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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

> spicy foods here are a) not spicy

Ha. Can confirm. Lived there 2 years and while I love the food, as far as I can tell there is no food available anywhere in Japan, at all, that the average south east asian would recognise as even mildly spicy. And outside the home islands I have observed Japanese people reacting hilariously to the actually spicy local food. My favourite was a co-worker who literally collapsed to the floor in the foetal position moaning after eating a mala hotpot which was, at best, medium heat.

Love the people, love the country, but Golden Curry's bright warning red "EXTRA HOT" is not bloody hot at all.

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It took months to convince my family that the extra hot was mildy warm.

But also at a wagamamas in London I had them do double extra hot on their hottest dish and could barely tell. I'm American from the Midwest living in Seattle.

I refer to many spicy thing like that golden extra spicy as "spicy as katsup"

This is my problem with a lot of spiciness advertising around me (in America). When I order something advertised as "hot" or "very hot", 90% of the time it's either medium/mild at best, or just packed with spicy peppers to the point of just tasting bad.

But it can be hard to communicate to some people when their upper level of spice tolerance is banana peppers.

I think the UK levels of spice are much lower than the US having been both places. Throw the pineapple chutney that I had at an Indian restaurant Bombay style in London plus summer was quite warm and delicious.

> This is my problem with a lot of spiciness advertising around me (in America).

It might just be a thing around here, but a lot of Indian or Thai restaurants have two separate heat scales, the 'normal' one, and the Indian or Thai one. One of the Thai restaurants that I used to frequent, for example, had a scale where 'spicy' was the same as 'Thai mild' and 'Thai spicy' would genuinely make your hair stand on end.

It takes so much buy in to get them to take you seriously on spice sometimes.

I don't blame them, and partially thank them. Far too many people are way too cavalier with ordering the spiciest dish and then blaming the restaurant for the dish not tasting good. Its also a lot easier to up the spice level on a dish than lower it. A curry that isn't spicy enough can be made spicier; A curry that is too spicy likely cannot be made milder.

In my experience, "spicy ketchup" is almost never spicy, even in the least. What distinguishes it from other ketchups is that it's less sweet (but still very sweet). The only actually spicy ketchup I found is "Kotlin Extra Hot", but I'm not sure if it's a thing outside of Poland.

You mistake what I'm saying. Katsup is not spicy. I'm saying "you must think katsup is spicy"... it's more funny to people than saying "as spicy as water", "Man this catsup shore is spicy" just works better for a joke.

I'll have to try and find the Kotlin extra hot at the Eastern European grocery by my house.

Yeah, I got that. Just wanted to expand on the weirdness of what "spicy ketchup" seems to mean in practice.

Fair warning: "Kotlin Extra Hot", although a bit spicy, still doesn't hold a candle to what Indian cuisine can offer (or Japanese — e.g. wasabi).

yes but then I can talk sh*t to my polish coworker who loves any polish cultural references. Anyway thanks for the referral.

That's surprising, when I get Coco Ichibanya I think level 4-6 is already fairly spicy

Yeah I was gonna say this. Coco (and also smaller competing chain gogo) is Japanese curry that you can find in every city and can be ordered extremely spicy. And it’s not by default but any of the Indian curry places will make it very spicy if you ask. I’ve also gone out of my way to look up the most authentic places for a specific dish, and been able to order something so spicy I could barely finish it.

All of that being said, mild is definitely what to expect unless you ask for spicy or go out of your way for a specific dish.

> Love the people, love the country, but Golden Curry's bright warning red "EXTRA HOT" is not bloody hot at all.

I chuckled at the basis of your comparison being a globally commercialized instant product.

How is the Korean food in Japan? Korean food is pretty up there in spice level.

Not by Thai or Sichuan standards it isn't. But to answer your question, denatured Korean food (esp. yakiniku BBQ) is widely available, and more authentic versions can be found if you head to the Koreatowns found in every major city (Okubo in Tokyo, Tsuruhashi in Osaka, etc).

Okubo is great. I'd say it's easier to find (if you sample random restaurants in Japan) good Korean than good Indian or good Thai.

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