When I visited Shirakawa-go over the long weekend in January, I found Hîragi, a cute restaurant along the snow-covered the vehicle-access road to the lookout point in Ogimachi, Shirakawa-go. I was intrigued, of course, because one of my favorite kanji is 柊 (hîragi), holly, because the radicals mean tree-winter. What sealed the deal was the menu: I wanted to introduce my friends to hôba miso yaki（朴葉味噌焼き), and they wanted to try Hida beef (飛騨牛).

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.

Kudos to 22-year old tennis pro Kei Nishikori for being the first Japanese man in 80 years to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open!  Unfortunately, once there he was vanquished in straight sets by Scot Andy Murray, but his impressive showing in his previous five-set win over France’s Jo-Wilfred Tsonga bumps his world ranking up to 20 from 26.

Nishikori, who currently lives and trains in Florida, is known as “Air Kei” for his leaping groundstrokes.  I can attest to the fact that watching his play is thrilling.  A few years ago I caught a match of his at the US Open that turned into a nail-biting five-setter, and was hooked.

Here’s hoping he can build on this impressive showing in Australia and have further success in 2012!

I recently received an email newsletter from acclaimed Japanese food writer Elizabeth Andoh regarding her newest book project, 希望 (Kibo or “Brimming With Hope”).  It will be released on February 28th and features recipes and stories from the Tohoku area, where last year’s earthquake and tsunami hit.  Andoh wanted to do her part to help the region recover, and the creation of this book is what she came up with (click on the link below for purchase information).  This March, she also plans to launch a new website called Kibo cooking which will be dedicated to Tohoku cookery.  See below for a description of Andoh’s project in her own words.

It is HOPE… fused with, and fueled by, resolve.

Dogged determination.

It is a BOOK… a culinary tribute to Japan’s Tohoku.

Recipes and stories: to comfort, to share.

On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, triple disaster – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident – assaulted Japan’s northeastern corridor, the Tohoku region, and to a lesser extent the Kanto Plains area that includes Tokyo and its environs. In the hours, days, and weeks that followed, the enormity of the toll became painfully clear. There was unprecedented loss of life, personal injury and property damage, entire communities and industries had been wiped out. Surreal.

Like many Tokyo residents who had been personally spared serious loss, I wondered what I could do. In the post-disaster barrage of media coverage, I found the plight of evacuees particularly poignant. Uprooted and transplanted to shelters far removed from their home, I wondered how traditional Tohoku culture could be preserved in the Diaspora.

I wanted to soothe survivors with comfort foods, help Tohoku residents prepare familiar dishes in unfamiliar places. By writing a book that celebrated the Tohoku’s culinary culture I thought to help preserve the region’s rich heritage while nourish the morale of displaced residents. By writing in English I could reach a wide, global readership enabling them to share in the pleasures of the Tohoku table while supporting recovery efforts through the purchase of KIBŌ. My publisher, Ten Speed Press, has pledged with me, to donate a portion of proceeds to Japan’s rebuilding and renewal efforts.

希望を持って、頑張ります

KIBŌ wo motte, gambarimasu

Brimming with hope, pushing forward…

After several trips to the brewpub Beer Belly and to the actual Minoh Brewery, it’s about time I got around to reviewing my absolute favorite beer in Japan: Minoh Beer (箕面ビール), which operates from Minoh, Osaka. Readers of my blog know that I love craft beers, and also that finding a really good dark beer in Japan is a huge challenge.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

*****

Broccoli Lover Learns to BBQ

Part 2

by Clara Solomon (CIR, Nichinan-cho, Tottori-ken; 1999-2001), the Director of Counseling & Career Development at the Office of Career Services at New York University School of Law. She previously worked for the Japan External Trade Organization, specializing in trade relations between Japan and Latin America.  She lives in Queens with her husband and twin daughters.

Read Part 1 here.

Living in a small farming community has a lot of advantages, I soon learned. For example, I was at the town festival in August shortly after arriving, and casually mentioned to one of my farmer neighbors that I liked sweet corn. I woke up the next day to find about 15 ears of freshly-picked sweet corn on my doorstep. Even when I didn’t particularly like something, I would often find that a kind neighbor, perhaps worried about my over-consumption of broccoli, had left bushels of it at my front door. I guess they’d heard that Americans eat a lot, because they would leave bags stuffed with enough eggplant, cabbage, and carrots to feed a small army. (Why, I often wondered, had I not moved to rural Tuscany, where I could have gotten donations of sun-ripened tomatoes, basil, and fresh bufala mozzarella?).

