Untangling My Chopsticks (6 page)

ot wanting to impose on Bob any longer, I moved to the Kyoto English Guesthouse in mid-November. This hostel of sorts lay in the northern region of Kita-ku, bordered by several small mountains that received their first dusting of snow on Thanksgiving Day. In exchange for 45,000 yen ($265) a month, I received an unheated five-tatami room complete with a
futon
(cotton floor mattress) that I wrestled to the floor each night from its waist-high sliding cupboard built into the wall. Since there were no sheets or quilts, I was thankful I had brought my sleeping bag.

Included in the rent was the use of a unisex bathroom with showers to share with the twenty or so other boarders consisting mostly of Americans, Canadians, and Australians in their twenties and early thirties. News spread quickly in such close confines
and I quickly learned who was genuinely glad to be in Kyoto and who was not.

The optimists had come to write novels, study arts like papermaking, or master the Japanese language. They relished being in the city and passed on helpful bits of advice. I learned about the health food store down the street stocked with nutty whole wheat bread, not available at the bakery around the corner, which sold only cottony white loaves and sweet buns. I heard about Nihongo Gakko, which offered the best Japanese language classes in Kyoto for the least amount of money. I found out about T's Rocket Restaurant, where tacked on the bulletin board inside the entrance were flyers advertising teaching jobs, secondhand bicycles for sale, and apartments to rent. Additionally, I discovered the restaurant made a fabulous spinach salad topped with corn, tomatoes, roasted pumpkin, and a creamy ginger-soy dressing; a tip I, in turn, passed along to others.

Those boarders who could not stand living in Japan openly admitted it. Having come to Kyoto to earn some quick teaching money, they could not have cared less about the culture. In fact, they would often sit around the den in the Guesthouse eating boiled eggs, imported Cheerios, and peanut butter sandwiches, carping about how expensive, cold, and cramped the city was and how weird and uptight the Japanese were.

What made up for any discomfort at the Guesthouse, however, was the spacious communal kitchen. Outfitted with several refrigerators, a mammoth stove, and plenty of pots and pans, it provided all the essentials necessary to cook in Japan. Finally, I could delve into the markets and start experimenting with all the unusual ingredients I had spotted thus far.

In the beginning, sight and taste guided my food purchases,
an easy and pleasurable exercise at the traditional food shops selling basic items like rice and miso. All I had to do was point, hold up my fingers for the number of kilos or grams I wanted, and pay. Admittedly, it took some experimenting to understand all the various grades and types of these ingredients. At the rice shop, for example, I tasted dozens of varieties, including the stubby glutinous grains often used for desserts and the partially polished ones that retained their germ, before settling on a favorite.

The miso store also entailed much sampling. Although all miso consists of crushed boiled soybeans, salt, and a fermenting agent called
koji,
the types differ based on whether rice, wheat, or barley is added to the mix. The flavor and color of each style can also change, depending upon the amounts of soybeans, type of koji (made from either beans or grains, inoculated with the mold
Aspergillus
), and salt that are added, as well as how long the miso ages. Brick-red miso, for example, comes in both sweet and salty varieties and is made with either barley or a mixture of barley and rice. Because it tastes somewhat coarse, it usually seasons hearty dishes, such as brothy seafood stews. Similar in flavor is the chocolate-brown miso. Mainly composed of soybeans, it has a bold earthy tang best enjoyed in robust dishes, such as potatoes simmered with miso.

Shiro miso,
or “white miso,” is a Kyoto specialty. Smooth, golden, and quite mellow, it is said to have evolved to suit the tastes of the effete aristocracy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is used extensively in Kyoto cooking, including tea kaiseki, and often comes seasoned with herbs, citrus, and mustard. Because of its delicate nature, it tends to be used as a sauce, mainly to dress vegetables and grilled foods. A saltier version appears most often in American markets.

