A recent post at my friend Marie’s blog made me think about travelling abroad, which of course brought to mind fond memories. Funny how most travel memories involve food, at least for me.
I never got around to writing the all-encompassing narrative that was our trip to Japan. Such a task would be a lot of work to do properly. Perhaps random anecdotes are a better route to go.
Of course it would only be two hours after writing I didn’t feel as though I’d found Japan that I’d actually find it.
The tourists’ guide provided by Kyoto had a listing for a cozy restaurant serving traditional Japanese cuisine with a wide selection of sake and other liquors. Deb was in the mood for tempura so off we went in search of Sasanuma.
We took the subway to Gion (the Geisha district) and found the appropriate alley to turn into. This is different, I thought as soon as I looked down the alley. I had found Japan. The alleys aren’t very noticeable during daylight. But at night they’re like another world. Signs for shops, restaurants, and nightclubs are stacked four stories high in front of each building. While on the main streets, English translations were nearly everywhere, here there were none. What English there was, was there to be trendy; phrases with vague meanings. Was this a sign for a restaurant or a brothel? During the day the alleys appear mostly deserted. At night, people hurry to and fro, usually singly but sometimes in small groups. Deb informed me that some of the clubs were private and required an invitation.
There are more alleys than you can see from the main streets. The labyrinthine twists and intersections add to the otherworldly feel. We had a lot of trouble finding the place, mostly because we were never sure where we were on our map. That all the signs were in Kanji didn’t help. When we finally found our bearings we still couldn’t find the place. The listing mentioned kabobs, and we found the kabob place, maybe that was it. We asked the proprietor. Actually, we blithered like foreigners and pointed to the listing in the guide. He nodded and led us… next door.
In our defense, the only sign was painted on a lantern set upon a small stool. The door was blocked by a hanging cloth, slit up the middle. Deb tells me this signifies the establishment is open. This seems backwards to me. Why block the entrance when you’re open?
I slid the door to Sasanuma open and we walked into a room half the size of a bedroom. By cozy, the guide meant Sasanuma had eight seats in front of a counter. Two regulars left as we took our stools leaving us alone with the owner. His English was far superior to our Japanese, but it wasn’t fluent either.
Deb ordered shochu. The owner recommended one made from potatoes. He enquired what I would like to drink. I said I’d have what Deb was having. He didn’t understand and then I did something I still can’t believe. I started to repeat what I had just said, only louder. Half way through the sentence I started laughing at myself. Eventually, we understood each other.
We expected the potato shochu to be like vodka, but it wasn’t at all. There was a slight potato flavor with a hint of licorice. A little odd, but not at all unpleasant. Deb ordered tako (octopus) tempura and I ordered pork. The owner said there was no pork that day, it was chicken. He prepared our dinner on small stove in the corner of the room, first Deb’s then mine.
“Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he said.
“Motto ii,” (“better”, literally “more good”) we said, after looking it up.
He asked us if this was our first time in Japan, how long we’d been in the country. I told him we were on our honeymoon, wondering if he’d understand. “Ah,” he cried. “Very happy!” He asked us if we liked sashimi (raw fish). He cut us six pieces of magura (tuna) and presented them on a plate that looked as if it came off the Food Network. He pointed to the small green lump on the plate and said, “This Japanese horseradish.”
“Wasabi,” I said.
“Hai, Wasabi!”
I ate the magura. It had an odd texture and the only thing I could taste was the wasabi.
The conversation moved along with only a couple of hitches. The biggest one came when he gave us some kimchi. I was under the impression that kimchi was fermented cabbage and other things, but what I ate was definitely protein and not vegetable. Turns out it was cod (and not cuttlefish as we were momentarily led to believe).
The owner was very kind to us. In addition to the sashimi and kimchi and a dish of pickled lotus root, he gave us a small ornamental umbrella as a wedding gift. The umbrella was in a cupboard on our side of the counter. To get it, he had to slip out a small door on his side and run through the courtyard and around to our side of the building.
After dinner we asked for some sake. He poured us flutes of a sake he said was from Kyoto and was the very best there was. He might be biased, but what we tasted certainly supported his claim.
We talked about baseball, mostly about the Japanese players in the major leagues. We learned that Hanshin Tigers supporters are “crazy”. Whatever ugly tourist points I had accumulated were erased when I mentioned Barry Bonds was well short of Sadaharu Oh’s home run record.
