Untangling My Chopsticks (28 page)

The kiss occurred one spring night, two weeks before graduation. We were at a party off campus and had gone down to a nearby beach to take a walk. There had been an undercurrent of romance for the past several weeks. It was dark. The waves pounded against the sand. A chain-link fence stood at the end of the beach and we were heading toward it. Suddenly, there was nowhere else to go. It was as if the fence was telling me my time was up—that there was no reason to keep fighting my heart. So I listened. And turned around.

Slowly John came toward me and pushed me gently up against the metal links. Then he placed his lips on mine. All my defenses fell away. By morning we were a couple.

From that time on, we were inseparable. He became my best friend, and I his. He called me “Sweetbread” (and “Sourdough” when I got on his nerves), while I called him “Johnnycakes.” We both moved to New York and began working in advertising. We each had our own apartment, although I am not sure why, since every night we shared the same pillow.

Two years later, I had become a monster and was thinking about running away to Japan. He began to wonder if law school was what he wanted, instead of advertising. Washington, D.C.,

seemed like a good place to go. I didn't expect him to join me on my journey to the east; he didn't expect me to follow him to the nation's capital. So we took a break. Now, after six months of separation, we were groping along, each knocking gently on the other's heart, hoping to be let in.

Since my new apartment had no shower, the first thing we did after plunking John's bags down on the tatami was to visit the sento, or public bath. For most Westerners, the concept of a Japanese bath consists of a quiet pine-paneled room in a traditional inn where you scrub yourself clean before slipping into a smooth teak tub with a carefully designed view onto a miniature garden.

The sento offers a spontaneous view into the life of the neighborhood. In many ways these public baths function like local taverns where friends meet and exchange news and gossip. But instead of doing it over beers, they do it while scouring each other's backs and lounging about in tubs of hot water.

In the winter, the sento serves another purpose: it is a way to keep warm at night. After soaking in the scalding-hot tub, families scurry back to their unheated homes and bury themselves under the quilts on their futons.

John's introduction to public bathing took place with me on the female side of the bath and him on the men's side. Although I cringed at the idea of shouting instructions over the cement partition that stopped just short of the ceiling, I decided it would be more embarrassing for him to blunder about in Japan's highly codified water world.

“First undress and put your clothes in the basket sitting on the shelf,” I hollered. Silence. “Cakes, are you there?”

“Yes. I can't find the basket.”

“Look behind you. Now, do you see it?”

“I think so.”

“Let me know when you're naked.” Long silence. “Cakes, are you undressed?”

“I feel funny. All these men are staring at me.”

“They're probably jealous. Do you have your soap?”

“Yes.”

“And my bowl and shampoo?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, next you're going to go through the door and into the bath. Then you'll want to fill the bowl with hot and cold water. Just press down on the spigots, red for hot and blue for cold, and dump the bowl over your head.”

“Sounds pretty primitive. These are the same people who invented the Walkman?”

“I know. Next, wash and then rinse yourself, including your hair. Then put all your stuff in the bowl and go soak in any one of the tubs. Call if you need help.”

“Okay, here I go,” he announced.

By the time John emerged from the bath it was nearly 6:20. Given his jet lag, we decided to have dinner in. I had made a sort of Japanese antipasto to accompany a bottle of French Bordeaux I had bought in the food hall of Daimaru department store. So while John sat on a blue cotton cushion hunched over the low
unfinished wooden table sipping red wine from a small glass tumbler, I presented him with a succession of nibbles: chili-speckled rice crackers and peanuts; boiled edamame tossed with coarse salt; chewy strands of dried calamari; and chilled steamed asparagus that I had bought fresh that morning at Nishiki market. For a taste of home, I sautéed pudgy slices of herb-flavored wheat gluten, soft as gnocchi, in garlic butter with sliced shiitake mushrooms. Dinner ended with snappy red grapes and imported coconut sables that broke into buttery splinters in our cupped palms.

Later, under the opalescent moonlight, we lay on my futon and held each other. As we reestablished our closeness, the ache of separation gave way to the relief of finally being together, once again.

For the next several days, my view of Kyoto came through John's eyes, a funny, joyful, and occasionally stinging vision. For so long I had imagined having him in Kyoto. Now the time had come for reality to live up to fantasy.

