|
Chapter 1: Walking the Roji
I celebrated my arrival
in Kyoto with a dinner of grilled eel, a
sublime delicacy in Japan. In the water the
fish resembles a ferocious jagged-toothed
snake. But when sizzled over hot charcoal it
looks like a fillet of sole that has spent
the winter in Palm Beach. The skin turns
crisp and smoky and the fatty white flesh,
basted with a sweet soy syrup, becomes
deeply tanned and as succulent as foie gras.
The restaurant was located in a cheery yellow mall beneath Kyoto
Station, home to the southern bus terminal,
north-south subway line, and Japan Railroad
Tokaido Main, one of the four major bullet
train routes. Being coatless and having
underestimated how cold it gets in Kyoto in
early November after the sun goes down, I
had ducked into the mall in search of warmth
and something to eat.
The restaurant lay at the end of a long corridor lined with
inexpensive clothing emporiums, elegant
Japanese sweet shops, and trinket stores
selling sandalwood fans, pottery tea bowls,
and I Love Kyoto key chains. Like all the
other eateries in the area, the eel
restaurant displayed life-like plastic
models of the items on its menu in a
brightly lit picture window. I chose a small
wooden table for two in the back of the
restaurant and sat down in the chair facing
the kitchen. I was the only diner. The chef,
sporting a clean pressed white cotton band
around his forehead, came over to my table.
He was apparently also the waiter.
�Are you kmrmshtka?� asked the chef.
�Hmmm?� My eyebrows
shot up.
�What would you nsmsplka?� I giggled nervously, then bit my lower
lip. He gestured to the window and started
walking. I followed him outside. �Unagiijxwbrp?�
he asked. I began to tell him I wanted the
tray holding the single, not double, fillet
of grilled eel with rice, soup, and pickles,
but he interrupted.
�No English,� he said with a frown, shaking his head. I tapped my
finger several times against the glass in
front of the dinner I wanted, hoping he
might make the connection.
�Ah, ah,� he
exclaimed, pointing at the glass, �Unagixpxwz.�
I squinted and leaned toward the window to
read the plastic plaque marked with the
meal�s price in yen, then slowly wrote the
price on my palm with my index finger and
tapped the window again.
�Hai, hai,� he beamed, nodding vigorously. �Kirin?�
Now, that I understood.
�Yes,� I said loudly, as if increasing the volume might lead to an
increased understanding.
�Ladzkmttaka?� He
opened his hands as if holding an invisible
fire hydrant from top to bottom.
�Yes! � I boomed, not having the foggiest idea of what he had just
asked.
The double-size beer arrived quickly, along with a glass. It wasn�t
one of those huge Henry the VIII steins like
we get back home, but instead a teensy
tumbler, similar to what budget hotels in
America use for juice glasses at their
complimentary breakfast buffets. I filled
the glass and took a sip. The amber liquid
tasted bitter and refreshing.
After about ten minutes, dinner came to the table, looking identical
to its plastic counterpart. Unfortunately,
the eel�s texture was similar too. But the
accompanying steamed rice, pressed into the
shape of a chrysanthemum, had a clean,
delicate sweetness unlike any rice I had
ever tasted. The tray also held a plastic
bowl of miso soup, clear in parts and cloudy
in others. I stirred the mixture with the
tip of my chopsticks then picked up the bowl
and sipped the savory liquid enriched with
diced tofu and emerald wisps of wakame
seaweed.
In a shallow dish sat a small block of bean curd splashed with soy
sauce and topped with pinkish curls of dried
bonito that looked like pencil shavings. I
cut into the silky white cube and tried to
balance the craggy chunk on the slender
pieces of wood. It tumbled off. After trying
again, success was rewarded with the sweet
taste of milky custard mingled with dark soy
and smoky fish flakes. There were pickles
too, crisp neon yellow half-moons of sweet
daikon radish and crunchy slices of
eggplant. Although I had not expected
culinary brilliance from a mall restaurant,
dinner was exceeding expectations. The
ingredients were plain, but exceptional in
their purity and freshness.
As
I moved around my tray�sipping, plucking,
and crunching�I thought of all I had seen
that day. Exotic images flashed to mind,
including the painted orange gates of Yasaka
Shrine, shaped like giant croquet wickets.
There were the streetlights, heralding
�uh-oh� for north-south foot traffic and
�wheesh-wheesh� for east west. Ginkgo
trees fluttered banana-yellow leaves shaped
like tiny fans against the turquoise sky.
Red and white vending machines, clustered
near subway stations, glowed brightly with
offerings of beer, batteries, and cans of
hot sweet milk tea. In a tiny noodle shop
near Tea Bowl Lane, where pottery shops
flanked both sides of the street, I joined
mothers, children, and old men to slurp
thick starchy udon noodles from a bowl of
savory fish broth. At Kiyomizu-dera (Clear
Water Temple), a massive wooden structure
looming over the city against a backdrop of
vermilion maples, I stepped inside the main
hall to see the female Buddha of Mercy and
Compassion. Fabricated from gold, she stood
on a pedestal waving her �thousand arms�
in a dark room with slippery wooden floors
and smoky air pungent with the musky sweet
smell of incense. Afterward I drank cold
clear water from an aluminum ladle at the
Sound-of-Feathers Waterfall below the temple
with a crowd of boisterous schoolchildren,
then sampled a green tea butter cookie at a
gift shop in the mall beneath Kyoto Station.
Even the beer with dinner tasted new to me,
cleaner crisper, and less fizzy than what I
was used to back home. It had been a day of
pure exhilaration, an unexpected adrenaline
rush in anticipation of the exciting,
unpredictable, hopeful promise of Kyoto�my
new home. |
Victoria
Abbott Riccardi 
