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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Natto for breakfast in Japan ? This claim is completely unfounded. Tons of Japanese actually HATE natto themselves.

As I commented above, my 2-year-old eats natto with rice for breakfast every morning. ("Natto, the stinky slime-encased beans that kids ask for by name!®")

Also, when I go to my Japanese wife's parents house, the whole family often has natto on top of rice as part of breakfast, often with chopped onions or thin sliced okra on it.

And, I myself came to like natto after forcing it down a few times at breakfast to be polite to my host family the first time I visited Japan 25 years ago.

So I'm pretty sure it is common to eat natto for breakfast in Japan. There are surely some people who hate it, though -- but lots of kids hate takoyaki, too.

I visited a Western friend recently in Tokyo and he introduced me to natto. I of course hated it! He really got into the Japanese culture and eats it with rice for breakfast most days.

in kansai, people don't usually eat natto. In kanto, they would. For breakfast, it depends if you're traditional or not. At a hotel, it would not be surprising to be served natto for breakfast.

Enough with the "Kansai people don't eat natto" thing, that's just not true. I lived in Kansai for years, and there were like a dozen brands of natto on supermarket shelves, everywhere. Big beans, small beans, with sauce and mustard, with just mustard, with added kombu taste, treated with "stink-less" process, you name them. My neighborhood sushi place had natto-maki prominently on the menu. If you order a traditional Japanese breakfast at an upscale restaurant in Osaka, it will most likely include natto.

Lots of Japanese like natto, lots of Japanese don't like natto. Go to France and you'll find the same thing is true of blue cheese.

Maybe natto is slightly more popular in Kanto. Maybe it wasn't common in Kansai 100 years ago and that's how the myth started. But let's stop staying Kansai people don't usually eat natto, when it's plain to see that's not the case.

If I would have said, "Kanto people don't usually eat Okonomiyaki" would you also have replied in a similar way?

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