So, to the cookbooks I turned. I can confidently say that Mark Bittman is a god – did you know that his book lists not one, not two, but nineteen different recipes for eggplant! Before moving to Nichinan-cho, I’d hated eggplant, but with the bounty at my doorstep, I learned to love it – curried, roasted, fried, parmesan-ed. I tried it all until I found my favorite recipes. Another benefit to living in a small town is that there isn’t much else to do, so I had ample time to experiment in my kitchen. Even the TV options were limited, as I really only got about 4 channels reliably, two of which were NHK. (And, yes, I’ll admit it now, there were some home-sick moments in mid-winter, when I rushed home after work to catch the NHK broadcast of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” just to watch something in English).

I cooked. And cooked and cooked and cooked. I became more ambitious, venturing into beef bourguignon (or as close to it as one could get in rural Japan) and triple-layer chocolate cake (also a challenge when your oven is the size of a microwave). Of course, even with an amazing recipe for eggplant Parmesan (with home-made tomato sauce, naturally), one small gaijin girl cannot possibly consume 15 eggplants, 3 cabbages, and a pound of carrots alone, especially not if she hopes to stay “small.” (Small being, in the land of 4’10” women, a relative term.) What to do?

I began inviting people over. I didn’t really know anyone, but there weren’t really that many people under the age of 40 to choose from, so I went ahead and invited all of them. Thus the beginning of the yaki-niku parties.

Well, it wasn’t actually the beginning of my infamous barbecues. Not quite yet. You see, although I was fluent in Japanese, I hadn’t yet gained the trust of my co-workers. Most of whom were skeptical about house parties with the broccoli-loving American. At first, only one person accepted my invitations, and I knew enough about life in small town Japan to know that it would be a very bad idea if “he” and I had dinner together alone in my house. The gossip would be never ending. So I kept trying to invite people over with different menu items. One night was beef stew, the next night was tacos, another night was cake and cookies. Not one broccoli dish on offer, and still very few takers.

In the end, my co-workers were swayed by the promise of beef. My veranda truly was a sight to behold. Big enough for a large grill, cooler for drinks, and at least ten chairs, it was a barbecue lover’s dream come true. My coworkers (all of whom knew where I lived, naturally) must have been waiting for me to figure this out, because they jumped at the invitation when I invited them over for yaki niku. Or maybe it was because I was finally inviting them for Japanese-style food, rather than all of that weird American stuff I kept offering. Either way, they showed up for that first party and had a blast, eating, drinking, and telling jokes until well into the night. It was such a joy to have people over, eating food I had prepared, and enjoying themselves, that I resolved then and there to have more yaki niku parties at my house. Like, every week if I could.

Eventually, I gained a reputation as a good hostess, and more people accepted my dinner invitations. I became proficient in Japanese drinking games, and they became fluent in singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” My Japanese neighbors and co-workers grew comfortable with me, even bringing dishes to share, sometimes experimenting with new recipes of their own. I got them to try non-Japanese dishes, while they introduced me to new Japanese ingredients and recipes. We became friends over food, and some of my colleagues became close enough that they would occasionally just show up unannounced at my door on a Friday night with all the fixin’s for a yaki-niku beef bonanza on my veranda (mini-keg included!).

Through our shared meals, we developed a close bond, discussing frustrations and upsets, hopes and dreams. This was the life I had envisioned for myself when I picked up that bunch of broccoli in Paseo on my first day in town. Little did I know that I would need to give up the healthy, responsible food and branch into the art of Japanese barbecue to get me there. While I was busy putting on the façade of a confident, independent, broccoli-eating adult, I learned that all it took was to open myself up to new foods, new ideas, and lots of friends to become who I really wanted to be.

ちょっと遅くなりましたが、明けましておめでとうございます！ I hope that your 2012 has gotten off to a good start, and that the year of the dragon is a fortuitous one for everyone.

I’m down in DC with a new group of International Visitors invited by the State Department to study U.S. energy policy.  In light of the Fukushima accident nuclear is obviously a big focus, but we are also looking at renewable energy options like solar and wind (as well as geothermal which will take us to a plant on the Big Island of Hawaii!).  As part of our cultural activities outside of the professional program, the other night we attended Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center where a Japanese artist was featured.

Her name is Yoko K. and she hails from Nagano, and she is an electronic musician, producer, engineer and vocalist.  I was not very familiar with that genre of music, but her performance kept me entertained throughout.  She incorporates various tools in her sound creation, and you can see the basis of her classical training in piano from the age of 3.  I particularly liked her bilingual and often humorous lyrics, especially from the song “Laptop on Top of Your Lap” (“I want to be a laptop on top of your lap”).

This song was from her 2nd album “Heaven’s Library”, which is available on iTunes and worth a listen if you are a fan of electronic music or looking to be introduced to it.  We got to chat with Yoko after the concert, and she was super personable and eager to discuss her music.  I look forward to following her continued success!

