Rice, Noodle, Fish (35 page)

In Noto, fish sauce goes back to the eighth century, predating soy sauce on the peninsula by hundreds of years. Though shoyu became the predominant umami-enhancing condiment of Japan,
ishiri
remains a linchpin of true Noto cuisine. The region produces two types of fish sauce, depending on which side of the peninsula you live on. On the west coast, where anchovies and mackerel are abundant, they produce the cheaper, somewhat harsher
ishiru
. On the east coast, where some of Japan's finest squid spend time in the channel between Noto and Toyama,
ishiri
is king.

To make
ishiri
, Toshihiro would salt hundreds of pounds of squid guts at a time, leaving them to ferment for two, three, sometimes up to five years (the longer the ferment, the deeper the umami flavor). He would then press the guts to extract the liquid, bottle it, and store it for use at the inn. At the end, you have a liquid as dark as night and as fragrant as a laundry basket of old socks, but with a sweet, dense concentration of amino acids perfect for stews and sauces and, of course, for fermenting other products. In the totem pole of global fish sauces,
ishiri
sits squarely at the top.

Soon Toshihiro became celebrated for his
ishiri
. Customers, most raised on soy sauce and who had never tasted Japanese fish sauce, fell in love with the flavor. The governor of Ishikawa designated Toshihiro with the prefecture's only Takumi award, a distinction reserved for the top class of Japanese artisans. Meanwhile, Tomiko's reputation as a guardian of Noto's culinary heritage grew (she would go on to be one of ten women from guesthouses across Japan recognized for passing on local traditions to the next generation), and the inn became famous for its dedication to a way of eating that some in the area thought was lost and many in Japan never knew existed in the first place.

Normally, a son would inherit this world created by Mom and Dad and be expected to carry on the family reputation through the business they built. Toshihiro and Tomiko never had a son, though, so the duty fell instead to their eldest daughter, Chikako.

From a young age, Chikako was an independent girl. She played sports, which allowed her to travel around the region and later to other parts of Japan—Kanazawa, Tokyo, Akita. When she was twelve, her table tennis team received an invite to play in a tournament in Fukui, 250 kilometers south of Noto, but no parents or chaperones could make the trip. Instead, Chikako organized everything—the train tickets, the hotel, the tournament details—and took her eight teammates on a weekend road trip to play Ping-Pong.

Chikako went to university in Kyoto and studied to be a teacher, but dedicated most of those years living outside Noto to a mixture of work and partying. She took a job at a hotel, serving breakfast for four hours before school, then dinner for six hours after class let out. On the weekends, she worked weddings—massive, elaborate banquets where she learned the ins and outs of service. She studied full-time and still earned $3,000 a month, establishing a rhythm of hard work and quiet determination that would follow her back to Noto and beyond.

(Michael Magers, lead photographer)

As the oldest daughter, Chikako had two primary responsibilities: to inherit the inn her parents owned and to assume the onus of the family name. The former is standard practice in family-based businesses across Japan but the latter is an old Noto tradition that comes with a host of loaded social responsibilities: pitching in with seasonal events, gifting money at weddings and funerals, and generally maintaining a strong, continuous presence for the family in the local community. Chikako accepted her fate, considered it an unwritten contract between parents and daughter, but before she settled down in Noto for the long haul, she wanted to see more of the world. She asked her parents if she could go to Australia, and they said no. The next year she bought a plane ticket, secured a passport, and organized a visa. A week before her flight, she told her parents she was off to Australia, with or without their blessing. Before she left, they made her promise that she'd be back in a year.

In Australia, she kept up the kind of lifestyle she'd started in her college years in Kyoto, working multiple jobs, studying English, sleeping on occasion. She organized a homestay with a family just outside Sydney, and even when she moved out a few months later, they continued to invite her to barbecues and family events, where she practiced English, watched rugby, and slowly became acquainted with the family's twenty-five-year-old son.

