Untangling My Chopsticks (31 page)

So what I realized was that a tea master tends to follow certain patterns for his tea kaiseki and tea ceremony, much the way a minister follows a certain format for his service. The church, like the teahouse, always serves as the gathering place. There will usually be hymns, prayers, a reading, and a sermon, the same way there will always be food and tea at a formal tea ceremony with a kaiseki meal. But depending upon the occasion, the service changes. A service for Thanksgiving, for example, will differ from one for Christmas, the same way a tea kaiseki and tea ceremony for an October moon viewing will differ from one to celebrate New Year's. And a church service can be very short—say, one prayer, a hymn, and a quick reading—the same way a tea kaiseki and tea ceremony can offer a tenshin and tea versus a full-blown tea kaiseki and tea.

“The biggest problem with tea kaiseki is its threatened loss of seasonality,” said Stephen, closing his notebook. Historically, life in Japan revolved around the seasons and the year was regulated by the lunar calendar. Each month commenced with the dark nights of the new moon, which became full around the middle of the month.

In general, the New Year began at a time that now approximates our February, which meant the foods during that time corresponded with the beginning of spring. That explained why my February tea kaiseki classes had focused on foods for spring and not winter.

The special opening of the sealed tea jar, for example, which marked the beginning of the new tea year, used to be determined by the yellowing of yuzu citrus fruit in late October, not by a set date, which is currently November. What shifted the seasonality was Japan's switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1873, shortly after the Meiji Restoration. Suddenly, all the food, flowers, weather, colors, and numerous other seasonal aesthetics involved in the tea ceremony and tea kaiseki fell slightly off track.

“In the olden days most tea kaiseki were based on vegetables,” said Stephen. “You would serve certain vegetables at certain kinds of tea kaiseki because that's what was seasonally available. Now everything is available.” He sighed. “And the seasonality is becoming increasingly contrived.”

As I sat there, I wondered if tea (and kaiseki) had become an endangered species. Aside from the seasonality issues, I had come to learn most tea masters no longer cooked their tea kaiseki meals. Instead, they hired fancy caterers to assume the role. What's more, some of the symbolism had changed.

“In the olden days,” said Stephen, “the garden outside the teahouse was a miniaturization of an idealized world free from
the devastation of earthquakes and fires. But things are different now.” The garden still exists, but instead of escaping earthquakes and fires, tea guests are escaping phones, faxes, and work-related stress.

Mrs. Hisa, the elderly woman who had introduced me to Mushanokoji's tea master, nodded in agreement. “In ages past,” she added, “sometimes tea kaiseki would last all day and into the night. It was an extremely relaxing affair.” She smiled and closed her eyes, as if savoring the thought.

“But who has time for that in today's world?” she asked, abruptly opening her eyes. “Plus, the younger generation can no longer sit on the tatami.” Kneeling with your feet beneath your bottom requires years of practice to prevent the legs and toes from falling asleep. The samurai were said to have invented this position so that in an emergency, they could rapidly rise and brandish their swords. Nowadays, most Japanese can only kneel for short periods of time because they're so used to sitting in chairs.

Stephen sighed again and then looked at his watch. “We should get cooking.” Most of the class had already begun preparing foods for their tenshin. It was nearly 1:30. So Mrs. Hisa, Stephen, and I got up from our chairs and headed over to the only free cooking station. Setting down our recipes, we began to make cooling green foods.

While Mrs. Hisa steeped fresh fava beans in sugar syrup, Stephen dry-fried baby chartreuse peppers. I made a salad of crunchy green algae and meaty bonito fish cubes tossed with a bracing blend of soy and ginger juice. Mrs. Hisa created a tiny tumble of Japanese fiddleheads mixed with soy, rice vinegar, and salted baby fish.

For the horse mackerel sushi, Stephen skinned and boned several large sardine-like fillets and cut them into thick slices along
the bias. I made the vinegared rice and then we all made the nigiri sushi. After forming the rice into triangles, we topped each one with a slice of fish and then wrapped it in a long oval piece of fresh bamboo grass, as if folding a flag.

Last, we made the wanmori, the heart of the tenshin. In the center of a black lacquer bowl we placed a succulent chunk of salmon trout and skinned kabocha pumpkin, both of which we had braised in an aromatic blend of dashi, sake, and sweet cooking wine. Then we slipped in two blanched snow peas and surrounded the ingredients with a bit of dashi, which we had seasoned with soy to attain the perfect whiskey color, then lightly salted to round out the flavor.

Using our teacher's finished tenshin as a model, we arranged most of the dishes on three polished black lacquer rectangles, first lightly spraying them with water to suggest spring rain. Then we actually sat down and ate the meal. To my surprise, the leaf-wrapped sushi, the silky charred peppers, candied fava beans, and slippery algae did taste cool and green. More so than I ever could have imagined. We ate a little too fast. And left sooner than I had planned. Had I known that would be my last tea kaiseki class, I would have lingered.

Along with the greening of May came the rain. Then the clouds disappeared and a soft pale lightness fell over the city, as if Kyoto had broken free of its tethers and lifted up toward the sun. The mornings were as dewy and verdant as a glass of iced green tea. The nights folded into pencil-gray darkness fragrant with white flowers. And everyone's mood seemed buoyant, happy, and carefree.

When I wasn't teaching or studying tea kaiseki, I would ride my secondhand pistachio-green bicycle to favorite places to capture the fleeting lushness of Kyoto in a sketchbook. With a small box of Niji oil pastels, I would draw things that Zen poets had long ago described in words and I did not want to forget: a pond of yellow iris near a small Buddhist temple; a granite urn in a forest of bamboo; and a blue creek reflecting the beauty of heaven, carrying away a summer snowfall of pink blossoms.