Thanks to Vancouver-based JET alum Alison Dacia Brown (Iwate-ken, Rikuzentakata-shi, 2005-08) for sharing this article she wrote with JETwit, which also appears (with photos) on page 8 of the latest issue of the JETAA British Columbia Newsletter.  It is a follow-up to a previous article she wrote titled “Rikuzentakata.”

Rikuzentakata, Iwate:  9 months after the tsunami 

The last article I wrote for JETAABC was just a few weeks after the tragedy happened.  I lived in Rikuzentakata, a small city in Iwate prefecture on the coast, whose location and landscape could not have been worse on March 11th.   Over nine months has passed, and even though Rikuzentakata, or Takata for short, is far from being fully healed, it’s unbelievable what has been accomplished to make the city liveable again in such a short period of time.

Temporary housing has been built. Grass has begun to grow again.  Debris has been cleared.  The Tanabata festival has been celebrated.  A Lawson has been opened. Possessions have been returned to their owners.  Possessions thought to have been lost forever.  As an example of this, could you imagine losing your home and possessions and barely escaping with your child and a few clothes?  Could you imagine the happiness you would feel when a volunteer is able to give you a memory card with pictures on it you thought were lost forever?  There was one volunteer department responsible for this ‘Photo Recovery Project’.  In an online video, I smiled when I saw those blue laundry hangers with the clips holding photos that had been recovered and carefully cleaned.

I was devastated when I saw the images of the destruction in the days that followed the tragedy.  What was worse was seeing a video taken of the city from a helicopter.  It wasn’t just destruction; it looked apocalyptic.  I recognized about three buildings which were some of the biggest:  The Capital Hotel, City Hall and the building that housed Daiso and the town supermarket, Maiya.  Even though they were spared from the waves which swept mostly everything away, they seemed to stand there like ruins, completely gutted from the inside.  In the days that followed, a closer look at these buildings showed trapped trees, cars, and probably people which were swept into their paths.  Boats on top of buildings seemed commonplace.

I keep in regular contact with my friends in Rikuzentakata and Ofunato, the city next door.  In addition, I do some volunteer editing on the Save Takata website.  I feel like doing all these things is keeping my spirits up.  What also keeps my spirits up is hearing all the stories about my town from volunteers and friends.  The day-to-day activities that show that life really does go on are amazing.  One of humankind’s best qualities is the ability to adapt, and the residents of Rikuzentakata have certainly adapted and carried on.  Enzo Caffarelli, a good friend and former ALT from Takata, has since returned with the volunteer group All Hands.  I remember messaging him back and forth on Facebook after he arrived and he told me was doing some work at a rice harvest cooperative, and being managed by a dirty old Japanese man who loved women and sexual innuendos.  Awesome.

In addition to cleaning ditches and digging canals, he was able to do some salvage work for a friend of ours who was the art teacher at the local high school.  He was able to find pieces of art, photos, slides and documents which made her very happy.  Another project he helped with was in making a local cemetery accessible again.  Stones had been toppled and the paths had been uncut for months.  He said it was great to see people coming back to visit their ancestors.

A new ‘Takata’ has appeared outside of the central town which houses many of the businesses and public buildings that were destroyed in March.  This new Takata now has our post office, city hall, a Lawson, a couple of bars, an AU shop, among others.  This sleepy area has now had to absorb new migration from the disaster zone.  Makeshift laundry shops and hair salons have popped up to service the people who live nearby in temporary housing settlements.  In the neighbouring town of Senmaya, Takata’s sake brewery has been reopened.

While working on a translation about osechi ryôri, the Japanese New Year’s meal, today, I came across a passage about how the meal is prepared in advance of the holidays to avoid using the cooking fire. From a practical standpoint, not having to cook while one’s extended family is visiting gives the primary household cook a chance to relax and spend time with the family. The other reason given is that using the kitchen fire during the year-end period makes Kôjin (荒神) the Fire God angry.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

So you’ve prepared your home in Japan as best you can for winter and you’ve got a heater or two, or a kotatsu, to keep you warm. What else can you do to survive the winter in Japan, especially with the continued emphasis on energy conservation?

1. Carry “kairo” (カイロ). Small body (typically hand) warmers. The disposable kind are the ones you open and shake up and typically last a few hours. Some can be placed in your shoes, around your ankles, around your waist or even around your wrists. Here are a few examples.

I’ve also noticed a trend of “eco-kairo” (エコカイロ) this year. The eco-kind vary, but some are filled with gel and you heat them in the microwave. Some are battery-powered (I’m not sure exactly how that is very “eco” though, unless they’re solar-charged, but I suppose it is less wasteful to some degree).

Some examples of “eco kairo” with cute covers (found at Loft):

2. Use a lap blanket. Whether at work or home, these smaller blankets are good to have on hand. Look for ひざかけ (膝掛け).

3. Or a space blanket. They aren’t just the shiny, futuristic looking sheets anymore (though you can get those too). These kind are fabric-covered. Look for スペースケット.

