JAPAN

OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF BEING

1. Today (Monday) I am tired and not because of all that hiking but because of worrying about blogging between the hours of midnight and 3. Resolve: I will not be so stupid again.

2. Half of me looks like I spent 2 weeks in the Caribbean. For some odd reason the right side of me got very very tanned yesterday (face, neck, arm, the whole bit). It must have been a trail’s positioning, or perhaps the doze by the lake, but I do look odd. I have to give a lecture in two days. I hope I look less odd by then.

3. The Rail Pass is wonderful for a person like me who was raised on train travel (my parents didn’t even own a car until I was in my teens) and would not mind spending a portion of each day in a comfortable train seat. (I include the qualification “comfortable” because there are trains in Poland that I would only recommend to persons whom have caused great harm in this world.) Not surprisingly then, on this day I am again riding the Japan Rail.

WASABI PARADISE


My morning today is at Hotaka – a small town, known for its farming of wasabi (Japanese horseradish). Hotaka is at the foot of the high Japanese Alps; it sprawls across a RELATIVELY flat stretch of land. Let me repeat: RELATIVELY.

…So that my idea of borrowing a bike to move around on is only a semi-good one. I say ‘borrow,’ because the woman renting a handful of bikes has this charming way of proceeding: she tells me to pick a bike, writes my name down on a piece of paper and waves me off .

No credit card? No deposit? No lock on the bike for when I park? No gear shift? NO! How did she know I would not abscond with it? Well, you’d have to take one look at the bike and you’d understand: a one-speed squeaky brake special. But it moved and stopped when I asked it to and she charged me 100 Y (about a dollar) per hour. In Japan. Yes. That little.

THE PROBLEM: The wind today is of gale force, I’m sure. Schools would close and people would go down to the basement back in Wisconsin if we had such gusts blowing. Pedaling against the wind, sometimes uphill, on a one-speed bike is----difficult.



THE JOY: Visiting a large scale wasabi farm is cool enough, especially since the producers went ALL OUT to attract visitors. There are paths through various wasabi-growing bogs (irrigated by pure Alpine streams). There is a wasabi store where you can buy ANYTHING wasabi related (gift shops here are 99% about food). And, there is even a wasabi ice-cream stand. It appears I’ve fallen into a rut of sorts: here’s the photo of the cone which, btw, was quite good , with a nice bit of zest to it.





But in spite of all the wasabi thises and thats, my favorite moment was not while in pursuit of the horseradish in this wasabi paradise. Without doubt, my very favorite moment of the day was when I biked on narrow random paths and came across a family tending its rice field. It is planting time now. Three generations were working diligently to speed up the process. Note the youngest member’s hard contribution. Watching them go about the work, knowing that they never had an audience and were enjoying one now, seeing the little one smile and smile as the wind blew her hair about was quite lovely.

MATSUMOTOOOOOOH, MATSUMOTOOOOOOH


So ‘sings’ the station announcer in a welcoming way when you get off in this town. I went there in the afternoon because it is supposed to charm: smaller than Nagano, it too, is a gateway to the mountains and it has several streets of old merchant houses that are pleasant enough to stroll through. It also is a castle town and the Japanese do love their old castles. And, since they are quite into ranking things, I should note that this particular castle is within the top four in the country. Reason enough to enjoy it? Not really.


What makes for a successful visit to these places, I wonder? Perhaps you warm to places where you are able to identify some essential local trait, spirit, character and you encounter it while there. Perhaps you feel drawn to a spot because you meet someone who lives there and for a second you imagine what it must be like to be located there for the better part of your life. Or, maybe you just have to be in the right frame and my frame was somehow deficient this day.



TOGAKUSHI FOOD (or, if the shoe, NOT THE HORSE SHOE, fits, wear it)

I went back to Gotoku Tei for dinner. How can one do better than this basement joint in the “ladies of the night” building, with the wonderfully fresh ingredients and the terrific cook to watch all evening long?



THE LADIES ISSUE: Readers may think that I exaggerate about the ‘ladies of the night’ thing and that I have no basis for drawing my rather inflammatory conclusions. Okay, doubting junipers, just for you, I am including a few photos of what one may find on one of the floors of the shabby old building. Having seen some of these ladies, let me assure you, they are not here to give tutorials in LSAT test taking.



SOY BEAN CHUTNEY: At Gotoku Tei all is calm and I am again in my little counter seat, staring at the cook who moves so skillfully between his grilled fish and pickles with soy bean chutney. [A digression: I bought a jar of this in the mountain village yesterday. Why? Because there was a line and people were buying at a fast pace and it reminded me of my early years in Poland when you would rush to any line that was forming in a store and only then ask what was being thrown onto the empty shelves. Usually it would be toilet paper. People always lined up for extra toilet paper supplies. Here, I did ask those around me what it is that I was buying but no one had the English to explain it adequately. I encountered this ‘relish’ again at the wasabi farm where you could buy a snack of long pickles which you would then dip in a little paper container of this stuff. I was almost going to buy a bright green pickle for munching purposes, but then I saw someone picking through the pickles with their hand, testing this one’s firmness, then that one’s and somehow the taste for it disappeared. I know that they are all washing their hands constantly here, but still, I imagined many hands had picked through the pickle pot and that was rather unsettling.) Now, sure enough, the soy spread is here again, at Gotoku Tei.

AVOIDING DELICACIES: I ordered a different set of dishes on this night– these were under heading of “Togakushi meal” (though the photos make at least one look similar, they are in fact quite different in both taste and presentation). Togakushi is the region I visited yesterday and I would not have even hesitated to pick this menu (being rather a fan of the region) except that the area is known for its fine horsemeat and I worried that a plate of it would be among the parade of eleven dishes that I’d eventually have to work my way through. If forced by circumstances, I could swallow even this ‘delicacy,’ but they would have to be rather extreme circumstances and I would not enjoy it.


You can imagine my attempt at formulating the “is there horsemeat?” question (which I felt compelled to ask before taking the plunge into Togakushi food). In spite of my best efforts at demonstrating what I was referring to, the waitress drew a blank. Luckily my hero chef came to the rescue and said in almost perfect English “Togakushi meal no meat.” I am on a fish roll here!


Again, it was all abundantly delicious, although I did not realize that in this particular grilled fish plate, the crustaceans are supposed to be ingested whole – shells and all. They are grilled to a crisp and I saw patrons crunching away at the entirety. I don’t know about that… (Included are food photos for the reader who lobbied for them. Your loyalty will be rewarded!)