Blahgorrhea

As I was peeling a pummelo yesterday, I thought to myself, “This fruit is a pain in the ass to peel.” It’s got a tough, almost impenetrable outer skin, underneath which there is a thick layer of bitter pith that is practically impossible to rip off. But once you get through those layers, you are awarded with sweet yummy fruit, well worth the effort it took. Just like me. If you were a fruit, what would you be?

Pickles. I love them, and Japan has some of the best pickles in the world (as well as some damn good kim chee borrowed from Korea). Better still, they serve you pickles at every meal, including breakfast. Different pickles for different meals or dishes, and always just a small amount — just enough to help with digestion. Even better, all of the markets have tons of different pickles for sale with samples of them all; you could have a small pickle meal just walking through the markets. Radishes, carrots, burdock, cucumbers, things I can’t identify but that look like sea monkeys. And they all taste so good, fermented in miso, sake and other exotic brine ingredients.

A couple things I appreciated about the Japanese meal time experience: towels, tea, and the check. The meal starts off with a warm towel to wipe your hands with. No need to travel to the bathroom to clean your hands before eating (where you would probably end up with cold wet hands anyway). And then you get a cup of hot tea, which typically stays full throughout the meal. With the cold weather outside, this hot tea is a welcome respite, and most places serve a good brew of dark green tea. One place served smoked tea, which was impressively good, and if I knew how to distinguish smoked tea from the hundreds of other teas available at the markets, I would have brought some back for myself. Finally, when you are finished ordering, the check is left at the table and when you decide to leave, you take the check to the register, settle up and take off. For a foreigner especially, this makes the conclusion of a meal easy, but it also serves another good purpose: to separate the food handlers (the wait staff) from the money handlers (the hosting staff). Makes a nice psychological division as well as a practical cleanliness one.

I’m frustrated at Japan. This whole trip has seemed like a total waste. I had this grand impossible vision of my vacation being just like A Cook’s Tour, eating crazy new meals that were all just fantastic. I haven’t had a good meal in two days, and it is really starting to bother me. The worst part about it is that I’m sure I could make things somewhat easier on myself if I just had the balls. I could just waltz right into some joint that in no way caters to foreigners and ask for “chef’s special.” Or take the guidebook along and show the waiter Kanji words of food I might want. But what if I walk into a tempura joint and ask for yakitori. Then I look like a dumb ass American and bring even more disdain than I would have received walking into a place I didn’t belong. See, for all the talk of Japan being welcoming to people and the wait staff at restaurants expecting us to be awkward and ignorant, I get this strong sense every time I wander down a dimly lit alley that I know is lined with tiny restaurants that I don’t belong there and am not welcome at all. And that is part of what is so frustrating to me right now. I just want to have a good meal.

I am definitely getting the hang of things being in a foreign land, but I am so happy that Jen is here to experience it all with me. The worst part of being alone was that I could not share the new things with her. I was unable to fully appreciate what I was experiencing without her to share it with. We are now in a temple in the mountain town of Koya-san. The monks open their temples to visitors, prepare two meals and include them in prayers in the morning. We just finished our enormous vegetarian meal with all sorts of strange tofu-based foods. Jen didn’t eat all that much because she didn’t like the mushy consistency of the tofu, but I had a ball trying all the new things. The dessert was a thick gelatin flavored of orange. It did not melt in your mouth the way Jell-o does, and you could cut it with a knife. I had fun playing with it as I ate. [Continue reading…]

I arrived in Osaka by shinkansen, the famous Japanese bullet train, which I suppose was quite fast. I got frustrated quickly trying to navigate yet another station (Shin-Osaka) and realizing that I needed to take a subway to get to the hotel. There seemed to be even fewer English signs than in Tokyo. I stopped at the tourist help desk for help, but I still needed to ask a couple more people for help doing things like purchasing subway tickets. I suppose I should feel proud of myself for having done as much as I have in such a foreign land, but instead I am just frustrated. [Continue reading…]

Today was a good food day. I went to a recommended tonkatsu place for lunch (Katsukura), on the 14th floor of a department store. They give you toasted sesame seeds in a mortar to crush up and mix with their special sauce. Barley in their rice added a nice texture, and their smoked tea had great undertones. This was probably the only pork dish I would like, though it was definitely fattier than I would have hoped for. Still it tasted good. I ordered the “extra special” cutlet, which was from some name brand pig. I wonder what the usual pig tastes like. This was another place that give you tons of food: cabbage, pickles (yum!), rice and soup accompany the pork. They offered free refills of the side dishes, but I had a hard enough time just finishing what I was served. [Continue reading…]

I managed to get some things done this afternoon that needed doing. I bought stamps for a family friend, made hotel reservations in Nara and Kyoto, and got a train ticket to Osaka. For a city that is really hard to navigate, the officials make it especially difficult to find the tourist information centers. The two I went to today were on the 10th and 8th floors of the office buildings. That is certainly not what a tourist would expect, and I was asked to fill out a questionnaire saying so at the 10th floor office. [Continue reading…]

I managed to find my way to Tsukiji market this morning. And I sort of got suckered into eating at a restaurant. The owner came out when he saw me peek in to tell me what was on the menu. I think he really just wanted to practice his English, since he wrote down a bunch of Japanese phrases for me and explained them all to me. He was very nice though, and his fish was quite good. I had a tuna sashimi plate with tea, miso soup and rice. It was a big mound of raw tuna with a few pieces of seared tuna on the side. The raw stuff still tasted like the sea. This was my breakfast, but hey, when the fish comes in fresh at 7am, there is nothing wrong with eating it raw at 9am.

I arrived in Tokyo in a daze. Getting to the train and getting my ticket were easy (mainly because the people at the Japan Rail desk helped me), but once I stepped off they train, I was in a whole new world. People flew, no swarmed, past me as I wandered trying to find the transfer to my next line. I stood in a cloud of doubt on the rush hour crowded train, before disembarking at my stop. Hoping for signs for the correct exit, I got lucky and found myself at street level, immersed in a crisp night air filled with neon light energy and more swarms. [Continue reading…]