Sometimes, I would sit under the shade of a willow tree at the bottom of my street, doing nothing but listening to the call of cuckoos, while reading and munching on carrots and boiled egg halves smeared with mayonnaise and wrapped in crisp sheets of nori. Never before had such simple indulgences brought such immense pleasure.

With the rainy season over, the swollen Kamo River offered up its riverbanks to couples and families, who strolled along the embankment, and to lovers, who found privacy late at night behind the dark bushes. On the western side of the river, between Gojo and Oike Streets, restaurants set up outdoor dining platforms for
yuka
(floor dining). Unique to Kyoto, these wooden extensions evolved during the sixteenth century, so diners could enjoy the gentle breezes blowing off the water.

Cool green foods became the natural choice in restaurants and teahouses. Matcha, the powdered green tea used for the tea ceremony, flavored ice cream, jewel-like gelatin cubes, and sweet whipped cream eaten in parfaits and layered with grapes, pineapple chunks, and chewy white mochi balls. There were Japanese-style snow cones, huge hills of shaved ice drizzled with green tea syrup, along with green tea–flavored mousse and tea-tinted sponge cake.

Matcha flavored savory items too, including green tea noo
dles served hot in dashi soup, as well as chilled and heaped on a bamboo draining mat with a cold dipping sauce of dashi, mirin, and soy. There was green tea–flavored wheat gluten and the traditional Kyoto-style dish of white rice topped with thin petals of sashimi that you “cooked” at the table by drenching it with brewed green tea from a tiny teapot.

One afternoon in late May, I decided to cool off with the famous hot weather dish of
nagashi somen,
meaning “flowing somen noodles.” In the small town of Kibune, a thirty-minute train ride north of Kyoto, I found the outdoor restaurant Hirobun, known for this eccentric specialty. After locating a free cushion on the tatami-covered wooden platform that extended out over the rushing river under a canopy of green leaves, I knelt down in front of a silver metal gutter filled with flowing water. The waitress brought me brewed green tea, then set down chopsticks and a bowl of cold dashi seasoned with soy sauce, scallions, sliced shiitake mushrooms, and a runny poached egg.

No sooner had I split open the chopsticks than a knot of thin white noodles flew by in the silver gutter. “For you!” shouted the noodle maker, leaning out of her wooden hut, where the noodles began their journey. I snatched the strands from the rushing water just before they sailed by and dunked them in the dashi. They were glassy and cool and bits of buttery yolk clung to the salty strands. Suddenly, a tangle whizzed past me. A party of Japanese women farther down my row looked over and giggled. Another noodle knot zipped by. More hands over mouths. I managed to grab the next nest of somen and was dipping it in the sauce when—whoosh!—off sped another white clump. Determined to rescue the rest of lunch, I seized several more bunches, not sure when to stop, since two new diners had sat down beside me. “Yours!” yelled the noodle maker, pointing to me. So I
plucked three more snarls of somen from the gutter before retiring my chopsticks.

There were other ways to counter the early summer blaze. Packs of teenagers would set off strings of firecrackers by the Kamo River late at night, then whoop at their cooling luminescent glow. Fans fluttered everywhere and the ding-a-ling of wind chimes hanging outside people's windows provided welcome sensory refreshment.

As I gave myself up to this exotic sensual world, it pulled me back to my grandmother and to the Kyoto she had described and I had sentimentalized: a faraway place where moss, soft as chenille, carpeted temple gardens; mock orange perfumed the air; and sunsets over the Tatsumi Bridge in the Gion created a fairyland of kimonos, hushed voices, and geometric shadows of dark and gold. It was the Japan of my imagination, rife with mystery, beauty, exoticism, and grace. Only it no longer existed. Reality had taken its place.

Matcha (powdered green tea) colors and flavors these noodles, which are served cold in this summer dish heralded for its ability to revive flagging appetites. Traditionally, the dish is made with buckwheat noodles and served on either a round flat basket (called a
zaru
) or a box-like slatted tray, which enables the noodles to drain completely. Wasabi paste is available in tubes in most Japanese markets.

14 ounces dried green tea soba

1 cup dashi (
page 48
)

⅓ cup soy sauce

⅓ cup mirin

1 cup matchsticks of English cucumber

1 cup bean sprouts

¼ cup shredded nori (available in packages)

2 teaspoons wasabi paste (available in tubes)

2 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced

1. Cook the noodles according to package directions until al dente. Drain and refresh under cold water. Drain well again and chill in the refrigerator until cold.
   

2. Blend together the dashi, soy sauce, and mirin in a small bowl. Chill this dipping sauce in the refrigerator until cold, about 2 hours.
   

3. When ready to serve, mound equal portions of the noodles onto four plates. Decoratively arrange a portion of cucumbers on one half of the noodles and bean sprouts on the other. Place a tuft of shredded nori in the center.
   

4. Pour the dipping sauce into four small bowls. For each person, arrange the wasabi paste on one side of a tiny dish and the scallions on the other. To serve, let each person blend some scallions and a little wasabi into their dipping sauce before dunking mouthfuls of the noodles and vegetables.
   

Makes 4 servings

This cook-at-the-table Japanese dish is called
ochazuke,
which loosely means “tea rice.” It evolved as a way to clean out the rice bowl at the end of the meal, since meals in Japan traditionally end with a cup of brewed green tea. The rice and toppings come to the table along with a small pot of tea, which you pour over the fish to cook it. You can eat the dish with chopsticks and simply pick up the bowl when you wish to sip the tea broth.