Ben Flatt grew up in Sofala, a gold-mining town two hundred kilometers northwest of Sydney. Ben's first job was cooking at his parents' restaurant, a French-Italian café with a blackboard menu where most of the ingredients came from the family's backyard. He learned from an early age never to name the animals, because one day his mom or dad would ask him to step out back and take its life. His dad was an eccentric type—he would go on to a career as
a writer under the pen name Captain Chaos—but his parents were good cooks and hard workers, and Ben picked up the passion at an early age. His parents eventually sold their restaurant, and Ben took off for Sydney to pursue his own culinary career. He spent the next few years cooking at trattoria around the city, slowly falling in love with rustic Italian food.

Pasta wasn't his only muse at the time, though. He and Chikako started dating a few months after she arrived in Australia, spending what little free time both of them had with each other. When her year was up, Chikako made good on her promise to her parents and prepared to return to Noto. She felt strongly for Ben, but she also knew that she couldn't back away from her duty to the family. When Ben said he would go with her, she hesitated. “I don't think you understand the world I'm going back to.”

Ben wasn't fazed. He had traveled and worked around Asia, lived on his own for years, and in his own way was every bit as independent and determined as the woman he was pursuing. Shortly after Chikako left, he packed up his life in Australia and set coordinates for Noto, arriving on the doorstep of her parents' inn with most of his life in tow. Toshihiro and Tomiko liked the young man from Australia, but were surprised to find out that he was dating their daughter. A few weeks after arriving, with Chikako translating for him, Ben asked Toshihiro for his daughter's hand in marriage. Dad said no: Ben was not Japanese, was not from Noto, and couldn't possibly understand the life that Chikako had in front of her. Chikako was inheriting not just an inn but an entire life circumscribed by the rhythms and rituals of a land Ben knew nothing about. It would be too hard for everyone, he said.

But Ben was undeterred. He told Chikako and her parents that he could live anywhere, that he wasn't afraid of Japan or Noto or the culture the rest of the family was working to preserve. To
prove it, he stayed. He studied Japanese and helped around the inn, especially in the kitchen. Three months after Ben arrived, Toshihiro presented him with a Japanese chef's knife, a peace offering in a struggle he knew he couldn't win.

A few months later Chikako and Ben were married in Kenroken in Kanazawa, one of Japan's most beautiful gardens. The reception was held in the old shogun's summer residence, with a menu handwritten by Chikako. Japanese tradition has it that the bride shouldn't be seen laughing or drinking or generally enjoying herself on her wedding day, but a photo from the afternoon shows Toshihiro pouring Chikako a glass of sake, the bride smiling widely.

米 麺 魚

Flatt's Inn sits on a bluff in Notocho overlooking an inlet on the Sea of Japan, a two-story home fronted by a dense forest and surrounded in the back by a large, active garden with yuzu and sudachi lime and persimmon trees, rows of leeks and cabbage, beans and daikon, and a large cherry tree that hangs over a tiny wooden bench, where, on a clear morning like the ones after it's been raining for a week and everything around Noto has that brave new sparkle, you can see across the channel to the outline of mountains that loom over Toyama.

You enter Flatt's through a corridor of stone steps and lush foliage. Inside, you'll find four traditional ten-tatami-sized rooms (the mats also serve as measurements) with squat rectangular tables, wooden-backed chairs that sit directly on the tatami, and no other decoration of note besides a dispenser for hot tea and cups for sipping. The restaurant, used by both guests and day visitors, has four tables that sit low to the ground, where diners eat on the floor; an
irori
, a charcoal fireplace used for cooking; long strings of produce—persimmons, radishes, chilies—in various stages of drying that dangle from the ceiling like garden necklaces; and large bay
windows with generous views of the backyard and the sea in the distance. There are two main baths at Flatt's, an outdoor wooden tub with a sprawling sea view and an indoor stone bath for when snow covers the ground and bathing outdoors is too difficult.