These traditional food shops, with their dark wooden inte
riors, slumping stone floors, and split curtains out front, mushroomed all over Kyoto when a huge merchant class developed to serve the aristocracy. With few exceptions, the same families still own them, using the original wood-burning stoves, hand tools, and careful methods that their great-grandparents once did, carrying on a legacy of extraordinary craftsmanship and quality.

One afternoon when I stepped into an age-old tofu shop, I saw a ninth-generation artisan, whose ancestors made tofu for the imperial court, charring rectangles of tofu on a small grill. So I bought one, all soft, warm, and tinged with smoke and made it the star of my
soba
(buckwheat noodle) soup that night, food fit for an emperor.

My knowledge of Japanese cuisine expanded enormously when several Guesthouse boarders tipped me off to the availability of free sampling in the massive food halls located in the basements of department stores, such as Daimaru and Takashimaya. In addition to selling vegetables, meat, fish, and other goods from farms and factories across Japan, the food halls showcased cooked dishes, sushi to go, and a plethora of imported products, including British shortbread, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and Moët & Chandon champagne.

At first I felt self-conscious helping myself to all these nibbles. After all, Westerners stand out in Japan, particularly hungry ones. But then I told myself it was all part of a grand plan to learn more about Japanese cuisine, and as long as I purchased something, these free tastes would help inform my decisions.

And they did, starting in the sweet section, where the main escalator dropped me off. Kyoto is known for its marvelous cinnamon cookies, snappy and dense and shaped like small roof tiles. They have sesame seeds in the dough and come plain or dribbled with the same kind of icing used to decorate hard gingerbread.
On each visit, I would grab a few, nod enthusiastically, and then head over to the section giving away sweet bean cakes.

Strangely enough, the Japanese base most of their traditional desserts on beans. Called
an,
this smooth chocolatey-looking paste is made from azuki beans boiled in sugar and water. I encountered it for the first time one afternoon when I helped myself to a traditional Kyoto sweet resembling a triangular ravioli stuffed with fudge. What a shock to find a center made from azuki beans, instead of cocoa beans!

Sometimes sweet makers choose chestnuts or white kidney beans to make the an, which they craft into dainty flowers, leaves, and fruits that look just like marzipan. Using special tools and food coloring, they fashion such masterpieces as prickly green-jacketed chestnuts with dark brown centers, winter white camellias with red stamens, and pale pink cherry blossoms with mint-colored leaves to commemorate the flower's arrival in April.

The bean fudge also fills and frosts other confections, including pounded glutinous rice taffy called
mochi
and bite-size cakes, made from flour, water, and eggs that are baked until golden. These moist confections go by the name of
namagashi
and are always served before the thick whipped green tea at the tea ceremony.

Before the thin whipped green tea, tea masters serve dry sweets called
higashi,
made from rice flour and sugar. In Kyoto, most sweet makers use a rare kind of purified sugar called
wasanbon.
Handcrafted in a two-hundred-year-old tradition on the southern island of Shikoku, the wasanbon goes through a twenty-day process to render it completely free of impurities. Confectioners then pour or press the sugar-rice flour mixture into molds to turn out pastel-colored sweets that instantly dissolve on the tongue.

Since green tea always accompanies these sweets, dozens of
nearby counters sold loose leaves ranging in price and quality. Black, green, and oolong tea all come from the same plant, an evergreen shrub related to the magnolia. I quickly learned that it is the way the leaves are grown and treated, however, which accounts for their individual characteristics and quality. To make black tea, the leaves undergo fermentation before they are heated and dried. For green tea, the fermentation process is skipped and the leaves are simply steamed and then dried. Oolong tea consists of leaves that are partially fermented before being heated and dried.