“You know Sadaharu?” he asked, incredulously.
I think the Japanese who’ve not traveled abroad would be surprised by how much Japanese and other Asian cultures have penetrated the West.
Neppa. That’s Japanese for heatwave. It’s 35 degrees in Kyoto every day this week. That’s 95 in American. The heat index is well over 100. All that leads to a very sweaty, very dehydrated and very cranky Scott. Deb likes to walk places. I’m from the Midwest, we only walk to the car. I think for the rest of the week my touring will be limited to early morning, evening or indoor places within two blocks of the subway. My tolerance is ended once I’ve sweat through my shirt. Which the past two days has been about two hours.
I drank the Pocari Sweat! If you’ve been to Engrish.com, you’ll have seen this beverage and wondered at the name. It’s an electrolyte drink ala Gatorade but without all the sugar and a very slight citrus flavor. Quite nice, actually.
Deb found some amusing Engrish yesterday. I’m sure she’ll have the photo up on her blog soon.
There are 11 channels on the TV in the hotel. For $10 a day we can get the day pass to watch movies, sports, etc. Of the animation options, 5 of the 6 are Tom and Jerry. What’s up with that?
Right now, Deb is going to a particular handbag store. I guess these guys used to make sails but now they make handbags out of canvas. For some reason they’re very chic and women line up to get into the store.
Things seem to work backwards in Japan, at least to the way this Amerika-jin would expect. It took a little while to figure out the subway ticket machines because first I tried to tell it where I wanted it to go. The machine wanted me to put in some money so it could tell me how far I could go for that amount. On buses, you pay when you get to your destination.
Despite all the signage in Japanese and the driving on the wrong left side of the road, Kyoto doesn’t seem very foreign to me. I suppose that’s because it’s a major city and things would be different outside. On the whole, there are more similarities than differences.
Our hotel is exceedingly Western. We ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, which is more American than anything. I had Spaghetti Borognese. There’s no ‘L’ sound in Japanese so it gets translated as an ‘R’. Often the ‘L’ doesn’t make it back when it’s translated to English. The tourists’ guide to Kyoto the hotel gave us is filled with advertisements for non-Japanese places. There’s an English Pub we’ll be going to just to sample their 60 labels of single malt. (That’s whisky, scotch to the heathens).
I expect tomorrow we’ll get some bento boxes for lunch. I fear even that won’t feel foreign as I used to get them all the time when I lived in Seattle.
Prices are about the same as in the States. The things that are more expensive you generally are getting what you pay for. I keep having problems with the money. The smallest bill is the 1000 Yen note. I have a tendency to think of it as $1 when, in fact, it’s $10. I almost tried to pay $150 for a $15 item today.
I’m not given much chance to try out what little Japanese I know. That’s probably for the best. This morning I said “Konbanwa” to the lady at a Kiosk (that’s a proper noun). That means good evening. I did correct myself and say “Ohayo gozaimasu”. She smiled. Crazy foreigners.
When I do get a chance to speak Japanese I’ve been forgetting the words. This morning at a flea market, when asked how many bunches of grapes (or possibly kilograms) I wanted, I held up a finger and said, “One.” Upon seeing the amount of grapes I held up two fingers and said “Two.” I know the words for one and two are “ichi” and “ni”. Heck, I can count to 99 (only because I keep forgetting the word for hundred). Just looked it up, it’s “hyaku”. If I remember that I can count to 999. And if I remember “sen”…
Have arrived in Kyoto. It’s not 9:24 PM local time but going on 7:30 AM for our internal clocks. Flight time from Chicago to Narita was 12 hours. Total time from Chicago to our hotel in Kyoto was 19 1/2 hours.
What I learned today:
Boeing 777s are cool, especially the LCD screen on the seat in front of you when it’s in map mode.
Teenage girls sound the same regardless what language they’re speaking.
The cabbie is a global species.
The Shinkansen (aka Bullet Train) goes very very fast, very smoothly, and does so suprisingly quietly.
The service in Japan is phenominal, bordering on embarrasing. I thought slavery was outlawed.
While the currency conversion is easy, about 100 Yen to the dollar, the numbers are so big that it gets confusing. When paying a $17 cab fare after nearly 20 hours of travel, it’s difficult to distinguish between 2,000 and 20,000 when your brain is thinking 20.
The word that you hear at the end of every PA announcement in Japanese is “Please”.
Oyasuminasai.