Becky Goes Out to Dinner

February 26, 2007

For practically all of February, I have spent weekends at home. This was due in part to my cold, due in part to a lack of a social calendar.

The only thing I’ve done socially has involved dinners. Two weeks ago, on Friday, I went out with the English-speaking staff at Nogyou for a Shinnen Enkai—a New Year’s Drinking Party. Granted, it mid-February, really too late for anything but Chinese New Year—but better late than never.

I don’t know how much I’ve mentioned Drinking Parties, but they happen quite often at my schools. The name actually makes it sound wilder than it is. Basically, the staff of a school (this can be the whole staff or just a part of the staff) goes out to a really nice restaurant, which serves all-you-can-drink alcohol for two hours. Rest assured, the alcohol flows quite freely, but it’s no college binge and no one gets really out of hand. The party usually begins around 6:30 and ends at 9:00. It’s a good chance to socialize and get to know people you normally wouldn’t talk to very much.

I’ve been to 6 of these since the school year began (two for Nogyou, two for Kushira Shogyo, and two for the office—none for Kogyou). I look forward to them because I like to socialize with new people. But I also like that there’s a time limit. I can leave after 2 and a half hours—I don’t have to stay forever and all night. As far as drinking goes, it honestly depends on what alcohol they serve. If they’re serving nothing but beer, sake, and shochu straight, I drink juice or tea, because I don’t like straight alcohol. If they have mixed drinks, such as chuhais (shochu and fruit juice), I have two drinks. Usually two drinks won’t do anything more than get me slightly hyper.

Anyway, back to the very late New Year’s Party. Now, I like Nogyou’s parties, because they’re smaller and more intimate—six people as opposed to, say, 50 in Kushira Shogyou’s parties. As such, I also have more say in what we have to eat. I had mentioned that I’d never had shabu shabu, and so they arranged to have the party at a shabu shabu restaurant.

Shabu shabu is cook-your-own-food restaurant where you boil pieces of meat and vegetables. These kinds of restaurants are tremendously fun (and expensive). If you’ve seen Lost in Translation, I’m pretty sure the characters got into a fight at a shabu shabu restaurant.

When I went in, there were already two giant pots of water and two platters filled with vegetables, tofu, and udon (thick white Japanese noodles). The stove was built into the table and the fire was on. I fiddled with the range until the fire was hot. When everyone gathered, we ordered our drinks. They had chuhai in this restaurant and I ordered a peach one. It was very good. I couldn’t taste the alcohol at all.

After our toast, the waitress brought in platters of meat: raw pork and beef, cut into thin strips. The water was already boiling nicely, so we stuck the meat in. We moved the meat back and forth underneath the water, swish, swish—or, as the Japanese say, shabu, shabu—and soon the meat changed colors. We dipped them in a tangy sauce and they were delicious.

We ate the meat and vegetables and kimchi appetizer. I had my second chuhai, grape-flavored this time, good but not nearly as nice as the peach one. After we had eaten all the meat and most of the vegetables, we added udon and ate that too. The waitress then took our cooking water and made a rice and egg porridge out of it. For dessert we had mochi ice cream, pieces of persimmon sliced up, and coffee and tea.

All of this added up to a heavy price tag: 4200 yen each. (About $42.00.) That is, of course, the downside to Enkais—they’re expensive. But I had fun and enjoyed myself.

This weekend, on Saturday, Rachelle and I went out to Nero for dinner, since neither of us felt like cooking. Nero is a very nice local restaurant that I’ve been to—let’s see, this was my third time. The very first time I went was my first night in Kanoya.

At the end of the restaurant, the walls are glass and there are a few trees or vines on the outside of the building. At night, when the trees are in shadow and Christmas lights sparkle, it feels a little like eating inside an enchanted forest. For 1200 yen you get a main dish, an all-you-can-eat soup/salad/appetizer/desert bar, and an all-you-can-drink (non-alcoholic) drink bar.

First we got our drinks. I always get apple vinegar. Always, always. Apple vinegar is either a very light vinegar or else vinegar and apple juice mixed together. In the case of Nero, I think it’s the former, because it was very pale, almost white. To me, it tastes like apple juice with a bit of a kicker: a little sour, a little sweet, a little zingy.

At the appetizer end, Nero has some of the best fresh tofu in Kanoya. It’s very soft and on Saturday it was served with an ume plum sauce that was mildly sour. I also had edamame, a slice of pizza (too late I realized that it had tuna on it), bread, cheese and bacon fries, and two cups of soup. This may sound like a lot, but you have to think in Japanese proportions. The pizza, for instance, was no bigger than a personal pan pizza, was thin as paper, and had been cut into at least 20 different slices. My portion was only slightly bigger than a splinter. The bread, too, were the size of croutons. I’m not exaggerating.

