Fishy Tidbits
It’s been a long while since I last updated, and that’s mostly because I’ve been all over the place with new friends, work, and loads of cooking shenanigans. But unfortunately no really blog-worthy events have unfolded recently. I do have a couple little incidents to relate, though.
First of all, since about the middle of October there’s been some construction going on just across the way from my apartment balcony. At first they came in and covered the doomed apartment building with big canvas sheets, and then started knocking the place down from the inside out. I didn’t think much of it until they came in with the heavy artillery and began blowing out entire floors every morning at about 8 am. It was so loud that I’d literally wake up to my apartment being rocked by the impact of heavy falling objects. The most frustrating part, though, was that I couldn’t even see what they were doing due to the canvas sheets. I would have felt better had I at least been able to see what was going on, but as it was they were just making immense, mysterious tremors behind a veil.
The demolition took about a month. Then I had about three days of peace before one morning I awoke to the sound of a bugle and chanting. For the next three days they held some sort of blessing ceremonies under a make-shift wooden pavilion on the site. These ceremonies included seemingly random bugle blasts and periods of moaning/singing. Then the constructing began and I’ve had an 8 am wake-up call of hammers, saws, steel welders, and heavy machinery ever since. This time, however, there’s no canvas shield. So I can go out and glare my disapproval from time to time. That’s a bit therapeutic.
Also in the realm of new additions to the neighborhood has been a small produce market. A farmer’s market style shop selling vegetables, meat, fish, tofu, and the like opened this month not two minutes by foot from my apartment door. The prices are good, quality is high, the people are friendly, and it’s about as convenient as physically possible. In fact, the people are so friendly that my first time going inside, the woman running the cash register asked me without ceremony, “What’s your country?” That’s the standard Japanese way of asking, “Where are you from?”
“America,” I said.
“Oh, wonderful,” she said. “Are you a student?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“Ah, wow! And you’re Japanese is excellent!” That’s a compliment that I’ve learned to put very little stock in, especially after conversations in which I’ve uttered no more than three or four words in Japanese. But in any case, they were very nice people.
The next time I went into the store, I bought a stick of gobo (a kind of root) and some chicken.
“Do you know what that is?!” asked the same cashier woman from my first visit.
“Gobo, right?” I said.
“Yes! Wow. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m planning to stew it with this chicken and some other vegetables,” I said. It was early. I’d been woken up extra-abruptly by some jack hammering next door.
“Amazing! Do you really know how to cook it? Shouldn’t you have some lotus root? And carrots! You need carrots!”
“I already have those, actually. These were all I needed.”
“Outstanding!” she sang. “And you’ll use soy sauce, too, right? And sake, and mirin?”
“That’s right.”
“Wow, maybe you’re Japanese,” she said, and some of the other women working there giggled.
“Maybe so,” I said, paid and left. They’d been well-intentioned, but I was still a little irked against the world for wrenching me out of bed so violently. And then the next day when I returned to the shop for more things the conversation continued.
“Oh, good morning!” the woman cried as I entered. I returned the greeting. “Did your stew go well?”
“It turned out okay,” I said. I was feeling a little more convivial this time. “It was a new recipe, a little hot instead of sweet. I used some Chinese chili peppers, which gave it a nice kick.”
“Unbelievable!” she said. “You must be a real chef. What did you say you’re doing here again?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“Ah, that’s right. But you can eat Japanese food?”
“It’s my favorite.” The jaws of the three women standing behind the checkout counter all dropped, despite the fact that I’d been going into the shop and buying ingredients for Japanese dishes for the past few days.
From that time I always have a genial, short conversation with the shop attendants when I go in for groceries. So that’s been fun. And additionally, down the street from my apartment a new fish market opened up. Actually, it’s been there quite a long time, but until this December they only supplied restaurants and izakayas. But now they’ve begun selling to individuals. I went in to check the place out a week or so ago, but was a little intimidated when none of the fish had clearly marked prices. So I’ve yet to buy anything, as I already have loads of other fish mongers mapped out around the city.
But one particularly charming facet of this new place is that every morning, as I ride past to go to work, I get to see an absolutely blood-drenched butcher’s table, complete with a blackened evil-looking hatchet and a meat hook. I’ve yet to see any fish on the table, but it’s always dripping buckets of blood off onto the street. The guys inside stride around in high rubber boots and patchy facial hair, scowling at scales and hunks of flesh. It’s a neat place.
I suppose that’s about it for now. The winter break is coming up, which brings the Japanese version of Christmas as well as the momentous New Year holiday. I’m excited to witness both firsthand.