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The story
On Fuji TV’s “Kamaitachi’s Instant Answer!”, talent Karen Takizawa said, “If I could only bring one seasoning to a desert island, mirin would do,” and the story was picked up on 5ch. The thread saw a string of practical objections — “salt can be made from seawater, so soy sauce or sugar is more useful,” “mirin alone is hard to use without dashi or soy sauce” — but the discussion also veered off into a debate over the premise itself, namely whether a desert island is guaranteed to even have an ocean nearby, and things never quite settled.
Sun, Oct 4, 17:33
Talent Karen Takizawa (34) appeared on Fuji TV’s “Kamaitachi’s Instant Answer! — Solve Your Problems in 60 Seconds” (9:00 PM), which aired on the 2nd, and revealed the seasoning she uses most.
During the studio talk, MC and Kamaitachi member Ryuichi Hamaie asked, “Is there a seasoning you use a lot?” Takizawa declared, “Number one is mirin,” adding, “If I didn’t have mirin… say I could only bring one seasoning to a desert island, mirin would do.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
You can get salt from seawater anyway.
salt's covered by seawater anyway.
plus it's got sweetness and umami.
For eating fish you catch, soy sauce's the way.
Salt can be made from seawater.
Getting sugar on your own isn't exactly easy either.
it's already got sugar, soy sauce, mirin, and amino acids in it.
Just evaporate some seawater for the salt.
goes with more things than mirin does.
Why is it a given that a desert island has an ocean?
What kind of island doesn't have an ocean?
Like an island in Lake Biwa, maybe?
Chikubu Island or something.
And who's this person who only lets you bring one seasoning?
Might as well just take sugar.
Pour it on anything — sand, rope, whatever — and it becomes edible somehow.
but you could catch fish and simmer them in seawater (maasu-ni style).
Making it purely by sun-drying would be pretty tough since it depends so much on the weather.
Karen's got it right.
Though it's hard to find on shelves lately.
a lot of people picture a desert island as
some perpetually-summer place surrounded by ocean.
But that's not necessarily true
so it could be a forested area with no sea or rivers in sight, or it could be ringed by sheer cliffs,
or it could be a frozen wasteland that's below freezing year-round.
Without any defined premise, there's no point overthinking it.
If you're gonna go there, the answer just ends up being "well, I'm not going to a desert island in the first place."
Background and Key Points of the Debate
“If you could only bring one thing to a desert island” is a classic variety-show question, and this time too the thread drifted off-topic on 5ch because the premise — whether there’s an ocean nearby, whether fire or a pot are available, and so on — was never spelled out. The idea that salt can be made by boiling down seawater came up repeatedly, but in practice sun-drying it and securing fuel aren’t that simple, and some pushed back on the very assumption that salt can be “sourced locally.” The majority view was that mirin alone can’t substitute for saltiness or dashi, and that soy sauce or miso are more versatile — but it tends to go unmentioned that Takizawa’s comment was just an offhand remark on a variety show, not an attempt to win some optimal-survival-strategy contest.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “If Karen Takizawa could only bring one seasoning to a desert island? Studio stunned by her unexpected pick: “No way!?”“
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