The
ryokan
stay is designed to be a fully immersive experience. Upon arrival, you trade your shoes and street clothes for slippers and a robe (called a
yukata
), your smartphone for a cup of sencha, your worries for a long, contemplative cleanse in the tub. Sip, soak, think, breathe: this is all that is required of you during your stay.

This being Japan, food is at the center of the
ryokan
experience. Dinner is normally an elaborate multicourse meal, often with a structure and progression borrowed from kaiseki. After strolling the gardens, after reading a chapter or two, after soaking your bones in simmering water, you sit down to a three-hour dinner heavy with signs of the season and tastes of the local terroir. While you eat, someone is back in your room, silently laying out a thick base of comforters and blankets on the tatami, which will embrace your warm, distended body as soon as you finish chewing. You will sleep like the dead, and when you wake up, there will be another elaborate multicourse feast set for you in the dining area, waiting to push your appetite to the limit. By the time you check out, the worries of the world long since evaporated, you will exhale deeply and turn to your partner. “We should do this more often.”

Flatt's Inn is like nearly every other traditional Japanese guesthouse you'll find in the rural corners of this country, except for one primary difference: the large Australian man with a bushy mustache working the stoves in the kitchen.

In many ways, Ben Flatt is the last person you would expect to fit into this world. He's twice the size of most of the customers he's serving, with the mouth of a marine and a tendency to wear his emotions like the kitchen scars that
cover his arms. He plays the guitar, rides a motorcycle on his days off, starts his morning with Vegemite spread thick on toast. In Noto, where people from Tokyo or Kyoto can appear like foreign invaders, Ben might as well be from another galaxy.

For many years, Chikako and Ben ran Flatt's just down the road in the space once occupied by Sannami. Chikako's parents were still working full-time back then, but in 1996 they built a new home for the inn, in the same lovely garden space where Flatt's is now. After getting married, Ben and Chikako didn't want to wait for her parents to retire before starting their own place, especially when it looked like Toshihiro and Tomiko could go on forever, so in 1997 they took over the old four-room
ryokan
and began to assert their own vision on the business. The food incorporated the flavors and ingredients of Noto, the same ones Chikako's parents were working so hard to produce, but through the filter of Ben's Italian cooking. Soon enough, both inns had obtained a measure of recognition for their respective cuisines. People would come for a weekend, stay one night at Sannami and one night at Flatt's, tasting the same ingredients in two very different expressions.

Toshihiro and Tomiko finally retired in 2011, and Ben and Chikako moved Flatt's up the road to the former Sannami space—inheriting its active gardens, its dozens of fruit trees, and its robust pickle shed. Chikako runs the front of the house with the help of a part-time assistant, while Ben helms the kitchen mostly on his own. For dinner, he serves dishes such as raw local fish accented with touches like fresh basil and balsamic vinegar; roasted pumpkin soup laced with
ishiri
; fat, chewy handmade spaghetti with tender rings of squid on a puddle of ink enhanced with another few drops of fish sauce. It's what Italian food would be if Italy were a windswept peninsula in the Far East.

If dinner is Ben's personal take on Noto ingredients, breakfast still be
longs to his in-laws. It's an elaborate a.m. feast, fierce in flavor, rich in history, dense with centuries of knowledge passed from one generation to the next: soft tofu dressed with homemade soy and yuzu chili paste; soup made with homemade miso and simmered fish bones; shiso leaves fermented kimchi-style, with chilies and
ishiri
;
kaibe
, rice mixed with
ishiri
and fresh squid, pressed into patties and grilled slowly over a charcoal fire; yellowtail fermented for six months, called the blue cheese of the sea for its lactic funk. The mix of plates will change from one morning to the next but will invariably include a small chunk of
konka saba
, mackerel fermented for up to five years, depending on the day you visit. Even when it's broken into tiny pieces and sprinkled over rice, the years of fermentation will pulse through your body like an electric current.