4. Or an electric blanket. Look for 電気毛布 (でんきもうふ, denkimoufu).

5. Use a hot water bottle (湯たんぽ, ゆたんぽ). Especially good for cold feet.

6. Eat hot dishes. Like Nabe. Curry. Ramen. Or any other hot meal. What’s your favorite?

7. Drink lots of hot tea, especially if your workplace provides it for free.

8. Hot drinks. Remember that many vending machines and conveniences stores have a section for “hot drinks” (usually have a red label underneath and say あったかい or “hot drink” while the cold ones have a blue label, and yes, the vending machines that offer them do change over from summer).

When I first arrived in Japan I had no idea you could buy a hot beverage from a vending machine, and when I chose (cold) tea, thinking I was just choosing regular tea from a vending machine, the person I was with looked at me in complete shock.

“Don’t you want a hot drink?” she asked.

“What? There’s hot drinks?”

“Yes.” She points to the red label, “These are hot.” The look accompanying this was more or less, “how did you miss that…”

Not sure if it’s just me, but I never really came across a vending machine in the US with hot drinks aside the dispenser types at some schools or hospitals, etc. Who needs a vending machine with a coffee shop on every street corner? I am from Seattle after all.

9. Heat Tech from Uniqlo. What you would call long underwear. If not from Uniqlo, wool or silk are also great materials (and yes, you can get non-itchy, lightweight wool base layers – merino wool is one of those). If you’re prone to being cold like I am, you’ll be extra thankful for that base layer!

10. Layer. Outer layer. While you’re shopping for long underwear, do yourself a favor and get a warm winter coat. I recommend anything with down. Uniqlo and Muji have them, but here’s a secret, Sierra Trading Post often has crazy discounts on down jackets. (No, they didn’t pay me to say that – I wish). Be careful if you want anything with fur trim though, as customs might get you when you have it shipped here directly.

CLICK HERE to read the other 14 ways.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

*****

Broccoli Lover Learns to BBQ

Part 1

by Clara Solomon (CIR, Nichinan-cho, Tottori-ken; 1999-2001), the Director of Counseling & Career Development at the Office of Career Services at New York University School of Law. She previously worked for the Japan External Trade Organization, specializing in trade relations between Japan and Latin America.  She lives in Queens with her husband and twin daughters.

Many of my experiences in Japan are tied up in the experience of food and cooking. Sure, I have my fill of the standard repertoire of “how many weird things will the American try?” My favorite of those is the night I was out at a new inn in my town, one that specialized in fresh, local food, with a “high end rustic” slant. So, I’m out with some co-workers enjoying a truly delicious meal, when they put a plate of glistening, dark red sashimi before me and say “to-rai, to-rai” (try, try). I wasn’t quite sure what this fish was, it was darker red than any tuna I’d ever seen, so dark it was almost purple, or black. There were thick veins of white fatty meat running through each piece – it almost looked like raw beef, though I could tell from the smell and texture that it was fish. “What is this?” I innocently asked, knowing full well that they wouldn’t tell me until I ate it. This game was a favorite of my colleagues, and they again said “to-rai.” So, I tried it. The minute I popped the full piece in my mouth, the entire table burst out with giggles and choruses of “Greeenpeesu! Greenpeesu!” Yes, Greenpeace. Turns out, I was eating endangered whale, the fishing and eating of which Japan has long been at odds with environmental groups like Greenpeace over (not to mention UN conventions, and the opinion of much of the rest of the world, minus Norway and the Inuit). How was it, you ask? Honestly, not that memorable. For one, it was extremely cold, indicating that it had probably been frozen and shipped to my town from somewhere further south (so much for eating local). For two, I think I would have rather had a piece of fatty tuna, whose rich, buttery flavor far outshone this piece of whale.

I could go on for pages regaling you with stories about the strange things I was given to eat, and the strange situations in which I found myself eating them (wild boar on live TV, anyone?). But, when I think back to the essence of my eating, drinking and cooking in Japan, those are only the warm up acts, the comedy routines that politicians put into the beginning of their stump speeches to play to the base and entice the crowds to stick around for the meat and potatoes (not that I had a lot of meat and potatoes in Japan…). My story of food in Japan is one of cooking and sharing, and gaining not only friends, but also self confidence in the process. You see, I lived in a small town of about 6,000 people nestled in the mountains of Western Honshu. While the town had a sprinkling of ramen shops, bars, and the above-mentioned high-end inn, my choices for eating out were, in actuality, pretty limited.