The main dish was bigger. Rachelle ordered eggplant spaghetti with meat sauce (one of the more normal Italian dishes—no I’m not kidding either), and I had bibimba. Bibimba is a Korean dish. They serve it in a stone bowl that’s sizzling hot. Inside was rice, meat, bean sprouts, kimchi (spicy pickled Korean vegetables), dried seaweed, and the raw yolk of an egg. I mixed the ingredients together, letting the stone cook the egg, and ate it. It was actually pretty good and a lot less strange than it sounds. Rachelle didn’t find her pasta quite so appealing. Let me tell you, finding good Italian in Japan is hard.

There was a small desert bar with coffee Jell-O and whipped cream (a modern Japanese staple in buffets), tiny, tiny cream puffs (slightly bigger than the head of a Q-tip), and vanilla wafers.

You know, to me, Japan is not an exotic place anymore. It’s real, normal, and boring at times. But the food never ceases to remind me that I’m not at home. Even things that are normal are slightly off. It’s an endless source of fun and amusement.

Shogatsu

January 11, 2008

Happy New Year!

I still get to say Happy New Year, because in Japan the holiday goes on until the 15th, although the festivities aren’t exactly non-stop. And we certainly don’t get any free vacation days past the 3rd of January. Still, Happy New Year everyone, or as we say in Japan, Shinnen Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu. Yeah, the English version is shorter.

And now onto business.

Shogatsu is the Japanese name for New Year, but check the phrase, you’ll notice the term doesn’t come up. That’s because Shogatsu refers to specifically the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of January. Yeah, it’s kind of confusing, but look at it this way: Shogatsu refers to the days I actually got off. Because, rest assured, I had to get up bright and early on January 4th (a Friday) and go to the office, even though I had nothing to do once I got there.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll begin with New Year’s Eve.

All I know about traditional Japanese New Year’s Eve is that you’re supposed to eat long soba, or buckwheat noodles, for long life. Of course, they know how we celebrate New Year’s in America and call it a “countdown party.” But I, for my part, celebrated in neither the Western nor Japanese way. In fact, I’m loath to say I celebrated. I watched Letters from Iwo Jima. When the movie ended, it was 12:30. The moment was over and I was too depressed from the movie to even open the bottle of Martinelli’s apple cider I had bought from Kagoshima City the day before. So I said “Happy New Year” to myself and went to bed.

Nor was January 1, 2008 very interesting. I studied Japanese and wrote my story. Around mid-afternoon, I got cabin fever, so, despite it being rainy and cold, I took a long walk around the city. My thinly veiled excuse was to see which stores were open and which were closed. As it turned out, only convenient stores and drug stores seemed to be open. I think the gas stations may have been opened as well, and the buses were running. But most every store, restaurant, and café seemed to be closed. Once I passed a bank, and the automatic doors were moving open and shut without reason. (I wasn’t the reason; I was on the other side of the street.) I bought a can of some steaming red bean milk from one of the vending machines. And that was the most exciting thing that happened to me.

January 2nd was my birthday. I really didn’t have any plans for celebrating, having spent all my good ideas on Christmas Eve. In the morning, I spoke to my family, and that was nice. But around mid-afternoon, which is really a dull time, I began to feel very lonely. I wanted someone to acknowledge my birthday, someone to celebrate with. I went to a coffee shop, but that didn’t help much, though the atmosphere was warm and the people were friendly. I felt more acutely alone with people around.

Finally, on January 3rd, I got to do something.



I had been invited to go bird-watching by Shinkoda-sensei and Kubo-sensei (both older women from Kushira Shogyou) and I accepted. So, early that Thursday morning, I dressed myself warmly in layers and, at the last moment, brought my bottle of Martinelli’s so that I’d have something to contribute. (And something exotic at that.) They picked me up near my office and we drove to Lake Oosumi, near the KAPIC Center (where I made gingerbread houses).

There was a large crowd of birdwatchers and they had set up a picnic area by the lake. A few dogs were roaming around. Later we’d have nabe, but for now we strolled around the lake, bundled warm in our coats, and looked for birds. Winter might seem an odd time for bird-watching, but we were as far south as you can get in Japan without crossing major chunks of ocean and all the birds had migrated to us. So really it made perfect sense.

I walked with Shinkoda-sensei. She told me the names of birds we saw and I checked this against my Japanese-English dictionary. Sagi. Heron. Kamo. Duck. There was also a little bird with a yellow breast called a kisekirei. And the same bird with a white chest called hakusekirei.



After watching birds, we all sat down for lunch. We had nabe, which just means pot in Japan, usually referring to a clay pot filled with soup, vegetables, meat, and whatever else you wished to throw in. They had heated a big pot of this under an open fire. Kubo-sensei and Shinkoda-sensei brought out onigiri (riceballs) and apples and various goodies. I was glad I brought my novelty cider. We toasted my birthday and drank down the cider.

Later, we went to KAPIC, where they had an Asian Cultural museum. I had been there before, but I played with the musical instruments, with the costumes, with the poles for a bamboo dance (reminiscent of a game of jump rope). And after that, Shinkoda-sensei showed me to Tasaki Shrine, where she instructed me to ring a bell and throw a coin for good luck. She was also proud of the 900 year old tree the shrine boasted. Then she bought me cotton candy from a vendor at the shrine.