Kechappu question

[neta]

I was at the store the other day and being tempted by foods I would eat in the states I bought some spaghetti that was on sale and seemed like a good way to feed myself. I also grabbed what I thought was tomato sauce. Upon returning to my dorm I greedily glanced at the lable of my "sauce" and discovered, to my dismay, the katakana "Tomato Kechappu"! Do the Japanese eat ketchup on their pasta or is this just bad lableing?

[yakamashii]

Some Japanese do indeed use ketchup on their spaghetti. The only sauce I have been able to find comes in funny-looking bags with things like "mi-to so-su" written on them in katakana.

[Henjin]

Hey, answer me this... Do they have some kind of special ketchup at First Kitchen restaurants, or did we get a bad batch? It had some particles in it and it tasted a little spicy. lol I didn't get sick, so maybe it wasn't rancid.

[nice gaijin]

I recommend seafood pasta or mentaiko spaghetti, what we'd consider normal spaghetti sauce over there is called meat sauce (ミートソース). My gf is fond of ika sumi and natto with daikon on her pasta! exercise extreme caution!

edit: henjin, they have a variety of dips at fakkin for french fries and such, chances are you got a flavor other than normal ketchup... I doubt they'd have a batch of "bad" dip out there. mmmm mentaiko (might've been that, since mentaiko is cod roe and is a bit spicy) and wasabi dips were my favorites.

[Henjin]

Interesting. Well, it wasn't bad, but we were wondering what it was. Thanks for the info.

'Fakkin.' That cracks me up.

[more cheerios]

You can make a good speghetti sauce out of ketchup. Boil it in a pot with some tomatoes, vegetable oil, oregano and chilli powder. Stir, simmer for a while then, voila!

Add water if needed. :B

[nice gaijin]

'Fakkin.' That cracks me up.
That's nothing, I got all my Japanese friends calling cheesecake factory チーズファック

[Henjin]

So I take it 「ファック」 isn't a very common transliteration? Oy.

[nice gaijin]

well if you say it by itself, it would be associated more with むかついてる than something dirty... but I guess that depends on the person...

[Henjin]

well if you say it by itself, it would be associated more with むかついてる than something dirty...

Why's that?

And I'd never use the word in English or Japanese, but I wasn't sure how commonly known it was.

[hapamama]

Most of the spaghetti sauces that the Japanese call a "napolitan" sauce is ketchup based... much different than the American adaptation of spaghetti sauce.

There's an entire thread on Japanese spaghetti over at egullet.com on the Japan forum.