Fortunately, I had always enjoyed cooking, and had the foresight to ship myself a copy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, so I was prepared to cook, well, everything. Or, so I thought. But this was, after all, my first time actually living alone and really fending for myself. And boy was I living alone, my JET home institution had graciously arranged for me a 3-bedroom, two-story house, equipped with a fully planted garden and a view of a rice paddy out of my bedroom window. A native of the NYC metro-area, I had never seen a potato plant until someone came in from wandering around my garden at one of my infamous yaki-niku barbecue parties holding a fistful of potatoes that he had apparently pulled up right outside my back door – who knew? We washed and boiled them and had a lovely potato salad with our bbq.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. In the first day that I arrived in my little town in Japan, I hadn’t quite envisioned yaki-niku parties on my veranda. Really, I hadn’t even registered that I had a veranda big enough for a barbecue grill. My supervisor and the local junior high English teacher, Naomi-sensei, met me at the airport, dropped my bags off at my new house, and took me right to the grocery store to buy some food. I was still reeling from the hour-long drive home from the airport, where we went deeper and deeper into the mountains, and further and further from the things I generally took for granted, like street lights.

As we drove into the little valley, and I saw my town nestled along the banks of the Hino River for the first time, I’d love to be able to say that I was instantly smitten, charmed by the small-town feel, the sun glinting off the river, the old ladies chatting in the streets, and the children catching dragonflies in the breeze. In fact, however, I was struggling to hold down a mounting wave of panic. I mean, I was born in Brooklyn for goodness sake. Sure, I’d spent summers on my grandparents’ farm in Maine, and had gone on some camping trips in the back-woods of Minnesota, but those were vacations, not long-term living arrangements.

So I was blinking back tears as I stepped into the grocery store with Naomi-sensei. At least the town had a grocery store, I thought to myself. Naomi-sensei was standing by my side as I perused the aisles of the Paseo for the fist time that day. I’d never had someone watch me shop for groceries before, and I was instantly conscious that I should be buying things that made me look like the responsible adult I was trying to pass myself off to be. Right. Well, responsible people eat vegetables, so I picked up some broccoli. At a loss for where to go from there, I pushed my mini-cart aimlessly around the store, and Naomi-sensei gently guided me towards the rice display. Right, in Japan, we eat rice – good thing I didn’t go for the bread aisle, or I would have never heard the end of it when the junior high English class got to the “Which do you like, rice or bread?” section of the textbook.

I don’t remember much of the rest of that shopping trip, but when I went to try to make myself dinner that night, I discovered that I had bought only four things: milk, eggs, rice, and broccoli. Broccoli omelets were my sole sustenance until I worked up the nerve to go back to Paseo for some reinforcements. By that time, however, I had already earned a reputation as Ms. Broccoli. Even two years later, after I had hosted countless dinner parties, and even taught some cooking classes at the local community center, people would stop my in the street or the store, and say “Ah, Kurara-san, I heard you like broccoli!” (Better than “I heard you like Doritos” or “I heard you like Colt 45,” I suppose, but still a strange thing to be confronted with on a regular basis.)

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Lars Martinson (Fukuoka-ken 2003-2006), author of the graphic novels Tonoharu: Part Two andTonoharu:  Part 1, has just launched a new cartoon series called “Kameoka Diaries“ about his return to teaching English, this time in Kameoka, Kyoto.

Click hereto read the post and the first cartoon.

This week I attended the Japan Society’s member screening of Norwegian Wood, the film version of this Haruki Murakami novel.  I haven’t read the book, but the movie was quite moving.  It takes place in the late 1960′s with student riots as a backdrop.  It is a love story centering on the university student Toru Watanabe, who is torn between his first love from his hometown, Naoko, and a new women he meets at school, Midori.  His relationship with Naoko is complicated as their mutual best friend (and Naoko’s boyfriend) committed suicide when they were in high school.  They share this bond, but it is also the source of Naoko’s mental instability.  Midori is a bit of a brighter character, though her life has been overshadowed by family members’ untimely deaths.  The film is quite tender in its exploration of these relationships and the direction Toru’s future will take.

The movie was made in 2010 by the French-Vietnamese director Anh Hung Tran, who was on hand at the screening along with Rinko Kikuchi who plays Naoko (pictured above with Kenichi Matsuyama who plays Toru).  They offered some behind the scenes stories, such as how Tran didn’t see Kikuchi as being right for the role but was overcome by her persuasion and powerful audition.  One poignant anecdote he shared was of a night when Kikuchi asked him, “Why is it that when I cry during a scene, it feels more real than when I cry in real life?” to which he answered, “Because you are an artist.  And to an artist, expression is more real than experience.”  This exchange captures Kikuchi’s artistic process and offers insight into her poetic performance.  I had the opportunity to interview her the following day, and found her to be both down to earth and impressive in her approach to the craft.

Norwegian Wood will be coming to the IFC Center on January 6, and my Kikuchi article will be in the February issue of Chopsticks magazine so keep your eyes peeled!

