[Photo: The Ansel Adams of Ham? by Michael Takasaki]

by Michael Takasaki

Let me be brief: I’m a ham guy. That’s not to say that I raise my own hogs and smoke my own hams.  Or go out of my way to eat ham whenever possible. Or that I’m able to hold forth on every ham-related topic that comes up. Well, that’s probably the closest to being true, but only because ham is rarely a topic of conversation and when it is, it always seems to be about the legal status of Spanish hams in North America.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I consider myself a ham guy because I recently realized the role ham has played as a sort of connecting thread throughout my adult life. (Also, I really do like ham quite a bit.)

For instance, though Chris and I had been friends for many years before, it was only during our time together in Japan that I realized we both had a knack for coming up with insightful analyses of the world around us. And what did it for me was what I will call “Momentous Ham Conclusion #1”: The Ham Shill.

The Ham Shill is the pinnacle of Western celebrity in Japan. Much has been made of the willingness of western celebrities to go for the easy buck of Japanese ads, but not enough, we felt, was made of the hierarchy of products a celebrity might be asked to endorse.

(Or the celebrities that would endorse stuff. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief the day I saw jazz pianist Keith Jarrett endorsing something. I want to say it was men’s suits, but I think that was Ron Carter.)

This was back in 1994. The biggest stars in the world were still Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And they sold ham. Gift boxes of very processed-looking, very expensive ham perfect for Japan’s semi-annual gift giving seasons. A pre-Contact Jodie Foster could sell canned coffee and a post-Fugitive Harrison Ford could play a hapless foreign employee at a run-of-the-mill trading company in Kirin ads, but you needed the much more universal appeal of a violent action hero if you were going pose with a two-pack of Nippon Ham’s finest.

Exhibit A (In which Sly Stallone plays “Love Me Tender” on the cello!)

Exhibit B (In which Sly speaks Japanese!)

I can’t stress the groundbreaking nature of Chris’s and my revelation. Honestly, you would not have believed the number of “Oh yeah”s we heard when explaining it to other Westerners in the bar where we hung out. Equally, I can’t believe we’ve held off publishing our conclusions for this long.

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I’m only just now realizing that perhaps it’s ham advertising that’s the connecting thread of my adult life. Because, post-Japan, that’s where I’ve found myself.

I’m a copywriter at a mid-sized ad agency in Toronto. And for some reason I have written an above-average number of ads for ham.  Some of them I sought out. The portfolio of made-up ads I used to get my first job included a campaign for the aforementioned Spanish ham with headlines like “The most sensual experience one should ever have with a pig.”

But ham ads just seem to find me. It probably has something to do with the fact that one of our clients is a major supermarket chain. They’re fond of using ham as a drawing card in their radio ads, which I often write. And so when I compile all of the spots I’ve produced, about 35% of them are for ham, edging out the lottery for the number one spot.

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Or maybe it is just ham that’s the connecting thread. My family talks about it an awful lot.  And we’ve all reached what I might call “Momentous Ham Conclusion #2”: Ham is the easiest path to hospitality glory. Because if you have to feed a big group of people and they eat meat, you can do no better than ham. First of all, it’s a giant hunk of meat, which always makes an impact. Second, even fantastic, ethically-raised, heritage-everything ham is obscenely cheap. If I could hand out the title of “Most Recession-Proof Meat” ham would be a shoo-in. Third, ham is pretty much already cooked, so you’d have to be an idiot to mess it up.  Particularly when you use this recipe or this one:

Leave out the raisins in the last one, though.  Ick.

Fourth, people don’t eat it enough on their own, so it’s kind of like a turducken or a dog walking on its hind legs.  Just doing it is noteworthy enough. Fifth, it photographs nicely. I was obviously trying for a little Ansel Adams in the image above.

Finally, and this is kind of related to all of the previous points, it makes you the hero of the office potluck when you show up with an 11-lb piece of meat that cost less than $30.

It’s about the only food at potlucks whose yield actually allows it to out-earn its cost, which is my eternal gripe about fundraising bake sales and potlucks. Someone should do a study to determine the fundraising power of a potluck vs. everyone just donating the amount you were going to spend. I’m fairly certain the donation would win handily.

Yet another realization: the unifying thread of my adult life has taken me from living abroad and spending late nights in bars hatching wild theories about the way the world works to griping about potluck lunches. This is, I imagine, the standard arc for most people’s adult lives.  Mine just has more of a smoky aftertaste.