One day we strolled down the Philosopher's Path, which proved as enchanting as I had hoped in the fragrant pink bloom of spring. Since ancient times, the Japanese have heralded the arrival of the cherry blossoms because they symbolize the ephemeral beauty of life.

But it isn't just the three or four days of open flowers that stirs the senses. It is their arrival and departure. Looking at a bud about to burst open offers the pleasurable anticipation of rebirth, while the soft scattering of petals on the ground is often consid
ered the most beautiful stage of all because it represents the death of the flowers.

Another day I took John to one of my tea kaiseki classes to watch the making of a traditional picnic to celebrate the arrival of the cherry blossoms. While he sat on a stool near my cooking station, Stephen and I cooked rice in water flavored with kelp, sake, and light soy, then packed it into a wooden mold shaped like a chrysanthemum. After tapping out the compact white flower, we decorated it with two salted cherry blossoms.

We wrapped chunks of salted Spanish mackerel in brined cherry leaves and steamed the packets until the fatty fish turned milky in parts. We also made cold seafood salad, pea custard, and chewy millet dumplings, which we grilled over a charcoal burner until brown and sticky enough to hold a coating of ivory Japanese poppy seeds.

In between these cherry blossom–related events, I took John to famous temples and shrines, the Imperial Palace, and numerous gardens and villas. I also led him down the winding back streets of Kyoto. Many resemble Venice, in that we could practically touch the houses on both sides of the street by simply stretching out our arms. Walking down a small lane toward sunset one evening, we came across several old wooden homes so blackish brown they almost looked charred. Dishes clattered in someone's kitchen. We smelled grilling chicken from a neighbor's dinner. Someone laughed and we turned around, only to realize it came from indoors. We mistook the wail of a bird for a baby and realized that this was the kind of place where there could be no nocturnal moans.

Not surprisingly, it took several days and nights for us to establish our mutual rhythm. John's exuberant manner often clashed
with the reserved conformist one I had developed in this fragile world of paper screens and unspoken rules. This was no more apparent than at dinner one evening at a nouvelle kaiseki restaurant in the Gion called Hanakanzashi (Flowered Comb). I had never encountered restaurant kaiseki and thought John might enjoy this unique form of cuisine, which I had come to learn differed dramatically from what I had been studying at the tea school.

First of all, restaurant kaiseki is all about the food, whereas tea kaiseki focuses on the tea. In a restaurant, joviality and entertainment set the tone for the kaiseki meal, which is based on sake. At a tea kaiseki, which is based on rice, solemnity and ritual set the tone for that final spiritual moment culminating in the drinking of whipped green tea. And while both meals aim to offer freshly prepared local ingredients with an acute sensitivity to the seasons, they contrast significantly in their order, style, and content. We splurged on a taxi from my apartment to the Gion, where upon our arrival the driver pointed us in the direction of an office building and sped off. After riding the elevator up to the fifth floor, we turned left and walked into a hushed gray dining room.

Hanakanzashi was arrestingly spare. Emptiness of space is a fundamental aesthetic in Japan used for visual, aural, and emotional effect. In a vast raked garden, for example, a few carefully placed rocks inspire contemplation. In Noh and Kabuki theater stillness between the action, or a silence inserted between spoken lines provokes introspection.

In Japanese food arrangement, chefs consider empty space a dynamic entity. Bowls are never filled to the brim. Serving dishes never come to the table heaped with food. The blank expanse creates a pleasing balance, framing the ingredients in a way that is tantalizing, not overwhelming. It is similar to Japanese ink paint
ings, where the effect of open white space serves to amplify the black and create a balanced whole.

“Whenever I go to a Western museum I get a headache,” said a Japanese friend. “There is simply too much stimulation, too many paintings on the wall.”

A young woman in a white kimono accented with purple iris escorted us to our seats, tall cushioned chairs that pulled up to a smooth counter of polished red lacquer. Glistening under the dim overhead lights, it was a dramatic stage, upon which the chef would tell his story of spring.

The waitress behind the counter, an older woman in a rose and navy kimono, placed two black lacquer trays before us. Along the bottom sat a pair of willow chopsticks resting on a pink ceramic holder shaped like a cherry blossom. A small frosted glass of
umeshu
(plum wine) sat on a white paper coaster toward the top. The syrupy wine, actually made from small Japanese apricots, had a honeyed smoothness and a fruity finish that left behind a streak of warmth.

