Japan: Supper

In lieu of doing the whole of Nanowrimo this month, I promised myself that I would journal aggressively about my trip, documenting as much as my synapses could transmit.  I have since decided that instead of writing whole new posts about the experience, I'll just post (fresh, possibly delirious, late-night) excerpts from my journal instead.

"11:09pm, Tokyo time for now.

In the lobby of the Keio Plaza Hotel, there is a massive bank of mini cubby holes.  Each one is outfitted with tiny red and green led lights and in their prim rows, they flash like the lights on a runway.  I'm trying to work out what they mean: are all the green ones on the right signs that people are in their rooms and suitably occupied?  Using the TV?  The lights?  The bathrooms?  Making love?  Are the red ones a cry for help or a sign of malfunction?

We arrive past dinnertime; go up to put our things down in our bedroom, an otherwise regular twin bed setup with a toilet that promises to steam-cleanse the anus.  I'm tempted to try it one day.

Already, I'm feeling excited because suddenly we're free.  We can do anything we like.  We could run the streets of Shinjuku till 3am and no one could tell me otherwise.  But it's also an excitement through an odd sense of calm because I've realised why I'm here.  I'm not here to see all the sights or famous or historical things.  I'm here to try anything that calls out to me on the spur of the moment and to live.  To feel all the things I don't normally feel at home and to find stories wherever I wish.  I'm not spurred by the thought of must-sees.  I just want to experience a slice of life.

And so this first night, we decide to experience our slice of life across the road.  We cross the pedestrian crossing - "Sirty seconds only", the concierge tells us earnestly - and find ourselves in an alcove of shops and restauraunts that contains a minimart selling bits of everything and an organic bakery.  One of the cafes promises a delicious breakfast but we want dinner and so weave our way through the streets and basement alleys until we find Hanamidori, a restaurant crowded cosily with wooden tables under low light, where everyone is bent over bowls of steaming chicken hotpot.

A waiter with coffee-brown skin brings us to our table.  "No English menu", he says anxiously, but we don't care, we just point to the stuff we want.  We choose chicken hotpot and, to my delight, they have grilled mentaiko - a salty, slightly smoky cod roe still in its original sac. 

Remember that scene in Departures where the old funeral director grills puffer fish roe over a brazier?  They roll it in salt and gingerly hold the globules between their fingers before slurping them, through pursed lips.  And then the old man says, "This is so good, I hate myself."

I have been dying to replicate that scene and much to my mother's amusement, after brushing my mentaiko lightly with some lemon juice, I do.  Every nugget is a briny, gently charred morsel on my tongue.

The chicken hotpot is a performance in its own right.  At our table, the waiter, Myanmarese, gently heats a pot of unsalted stock with chunks of cooked chicken in it.

When it starts to steam, he sprinkles salt and spring onions in a shot glass and pours a ladleful of soup over them.  He gives us each a small, pure white chunk of chicken on the bone, squatting in an umami yuzu sauce.  Then, as we dutifully sip at our shotglasses, he tenderly places vegetables in the soup, rolls and dunks chicken balls from minced meat with a wooden spoon.

The last thing he puts in, after chunks of chicken meat and liver, is a thick slab of jelly (collagen?) that starts to melt almost immediately.  As it cooks down, the soup thickens, becomes delightfully fragrant and nourishing.  Inside this, the chunks of chicken are so clean and white and firm that even the fat is palatable.

We eat in silence, vegetables and meat and shotglass after shotglass of soup until my lips are slightly tacky from the richness of it.

Yuppies chain smoke cigarettes in the restaurants here, blowing plumes elegantly at the light fixtures.  One girl keeps shouting for the waitress - Sumimasennnn! - and orders so many dishes, I wonder how she will pay for them.

We leave, slightly glazed and smelling of tobacco.  The light pollution makes the 10pm air so unnaturally bright that it looks like dusk is suspended over the city.

We hit the minimart and for the first time in a long time, even though I have travelled, I feel like a complete tourist.  The little cakes in their clear plastic packaging - fat Baumkuchen and rummy marble cake, the racks of coffee in heated cans, ready for immediate consumption, even the packages of hundred yen tidbits makes me sigh and gasp.

I buy a Japanese action nail clipper (don't laugh, I'm bringing a whole bunch home for friends) and a pack of lightly puffed rice coated in a layer of chocolate so thin that it melts to nothing but a delicious aftertaste in the mouth.  We stroll back to the hotel, examine the bakery downstairs and make plans to buy a cheap fashion magazine for the free tote that is being sold with it, and then, as I'm wondering what to do with my chocolate rice puffs, we return to the room to find our last pleasant surprise of the night: hot water and a lacquer box of roasted brown rice tea.

Done, and done."