A really terrific December edition of AJET Connect online magazine is now available for viewing at:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/AJET/AJET+Connect+DEC+2011.pdf

• “A New Framework for US-Japan Development Cooperation“ (PDF)  http://www.jcie.org/researchpdfs/USJapanPapers/Gannon.pdf

Click here for other JCIE papers in the series.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

******

Kaijō!

by Justin Maki (ALT Osaka-fu, 2002-06), a writer and editor currently working at the Sports desk of Kyodo News America in New York City. He also writes about health and exercise science for J-Range Training (www.jrangetraining.com), a Denver-based fitness company whose method of low-impact weight training is under review for a US Patent. Justin’s short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in a handful of small journals. Contact him at makij408@gmail.com. 

“When you go to the kitchen to prepare dinner, be born in the kitchen. When you finish there, die. Then be born at the dining table as you eat your dinner and, when you finish eating, die there. Be born in the garden, and sweep with your broom. When you get into bed at night, die there. And when daylight comes, and you awaken in your bed, be born anew.”

These are the words of Soko Morinaga Roshi, the famous abbot of Daishuin Temple in Kyoto. Ten years after Morinaga-Roshi passed away, in the rainy season of my third year in Japan, I had the opportunity to move into Daishuin with his successor. Nobody was there except me and the monk, a wiry forty-year-old with thick glasses and a firm, toothy grin. I cooked with him, cleaned with him, meditated with him; at every meal I asked him questions and learned what I could, although he often left me puzzled. I was a total newcomer to Zen, more of a guest than a student, and far from fluent in Japanese.

And so my life began, every morning, in darkness. I heard soft footsteps in the hallway, followed by the dreaded “kaijō!” More dead than alive, I scrambled for my belt and ran to splash water on my face and fetch the bucket and rag. I was born in the hondō while lighting incense, and after we chanted sutras, I died. I wiped the temple’s long wooden corridors as the sun came up. Finally, with a sense of relief, I would go to the kitchen to make breakfast for myself and the monk, and be born anew.

At the time, I was commuting to work at a public high school in Osaka, and living in the temple thanks to a substitute English teacher who had been friends with the late Morinaga-Roshi. In order to leave for work on time, I couldn’t afford to spend more than twenty minutes on breakfast — but compared to the strenuous pace of our chores, these twenty minutes were a long and leisurely extravagance. I would set the table with two bowls of rice gruel and two sets of chopsticks, and on a saucer-sized plate for each of us, I would arrange a few grams of seaweed, a pinch of salty miso paste, and a plum so intensely sour that even the monk used to grimace while eating it.

I remember this particular combination of tastes more vividly than almost anything else from four years in Japan. These breakfasts gave me a powerful sensory cue, a link to what Zen practice made me feel: the much-needed shock to my system, the open passageway for intuition rather than the word-bound, cluttered “thoughts” that I had grown so dependent upon. Two months after leaving Kyoto, when the clutter began to overtake me again, I decided to re-create the temple diet as much as possible.

In the interim, I had gone back to Colorado for summer vacation and returned to southern Osaka prefecture to a new job and a new home. The apartment, selected by the rural board of education that now employed me, seemed fortuitously suited to my project. It had a hardwood-floor kitchen — perfect for the peaceful grounding ritual of wiping it down with a rag before dawn — and two completely empty tatami rooms, either of which would be great as a mini-zendō. I bought a huge jar of sour umeboshi, packets of miso paste, and seaweed as part of a simple diet.

But perhaps from the very first day, the project was more sentimental than a sign of any true humility or dedication. My new job involved teaching English in kindergarten and elementary schools, a wonderful experience, but one that required a lot more running, singing, and game-playing than working in a high school, and a full day’s exertion on a third-grader’s lunch of tonjiru soup and white rice. I often came home exhausted and starving. In the last hour that my local supermarket was open, I bought discounted sushi packs and box lunches. I would make quick sandwiches from ham or cheap tempura; I bought ready-made, single-serving containers of potato salad or tofu dishes; and for dessert I had red-bean-filled tea sweets without tea. As long as it didn’t require cooking, I was satisfied. The healthy foods I bought optimistically on the weekend, the udon noodles and broccoli and carrots, rotted in opened packages during the week and eventually had to be thrown away.

In the temple, we were not allowed to waste a single grain of rice. But this, obviously, was not temple life: not only did I never get up in time to wipe the hardwood floor, but I hardly got up in time to eat breakfast at all. Most nights I would set my rice cooker to begin cooking at 5:20 a.m., so that it would be done by 5:55 when I was supposed to get up. But with nobody yelling “kaijo!” in the morning, it could be 6:19, or 6:44, or even 7:02 by the time I got up and ate a quick bowl of rice and/or a slice of white bread before rushing out the door, biking furiously through the shotengai shops, parking illegally at a cram school behind the train station and sprinting through the ticket gate and up the stairs. Leftover rice was often the basis for dinner. Many times I would boil a bag of cheap instant curry to dump over the cold rice, and toss in a large package of tofu. My habit of eating sweets made sour plums unbearable. They too had to be thrown away.