Several minutes later, the elderly waitress set down two rectangular white dishes holding the hors d'oeuvres. In restaurant kaiseki, they call this course the
hassun,
and it arrives either at the beginning or at the end of the meal. Confusion often arises because these tidbits do not come on the wooden tray that gives the tea kaiseki course its name. Yet both types of hassun feature foods from the ocean and mountains.

We began with two buttery sweet edamame and one sugar syrup–soaked shrimp in a crunchy soft shell. A lightly simmered baby octopus practically melted in our mouths, while a tiny cup of clear, lemony soup provided cooling refreshment. The soup held three slices of okra and several slippery cool strands of
junsai
(water shield), a luxury food that grows in ponds and marshes
throughout Asia, Australia, West Africa, and North America. In the late spring the tiny plant develops leafy shoots surrounded by a gelatinous sheath that floats on the water's surface, enabling the Japanese to scoop it up by hand from small boats. The edamame, okra, and water shield represented items from the mountains, while the shrimp and octopus exemplified the ocean. I could tell John was intrigued and amused by this artistic (perhaps puny?) array of exotica.

Two pearly pieces of sea bream, several fat triangles of tuna, and sweet shelled raw baby shrimp composed the sashimi course, which arrived on a pale turquoise dish about the size of a bread plate. It was the raw fish portion of the meal, similar to the mukozuke in a tea kaiseki. To counter the beefy richness of the tuna, we wrapped the triangles in pungent shiso leaves, then dunked them in soy.

After the sashimi, the waitress brought out the
mushimono
(steamed dish). In a coal-black ceramic bowl sat an ivory potato dumpling suspended in a clear wiggly broth of dashi thickened with kudzu starch, freckled with glistening orange salmon roe. The steamed dumpling, reminiscent of a white peach, was all at once velvety, sweet, starchy, and feathery and had a center “pit” of ground chicken. The whole dish, served warm and with a little wooden spoon, embodied the young, tender softness of spring.

Steamed foods do not show up at a tea kaiseki. Nor do fried foods, our next course, because the heavy oils are said to linger on the palate, thus marring it for the tea to come. What makes restaurant kaiseki unique is that it does not have to worry about the rules, social considerations, or type and order of courses that guide a tea kaiseki. Nor does it have to concern itself with the ultimate spiritual purpose of the meal.

Our
agemono,
or “deep-fried thing,” was tempura, the lacy batter-fried style of cooking that came to Japan in the latter half of the sixteenth century via Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and traders. The dish was so named because it was originally sold at stands on
tempura
(temple grounds).

At Hanakanzashi, our tempura came in the form of a crunchy flaxen flounder for two that fell apart under the gentle prod of our chopsticks. But instead of serving the fish with the traditional tempura dipping sauce of dashi, soy, mirin, and grated daikon (which helps the body digest oily or fatty foods), the chef offered a tiny dish of salt seasoned with peppery tongue-tingling sansho.

For the yakimono out came a vivid red plate holding one of my favorite dishes, a disc of supremely soft deep-fried eggplant that had been “buttered” with thick sweet miso paste, then run under the broiler. Four peas, which sent John into spasms of laughter, decorated the top, while a pickled pink stalk of ginger and a fresh shiso leaf garnished the plate. “It's all very beautiful, but a little precious, don't you think?” he asked, holding up a pea. I agreed, but added that it was only if you view it through Western eyes.

Our final course before dessert was a flower of rice topped with tilefish, salted cherry blossoms, and a cherry leaf. Had we splurged, we would have also received a
suimono,
meaning “thing to drink,” usually a clear soup flecked with things like spinach, tofu, and seaweed. We would have also encountered a
sunomono,
meaning “vinegared thing,” often a tiny tumble of fish or vegetables tossed with rice vinegar and soy. Finally, we would have been offered either a spring
takiawase,
meaning “foods boiled or stewed together,” or a wanmori (the apex of a tea kaiseki meal) featuring
seasonal ingredients, such as a cherry blossom–pink dumpling of shrimp and egg white served in a dashi base accented with
udo,
a plant with a white stalk and leaves that tastes like asparagus and celery, and a sprig of fresh sansho, the aromatic young leaves from the same plant that bears the seedpods the Japanese grind into the tongue-numbing spice always served with fatty eel.