Japan Part III: The Food

It was a dark and stormy night.

Okay - that's certainly a bit cliched and dramatic.  But it was dark (what kind of night isn't?), and it was raining.  It was also cold, and there wasn't a sole to be found on the streets of Okayama.  It was my first night in Japan.  I had taken the train up from Takamatsu, where I had landed that afternoon.  Okayama wasn't my final port of call, nor was it the city I was most excited to visit.  But it was my first night in Japan, dammit, and I was going to see what Okayama had to offer in terms of food, drink, and other excitement.  The answer was quickly discernable: not very much.

The streets of Okayama were cold, rainy, and, most perceptibly, empty.  One of the main drags, through the middle of a which flows a rather nice canal, was as quiet as a snowy mountainside in midwinter.  One could imagine it being a nice place for a stroll, but on this particular night it was just a cold place for a stroll, with very few, if any, enticing places for sustenance.

My exuberant traveling spirit somewhat dampened, I eventually turned back towards my hotel, hoping against hope that I would find somewhere - anywhere - to grab a quick dinner.  All thoughts of an authentic, amazing Japanese culinary experience had yielded to the desire for two things: food, and warmth -- perhaps not in that order, but as quickly as possible.

I ducked into what I hoped was a restaurant, and found myself in a small room, with just a countertop bar, and (of course) nobody in it.  An older woman was futzing about in the kitchen preparing food for the evening's patrons (why she needed to prepare was beyond me, given the lack of street traffic).  She came out and smiled, gestured me into a chair at the bar, and said in Japanese what must've been "What would you like?"

I looked around, decided that there was no way she would have an English menu, so I just shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to convey that I was indeed hungry, but didn't know how to describe what I would like to eat and also didn't care that much as long as it was hot.  In China, this probably wouldn't have worked.  Miraculously, however, she nodded, smiled again, and glided back into the kitchen from where I soon heard the sizzling of food being prepared.  She came out with some tempura style somethings (not meat, perhaps potato or some other root vegetable, I'm not really sure).  I managed to reason out the Japanese for "hot sake", which she gladly poured for me, along with a beer for herself.  And I started to eat.

The tempura was followed by some soup called oden, with all sorts of fun vegetables and meat inside it.  After that, she fried up some yakisoba noodles, prepared on the hibachi grill with soy sauce, cabbage, carrots, and other veggies.  Each "course" was filling enough (and delicious enough) to satiate my appetite, but after each I made the "mistake" of clearing my plate (I couldn't help it), which signaled to her that I wanted more.

That was my introduction to both food and hospitality in Japan.  That one meal changed my entire perspective on the trip -- I'm sure I would've come around anyway, after a good night's sleep in Okayama and a train ride (everyone knows how trains can cure any depression for me) up to Osaka the next day.  But her willingness to just cook for me, without being able to ask what I wanted to eat, made all the difference for a cold, tired traveler on a rainy night in Okayama.  Throughout the meal, she sat with me, sipping her lager as I nursed my sake.  She tried to make small talk, but most of the time we were both content just to sit, understanding that we couldn't really communicate with each other effectively.

That was, as they say, the tip of the iceberg.  From Okayama I went to Osaka, where I embarked on a mission for okinomiyaki, an Osaka speciality sometimes known as Japanese pizza.  The joint I had been directed to by the New York Times travel section had been, to my chagrine, torn down.  But I quickly found another buzzing "pizza" hut, frying up delectable and large saucers of cabbage, potato, egg, veggies, pork, some barbecue style mayo sauce, and crunch fish flakes.  It was, hands down, the best thing I had in Japan (along with the other, much cheaper, okinomiyaki I found in Nara a few days later).

Other culinary highlights included the Nishiki Food Market in Kyoto - a long, narrow open market full of fish vendors, tofu donut makers, and other oddities that I couldn't even figure out.  I sampled some "street sashimi", several yummy nuggets of raw tuna marinated in two different ways.  This was, surprisingly, the only raw fish I ate in Japan.  I perhaps naively assumed that sushi was more ubiquitous in Japan than it was elsewhere, but it's just as much of a delicacy there (if not more so) than it is in the US.  So unless you're prepared to fork over a large wad of yen, sushi is probably not the ideal meal, even in Japan.

I went to Honke Owariya, a noodle house in Kyoto that has existed since 1465.  The cold soba noodles were served in 5 small bowls, stacked on top of each other, along with a dish of eight or so "toppings" including egg, shitake mushroom, spring onion, and shrimp tempura, with which one could make five little "make your own" noodle plates.

These are takoyaki, balls of dough and octopus in a tangy sauce.  They didn't appeal to me at first, but after trying them at a mom and pop shop in Nara, I can say I'm a fan.

Some gyoza and ramen near the train station in Takamatsu.  Sprinkled in between were random restaurants stumbled upon in the same ilk as the first one in Okayama, as well as a dinner of fried meat and veggies (delish, but heavy) with a Japanese friend of a guy I met at the hostel I stayed in Kyoto.  All in all, the food was terrific, if not initially a bit difficult to find.