent addition to the Japanese diet, introduced during the late 1940s, when powdered milk and imported wheat became a cheap dietary substitute.

Similarly, if you're used to the sheer abundance of cheese varieties in a Swiss dairy shop, with many dozens of kinds on offer at any one time, then the limited choice in a Japanese supermarket can be a bit underwhelming. By the way, I have actually never come across a dairy shop here and have to assume they simply don't exist. There are said to be more than 450 different kinds of Swiss cheeses (Switzerland being second to only France, which boasts more than a thousand). Naturally, in a typical dairy shop in Switzerland, you will also find dozens of kinds of cheese from surrounding countries as well, so you are very much spoilt for choice.

To be fair, things in Japan have - thankfully - changed somewhat since the mid 90s, when I arrived, with imported goods more readily available, and Japanese people developing more of a taste for Western food. Though it differs a lot on where in the country you are. Tokyo, for instance, offers a far greater variety of goods than a regular supermarket away from the capital.

But the biggest gamechanger was undoubtedly the Internet and the emergence of AMAZON.

When I arrived in Japan in 1996, Internet shopping was not an option, as the Internet itself was still in its infancy. Heck, we didn't even own a computer!

Fast forward 27 years, and the vast array of goods available online is mind-boggling, and so is the short time it takes for them to be delivered to our home - though the proximity of a huge Amazon warehouse literally a few hundred metres from our house probably helps!

The other day we had invited some friends for dinner for the upcoming weekend, and we thought it would be a good idea to have the first raclette of the season.

For those not familiar with raclette: It's what I would call the cousin of (the probably more universally known) cheese fondue. Both are cheese dishes hugely popular in Switzerland and enjoyed exclusively during the winter season. Except for foreign tourists to the country, who eat them even in the height of summer in restaurants at typical tourist destinations, such as Lucerne.

The fondue consists of a blend of cheese melted in a pot, and it is eaten by spearing a piece of bread on a fork, swirling it in the pot and then putting it into your mouth. It's the ultimate dish for a cold winter's evening, warming you up from the inside (though the 'high-spirited' digestif may play a part in that as well...).

Similarly, raclette is comfort food usually enjoyed by the family at home (although common at festivals, but shamelessly overpriced!) during the winter months. The main difference is that the cheese has to be specific raclette cheese (one of those 450 kinds) and is heated at the table in a specially designed raclette oven. It is consumed not with bread, but with boiled potatoes and pickles.

I would argue that almost every family in Switzerland owns a raclette oven, which can accommodate anything between 4 and 8 persons. When we left Switzerland, we were forced to leave it behind, along with all the other electrical appliances, simply because the electric systems in the two countries are not compatible (Japan operating with 100 volts, while Switzerland has 230 volts).

For quite a few years, the only opportunity we got to enjoy raclette was when travelling back to Switzerland to visit family. That it, until Internet shopping started to take off, and we were able to buy an oven for use here in Japan.

While you still wouldn't find a raclette oven in a brick-and-mortar shop in Japan nowadays (the demand is simply not there), when it comes to buying the specific cheese, it's less of a challenge. Inside a nearby shopping centre, there is a specialised cheese shop, and they do sell raclette cheese, though it's prohibitively expense! So the Internet is still the more reasonable option. So when planning the dinner the other day, all that was needed was a few clicks, and a couple of days later a package arrived with half a truckle of raclette cheese, weighing 2.5 kg. And we were set for the first raclette dinner of the season together with our friends!

Cheese usually comes in so-called 'truckles', on average 30 centimeters in diameter and weighing 5 kilograms.

The table is set for a raclette with friends!

The drink that goes best with raclette is white wine. So, naturally we are always well-stocked with wine of all kinds. It's not that it wouldn't be available in regular shops in Japan, but there is so much more choice available online, which you can peruse from the comfort of your home... Not Swiss wine, though! While Switzerland produces a lot of wine, it's hardly being exported. I guess they prefer to drink it by themselves. I cannot really blame them...

Now, the dependence on Amazon doesn't just extend to food and drinks.

Certain other items that are important to us are also not available in regular shops anywhere in Japan. Take DVDs of European films, for instance. Especially so, when they are foreign-language films with English subtitles. Even if the films are being distributed in Japan, they come only with Japanese subtitles, which are of little use to me. They are, however, available on Amazon. And if not on Amazon Japan, then on one of their sister sites in the UK or elsewhere in mainland Europe.

That doesn't automatically mean, though, that you can then watch those DVDs on a standard Japanese DVD player. Oh no! Things are often not as straightforward as they may seem, or in fact should be...

Depending on the source you're looking at, there are three or four different colour encoding systems for TVs in the world, the main two being:

• NTSC (which stands for 'National Television Standards Committee'), which is used only in North America, part of South America, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea and - Japan.

• PAL (which is the abbreviation for 'Phase Alternate Line' - whatever that may mean...), which is the standard in much of the rest of the world (and namely in Europe).

DVDs are basically encoded either in NTSC or PAL, depending on where they are sold.

For those living in Europe, it doesn't really make a difference because DVD players built for a PAL signal can also handle a disc encoded in NTSC format.

Ironically (and frustratingly), however, the compatibility only works one way, i.e. NTSC players sold in North America or Japan will steadfastedly refuse to play a PAL disc.

And as the average Japanese consumer will be happy enough to buy DVDs sold in Japan (and with Japanese subtitles), shops do not cater for the miniscule minority of foreigners who shop for DVDs overseas.

Last time I tried my luck (many years ago) in one of those gigantic electronic stores, which would seem to sell any conceivable gadget that your heart might desire, all I earned from the shop assistant was a puzzled look, as he was obviously wondering why on earth I would want to play DVDs that were in a different format. I might just as well have landed straight from another planet...

And that's when Amazon comes into the picture again. Because that's pretty much the only place where I can reliably buy a multi-system DVD player, which can handle both NTSC and PAL discs, and which is designed for use in Japan and thus works on the same voltage and is equipped with an electric plug that fits Japanese sockets - both of which are, of course, completely different again in Europe.

After our old DVD player had recently packed it in, it was time to unpack the new one I had ordered online.

It seems the world is not built for people moving to different countries and having specific needs differing from those of the local population...