Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Something Amazing

I witnessed something amazing. I woke up early the other morning to the sound of rain, the clear sound of rain pattering on the thin, tin-like roof of my apartment. I was up early for the annual grand gate gold tournament in Akune. As I expected, not ten minutes after I rose from the warm depths of my futon did I receive a call from my advisor Momokita-sensei informing me that the gate-golf tournament had been cancelled, do to the rain, of course. Too bad, I thought to myself, tired and shivering in my cold apartment.

I decided not to go back to sleep. Instead I whipped up a quick breakfast of a left over tofu omelet that I ordered at Harmonican the night before. Breakfast is what keeps me connected with my bread, cheese and egg-eating Western roots.

On the way home form a short excursion to the drug store for a ridiculously expensive-nearly twenty dollars-10 gram tube of cortisone cream I witnessed something amazing, something that one would only witness in a small port city like Akune: I turned on to my street, and was walking in front of a fish restaurant where the owner and a fisherman happened to be doing business right out in front. It was just around nine o’clock in the morning; the fisherman must have come back at that moment from his morning out at sea. As I neared the restaurant’s front, I peered into the open back of the fisherman’s truck. There was a beautiful payload of vibrantly colored fish, many different kinds, all packed in wooden boxes and filled to the brim with ice. I saw something moving in the bottom of the truck and thought to myself, ‘Now that’s fresh.’ After taking a closer look, I realized that I was looking at a fish filleted completely in half, from the mouth to the tail, still squirming with a surprising amount of energy. I couldn’t help but stop and stare. Wiggling and pulsing in its ice bed, this fish would just not give up. I turned to leave when, in a moment sheer endurance, the fish flipped itself 180 degrees to show me its scales, for the whole time before I was looking at its unidentifiable fleshy inside. ‘Huh, kampachi (yellowtail),’ I thought to myself.

It had become noticeably colder in Akune over the past weeks. As a result, the schools’ temperatures have plummeted, bringing on the season of kerosene heaters in the faculty room; there is nothing like the taste of bitter canned coffee with a slight aroma of kerosene in the air. As for my apartment, it is also, unfortunately, thermally challenged. When I come into through the doorway I just don’t seem to fell the surge of warmth one usually does when entering a home with proper heating and insulation. I have noticed that my towels hanging out on my veranda in the sun just do not seem to dry as quickly as they used to. When I get dressed in the morning for school my white dress shirts chill my skin. On the bright side, however, I can now leave all my beer on the living room table with full confidence in the fact that it will be a perfect 10 degrees celsius when I go to drink it.

There are a number of ways to tackle the heat, though, and I have been trying my hardest to follow the strategies of my local neighbors. For instance the other day after finishing my only two morning classes on Wednesday, I played hooky and went over to Captain Matsunaga’s house for coffee (recently brought back from his trip to the Dominican Republic) and a quick lesson about how to make a simple miso soup. The coffee was great and the miso soup really did warm me up, but what really did the trick was the Captain’s pickled ginger. With just a little bit of vinegar and sugar you can turn ginger into a very tasty pickle that truly warms up the body.

It just occurred to me that it has been nearly a month since I posted an entry, and not just any regular month. This past month has been busy with all kinds of events, expeditions, and escapades. Allow me to fill you in on the happenings of last month in Akune.

In late November Captain Matsunaga’s daughter Juno and the son of Ms. Matsumoto (the cooking class leader), Shigehisa (the owner of Harmonican) were joined in holy matrimony. The date of the wedding was on the very auspicious day of November 22nd: The character for 1 in Japanese can be read as “i”, which sounds like the “ee” of bee; the character for 2 can be read as “fu”, like the “fu” in Mt. Fuji, thus making 11/22 iifufu, which in Japanese means happy couple. I joined the new Mr. and Mrs. Matsumoto at the after party held at Harmonican and enjoyed delicious food made by guest chefs from Okinawa in the company of the newlyweds’ close friends and family. It was a pleasurable night, one only fit for the debut of my new bow tie (thanks Mom and Dad).

At the end of November there spread a new gossip around Akune, a rumor that always seems to emerge around this time of year: hakusai cabbage is getting cheaper. I first heard it form the Mama at my local yakitori joint, Otone, then I heard it from my fellow teachers. Finally, after hearing enough cabbage chitchat I went to the store myself to see what all the fuss was about. Wow. They were right, 90 yen for a whole cabbage? That calls for kimchi. After gathering the ingredients for a kimchi mix I researched at Akune library I high tailed to the store for a head of cabbage and this started the third kimchi excursion this year.

As I was marinating my cabbage in its four-hour salt water bath I though to myself, ‘In the amount of time it takes for my cabbage to cure, my Mom could make one hell of a Thanksgiving turkey.’ This thought then reminded me of the fact that I wasn’t in fact going to miss out on this year’s Thanksgiving festivities, for I had just recently been invited to a little gathering in the town of Togo just one hour south on the Orange Railway. The weekend following the wedding I headed down to Togo with a Tupperware container full of steamed vegetables, my contribution to the potluck, anxiously anticipating what kind of warm atmosphere awaited me at the end of my train ride. Nearly 15 English teachers showed up to the Thanksgiving gathering, each with their own dish and thoughtful words about what makes them thankful. I was thankful for the fact that although I was so far away from family, I could still feel, in the presence of everyone, a sense of family. I was also thankful for the Scottish girl who brought real bread and cheese as well as my friend who brought Star of David cookies.

With all the gorging I had done on the Thanksgiving I was glad to accept my friend Gata’s invitation to participate in the upcoming walk rally from Izumi to Minamata. Gata is one of my good friends from Big Up NPO and the guy that has really connected me to a lot of people in Akune. In other words, if Gata says that I should consider participating in something, it is most likely going to be a good time. As for the walking rally, it was nothing but a testimony to my belief in Gata’s intuition.

When Gata told me that I was going to be dressed up as a Samurai and walk along the Satsuma seaboard (a route that merchants used for hundred of years during the Edo period), I though he was pulling my chain, as he often does. However, after he called me into the office to get my measurements to send off to the fitting company, I realized I was in for a walk rally like none other.

Before I thought that I was stared at a lot. Whether I was walking down the streets of Akune, shopping in the grocery store, teaching at school or even in my workplace, I always felt the weight of someone’s stare. Imagine how many heads I turned when I lead a walking rally of nearly 500 people in full Samurai attire. At the end of the 14-kilometer walk rally in my exceptionally heavy Samurai garb, I had certainly strayed from the head of the pack, but I finished the walk nonetheless.

It took nearly a week of massaging my own thighs, going to the onsen and stretching to rid myself of the soreness caused by the walking rally. As the pain finally seemed to have escaped from the deepest parts of my muscle tissue, I got a call from Mami-san reminding me of my promise to go hiking with him and the boys from Big Up this Sunday. