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Culturally Acceptable Exceptions to the Rules

As many British readers will doubtless appreciate marmite is.

But as much as I might like to think that its unique, every culture has its 'marmite' equivalent - Germany has schmaltz, Japan natto, Thailand is known for its fried insects and China, well take your pick. It's that food that typically provokes either strong for or against reactions amongst locals and something that, for people unable to draw on a childhood's worth of context and conditioning is usually too much to stomach.

So it was with some trepidation that I picked up a jar of Marmite Guinness before leaving London last week - given that it was a hand-luggage only trip, that marmite is a gloop-like dark liquid substance, and liquids and creams of this kind of volume are not allowed through security. Would it make it through British airport security checks?

It turns out that despite the jar being checked at Heathrow it did, but that it was irrelevant but would later get confiscated by Finnish airport security for whom my cultural pleadings fell on deaf ears.

A decent bottle of sake for the first person who offers to ship a decent sized jar of Marmite Guinness to Tokyo. Form an orderly queue at info at jan chipchase dot com please.

Writing from Tokyo | April 22, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Michael Buckbee at April 24, 2007 12:49 AM

Posted by: Jeff Werner at April 27, 2007 9:31 AM

Posted by: cyril at July 8, 2007 8:31 AM