IN JANUARY we offered some recommendations on spicing up airline
food. But for many travellers, the cuisine found on arrival
provides greater cause for concern. When China's National
People's Congress considered banning the consumption of dogs and
cats recently, it served as a reminder of how challenging
culinary differences can be.  Within Gulliver's Asian patch,
national cuisines vary greatly, delivering challenges too
diverse for a single blog post. In China alone, visitors dining
with local hosts can encounter squelchy cow's stomach, fried
unfilleted frog or boiled pig's brains. By comparison, Japan
seems a pushover: raw fish may not be to everybody's liking,
despite sushi's international fan base, but the fragrances of
Japanese food are generally palatable to foreigners. Yet, as
such interlopers may soon discover, challenges do in fact lurk,
together with strict culinary-cultural mores. Hence it is to
Japan that Gulliver turns in this case study.  Most
particularly, he will focus on natto, a food that ha