One problem, I thought, was that I simply didn’t have the skills to cook healthy foods that were also satisfying. I enrolled in a bilingual weekly class called “Let’s Enjoy Japanese Home Cooking.” At every session I got hands-on practice making dishes like pork dumplings, grilled salmon with vegetables, various stir-fry meals and dashi-based soups. It was a fun and helpful class, but I still had trouble finding time to cook. My kitchen was not nearly as well-equipped as the class kitchen, and what implements I had were more often than not piled dirty in the sink.

As the winter progressed, my so-called meditation room fell into disuse as well. I had a profound appreciation for the benefits of Zen practice, but I wanted my own sort of practice, not necessarily locked into the culture of Buddhism. Therefore, my mini-zendō was actually a zendō-inspired reading room: by honing my concentration, I would learn to immerse myself completely in works of literature, to focus beyond the words until I could see the characters and situations take shape before my eyes. While sitting on the tatami floor, however, I had the same problem as I’d had while meditating in the zendō. My concentration wandered. My posture slumped. But instead of straightening up and persevering like I would have in the presence of a monk, in my private apartment I would slump further, lie on my back, or prop myself up on an elbow — none of which allowed me to concentrate for very long, and none of which were comfortable while shivering on a December evening. The hardwood floor I’d promised myself to wipe daily, as if wiping the stale, tangled thoughts from my mind, remained covered in teaching materials, dust, books, and dirty laundry.

Looking back, it is not hard to understand why this happened. One of my first questions for the monk had been to describe his idea of happiness. “When I have continued something tedious and difficult for a long time without giving up,” he’d answered. “That’s happiness.” Picking up a saucer-sized plate, he’d said that the top of the plate was tedium, the underside happiness. There was no dividing the two. But perhaps the attempt, this futile struggle to have it my own way, was a necessary stage of learning. Even Morinaga-Roshi describes the resistance in his young heart, the impatience with which he heard but failed to understand the words of his teacher. When Zuigan Roshi took him in at Daishuin, the very first lesson was this: “From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.” Morinaga admits that it took considerable time and effort before he could put the meaning of this statement into practice. Similarly, I was not finding it easy to adopt the monk’s wisdom into my accustomed routine. The temple meals, apparently so simple and powerful, depended upon a much larger context that I couldn’t duplicate on my own.

And when I think of the best meals I had in the year after leaving the temple, I remember all the people who invited me into their homes and tried their best to speak English while generously providing homemade cooking and good saké. I remember my girlfriend making Sunday morning pancakes, and one day — a cool, fragrant day of sakura trees blooming in the rain — we’d made a big leafy salad with kiwi fruit and avocado, with cashews and raisins and orange chunks, with celery, spinach, cherry tomatoes — with the abundance and joy of springtime itself.

But most nights after work I was alone, and nothing went into my dinners but a hasty cash transaction. A thousand yen in the closing grocery store, choices made while trembling with hunger, happy at the weight of the basket against my arm. Cinnamon-raisin bread, some apples, seaweed with sprouts and tofu, a box lunch, a somen noodle tray. This is the way it happens: I rush out of the store and wait impatiently for the elevator to my fifth-floor apartment. There is no need to open my small fridge, because nothing of what I’ve bought will be left over. I go straight to eating the box lunch. It is a multi-compartment tray with take-no-ko rice, grilled salmon, a fried meatball, mashed potatoes, lettuce, seaweed, and a few other things. I do not look at the food very carefully before grabbing it with disposable wooden chopsticks and rushing it to my mouth. When I am finished with the tray, all I know is that I want more. I eat two apples quickly and dig into a packet of fried tofu. To make it more like dessert, I squeeze a layer of honey over the top of the firm, black-spotted surface. It cuts yet holds together as neatly as moist cake, and is just as delicious. Finally I take a long drink from a lukewarm bottle of tea that has been sitting in the apartment for several days.

I take a deep breath, the first one in quite a while. I am full, but far from born anew. A heap of empty plastic trays, dishes with neither tedium on one side nor happiness on the other, clutter the sink. “From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash” — and yet here I was in the rainy season of my fourth year in Japan, a year after my stay in Daishuin, reminding myself to get more trash bags.

At Kyoto’s Kiyomizu Temple, 今年の漢字 (kotoshi no kanji), or the kanji of the year was just announced to be 絆 (kizuna) or bonds between people.  According to the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society, the rationale behind its selection by the based on ideas from the public was that in a disaster-ridden year that brought a nation closer together, kizuna best reflects the events of 2011.  These bonds include those among family members, friends and neighbors, as well as refers to support from abroad.  It was chosen with the hope that the world will continue to coalesce to help restore Japan.

