A JAPANESE HOTEL MEAL
ON TO A Japanese restaurant for dinner—or at least what Mr. Vast Experience had said would be dinner. Of course this order would never be placed and he knows it, but he is getting a kick out of naming unfamiliar foods. As a matter of fact each of the dishes he names makes very good eating indeed at the proper time and place in a dinner. The secret of course is all in the preparation and the sauce. Anyhow, they’ll probably end up eating sukiyaki.
“Let’s see … We’ll take bamboo, sea-weed, raw squid, fermented bean curd, and fish-eye soup, topped off with a double serving of pickled octopus.”
SUKIYAKI AND SAKE
OF COURSE it is sake and sukiyaki. The tour guide is playing cozy, taking his time till the sukiyaki juice has simmered to its ultimate deliciousness. He is also showing off by sitting Japanese style. When he starts to get up though, he may find his legs have gone fast asleep.
The tourist booklet was right. Sake is a light white wine made from rice. But like everything else, you can overdo it even while drinking from cups not much larger than thimbles. The trouble is that sake drinking is accompanied by so much toasting and complimentary exchange of pourings and cups that the rate of consumption is likely to soar unawares.
Sukiyaki itself is usually made from thin strips of beef and assorted vegetables broiled together with their natural juices, soy sauce, and sugar, right on the table in front of you. One of the nicest things about it is the aroma and sociability, to say nothing of its truly delicious and unique flavor.
“But the tourist booklet said it was just a light white wine !”
DAIKON
THEY DON’T grow on trees. What you are looking at are daikon or giant radishes hung out to dry. Next to rice they are one of the most important staples in Japanese diet. An average daikon will be a foot or more long and weigh five pounds or so. They can be much bigger. They are eaten boiled with shoyu, sliced, or shredded as salad. Well-to-do Japanese frequently eat daikon as an essential part of the sauce for the famous tempura (sea-food deep fried in batter). Farmers and laborers are more dependent on daikon as a part of their daily diet, pickled and eaten with rice. If any Japanese food has an odor to which Japanese are sensitive it is pickled daikon, although to a Westerner who may be used to garlic or onion it is not a particularly strong smell at all.
‘I didn’t know they grew on trees!’
GIANT STRAWBERRIES
STRAWBERRIES come so large in Japan that one box will scarcely accommodate an even dozen. The strawberry box is flat and the berries are laid tenderly in on paper, like a box of Western chocolates. The strawberries themselves come as big as plums and hold their taste and juiciness in spite of their size. They are specially cultivated on terraced slopes with a southern exposure.
Fruit in general is plentiful and delicious. Almost every variety seen in the West is available, plus some others not ordinarily found. These include sweet persimmons, sometimes as large as small grapefruit; mikan, a type of tangerine; nashi, a sort of pear-apple with the pear flavor and the apple texture; biwa or loquat; and amazingly large fresh figs.
In almost every Japanese neighborhood the fruit shop rivals the flower shop in attractiveness to the passers-by.
“…and a half-dozen strawberries.”
SHAVED ICE
A FAVORITE summer treat in Japan, for young and old alike, is a dish of shaved ice over which has been poured an extremely sweet syrup. The result is a sort of defrosted popsicle. The syrup comes in several flavors including strawberry, lemon, grape, orange and melon. Even sweet bean paste, a staple for Japanese cakes and confectionary, is found on the shaved ice menu.
The hot and humid Japanese summers make understandable the popularity of this dish. In the countryside the shaving process may be done by a hand scraper but more familiar is the iron machine with a large turning wheel.
The character on the shop curtain denotes an ice shop and there are so many in the summertime that it is one Japanese character that is easily recognized and learned by foreigners.
The Pause That Refreshes…
NOODLE SELLER
THE LONESOME, weird note of the noodle seller’s horn is one of the most characteristic Japanese sounds. Japanese sometimes refer to “night weeping noodles.”
The noodle man comes out after dark in the winter season, pulling a little house-on-wheels and announcing his passage with his horn. He sells his wares until one or two in the morning, stopping for a few minutes in a likely spot and then moving on. His steaming hot bowls of noodles heated over a charcoal stove and sold at comparatively low prices are very tempting on a cold winter night. One distinctive scene in Japan is a train of noodle carts moving away in the early evening from the noodle cart pool where they have been stored during the day.
“Where’s Duncan Hines?”
— CLOTHING —
KIMONO AND OBI
HERE IS evidence that the kimono is not as simple as it looks. Far from it. In fact, in addition to considerable strength necessary to put it together, it also requires several odd little gadgets, some of which may be described briefly as a miniature pillow, a ten-inch metal clip and several small sashes. In any case, once the obi and kimono are successfully put together with a pretty girl inside the result is one of the world’s most beautiful feminine costumes and well worth the trouble.
Neither the kimono nor the obi is an inexpensive proposition. The New Year’s kimono of a seventeen-year-old Japanese girl will be every bit as costly as her American sister’s first formal. Japanese kimono may look alike to Westerners but to a Japanese each is different and the age and social status of the wearer and season of the year can be told at a glance.
Incidentally, kimono in Japanese means clothing in general rather than this particular outfit.
