Haven’t met many ‘gaijin’ who like natto.

Natto is fermented soy bean. Consistency of snot, smell of something rotten, and a taste to die for (as in I’d rather die than eat).

Marmite ended up being some inter-cultural form of self-defence. The Japanese would take great delight in trying to force us to eat natto - saying that it was good for us.

We’d counter-attack with Marmite - the British natto.

Love the stuff.

I doubt whether anybody loved it straight from the off. I once fed some to my 2 year old nephew and he pulled a really disturbing face before bursting into tears.

Mind you, he also did that with the quarter teaspoon of mustard that followed. (Can I quickly add that this was experimentation and not abuse. I wanted to test the hypothesis that most spicy foods are an acquired taste and what better test group than people who have never tried them before.)

Unfortunately my sister came back into the room before I had chance to move on to the lazy chillies - and I have now been banned from using ‘nephew experimentation’ to form the basis of a blog article.

I think my nephew was more upset that he only recieved two of the five mini-mars bars that were promised for his participation - but he can blame his mum for that;-)

Any how - marmite, cheese and toast is surely the classic combo!