As for how this year’s お正月 (oshougatsu) nine months after the disaster will be spent, it seems as if most people are being low-key and staying close to home due to 3-11.  Many are still in mourning for the lives that were lost, and this probably will continue until the one-year anniversary next year.  People aren’t even sure what to write on their new year’s cards, as the typical 新年おめでとう (shinnen omedetou) or “Happy New Year!” may not be appropriate.  Below are some suggestions (in Japanese) for what to write on 年賀状 (nengajou) to those in the disaster area.

祝いの語を使わない例

桃栗三年柿八年 (momo kuri sannnen kaki hachinen): it takes time to reap the fruit of one’s actions

(lit. [It takes] three years for [planted] peach and chestnut trees, eight for persimmons [to bear fruit]) (ことわざ学習室）

In late autumn and early winter (mid-Nov. to New Year), Omicho Market is awash in reds and oranges: strawberries, crabs, mikan, and persimmons. Before I moved to Japan, I had never seen a persimmon, though they seem to be available in California. There are two main varieties available in Japan: non-astringent (amagaki, 甘柿) and astringent (shibugaki, 渋柿). Fuyu (富有), the tomato-shaped variety, are a variety of sweet persimmon; they are dull orange, firm, and ready to eat when they are sold. The human-heart-shaped Hachiya (蜂屋), on the other hand, is very astringent until the skin turns reddish and the insides turn to jelly.*

I tend to eat Fuyu persimmons plain, but I was inspired by The Food Librarian‘s “Fuyu Persimmon Bundt” to try something new.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.

Time truly flies, as I can’t believe it has been so long since I’ve been here.  At any rate, tadaima!

Although almost nine months have passed since the earthquake/tsunami in Fukushima, and I am glad to say that the recoverｙ effort is still on people’s minds.  Last night I went to the Artist Showcase and Fundraiser for Japan held at Ambassador Shigeyuki Hiroki’s Residence. The event featured a reception honoring a visiting Fukushima prefectural government delegation to New York, along with artwork (some from JET alumni!) available for silent auction purchase.

Ambassador Hiroki offered his comments, and a representative of the Fukushima prefectural governor read a letter from him on his behalf.  On display were Fukushima goods, and guests partook of Fukushima sake as well as local culinary offerings such as delicious rice and peaches.  The filled to capacity crowd seemed to enjoy themselves and were glad to be able to contribute, even in a small way, to the ongoing struggle to restore normalcy in Fukushima.

For those who weren’t able to attend last night but feel like they want to do something to help the cause, there is an event tonight in Union Square being held by the Blue Sky Project, a group of young Fukushima enterpreneurs, with backing from the New York Fukushima Prefectural Association.  For details, please see the press release below and hope to see you all there!

New York, NY – November 25, 2011 – Members of Young Entrepreneurs Group in various regions of Fukushima, Japan formed and established a group called “Blue Sky Project” and will be in New York to raise their spirit of rebuilding their hometown after experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami followed by ill-fated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster. New York is the aspiration for Fukushima that the city also has experienced September 11th, and has been recovering financially and mentally from the tragedy. Fukushima has been suffering from financial damages and harmful reputation from radiation scare even after 8 ½ months later. In order to overcome the negative images and views towards Fukushima, the members of “Blue Sky Project” and its supporters of New Yorkers will conduct the event: Support Fukushima Candle Night.

Despite my oft-mentioned love of turkey, I had actually never cooked one until this year. In between being a super serious high-school student buried in a stack of books during the holidays and being a super-serious undergrad/grad student visiting from out of state, still buried in a stack of books and often rushing to get back home in time for holiday meals, I somehow seemed to have missed participating in the time-honored ritual of roasting a whole bird. This year marked my third consecutive Thanksgiving missed because I live in Japan, so rather than cry over my twitter feed of satisfied turkey-eaters in the US, I decided that my upgraded oven range was going to good use this year: we would host Thanksgiving, and, moreover, we would cook the turkey.

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もちもち (mochimochi): springy (texture)

Back in my language-school days at Midd, a New-Yorker foodie friend got on my case for eating the dining-hall bagels, telling me, “That’s not a bagel. That’s a piece of bread shaped like a bagel.” It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t find out what sort of things pass for “bagels” in Japan–it’s more like “cake shaped like a bagel.” Sometimes you can get passable bagels in the chain bakeries of Kanazawa, and Kaldi Coffee sometimes has imported frozen bagels, but they’re a bit pricey. Either way, it’s not just like popping over to Espresso Royale for a fresh Barry’s Bagel during an intense paper-writing session.

Bagels are one of those foods that seem very intimidating in part because of the multi-step process of making them: using yeast, letting the dough rise, shaping, boiling, and then finally baking; and in part because you really never need to make them in the US when they’re so widely available.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.