The fanciest grade of green tea in Japan goes by the name of
gyokuro,
meaning “jade dew.” It consists of the newest leaves of a tea plantation's oldest tea bushes that bud in May and have been carefully protected from the sun under a double canopy of black nylon mesh. The leaves are then either steeped in boiled water or ground into a powder to make matcha (literally, “grind tea”), the thick tea served at a tea ceremony. (The powder used to make the thin tea served at a tea ceremony comes from grinding the older leaves of young tea plants, resulting in a more bitter-tasting tea.)

The middle grade of green tea is called
sencha,
or “brew tea,” and is made from the unprotected young tea leaves that unfurl in May or June. The leaves are usually steeped in hot water to yield a fragrant grassy brew to enjoy on special occasions or in fancy restaurants.

For everyday tea, the Japanese buy
bancha.
Often containing tiny tea twigs, it consists of the large, coarse, unprotected leaves that remain on the tea bush until August. When these leaves are roasted, they become a popular tea called
hojicha.
When hojicha combines with popped roasted brown rice, a tea called
genmaicha
results.

After the tea and sweets section, I would usually stop by the area selling rice crackers. Considered a form of dessert, these crispy morsels are made of rice or wheat flour dough stretched thin and baked in metal molds. The dough often contains egg, seaweed, or spices and is usually brushed with soy before baking to render the crackers shiny and salty as they puff and harden. The least expensive ones, such as the short orangey rods wrapped with nori seaweed, generally appeared as samples. The fancier crackers, including the wafers imprinted with ferns, small horns crusted with pink icing, and white daisies with yellow soybean centers, lay in clear cellophane pouches in elegant gift boxes.

The section proffering pickles and salted vegetable mixes to accompany steamed white rice was always ripe for samples. Kyoto, being an inland city, has earned a reputation for the quality of its vegetables, particularly the round, watery, sweet eggplants and succulent bamboo shoots. Since every Japanese meal traditionally ends with pickles, this area was thick with prospective buyers.

“Oh, what is this?” I'd ask with my eyes, stabbing a juicy chunk of salted turnip on a toothpick. I would then scrunch up my face, pretending I didn't care for it, and try another pickle, equally as crunchy and delectable. When I felt I had pushed the limits of freeloading, I would stab one more pickle and nod as if to say “very good,” then step away to visit another section.

If I was lucky, hot foods would appear, such as plump oily knobs of grilled mackerel or eel glazed with soy and mirin. Male clerks dressed in navy-and-white cotton kimono-like jackets worn over their Western-style shirts and trousers would pass sample trays like waiters at a cocktail party. “Have a riddle taste,” they'd say, flourishing their dainties. Copying the women around me, I would pop the hot morsel in my mouth and utter “
oishii,
”which means “delicious.” And it was. Of course, the Japanese women
would purchase whatever was being promoted, since few Japanese would ever sample a product without buying it. I usually would slink off to another section to look for something more affordable, such as a bag of bean sprouts for my evening's stir-fry.

Informative as these sampling seminars were, my understanding of Japanese cuisine skyrocketed when I met a young Japanese woman named Tomiko. Shortly before moving to the Guesthouse, I had landed a job teaching conversational English to five- and six-year-olds every Friday afternoon at a school she ran from her Western-style home. Tomiko's husband, Yasu, was a carpenter and had built the two-level house complete with hardwood floors, central heating, and an indoor shower and bath. It was light, warm, and modern—the antithesis of a traditional Japanese dwelling.

One Friday after teaching, Tomiko and I were having tea in her family room when the conversation turned to food. It was apparent from our first get-together that Tomiko was not a woman to trifle with her stomach.

“I am a gourmand,” she had confessed, patting her ample rice belly. Tomiko had grown up appreciating rare foods and fine cooking as the only child from an upper-class family in Osaka, a city known for its outstanding cuisine. She also loved to cook. When I told her I still did not recognize the majority of ingredients in modern markets, an expression close to pain crossed her face. I offered her another cookie. It seemed to help. For as she chewed, she came up with a plan: she would take me to her local “supermarket” the following week to explain the contents of the aisles.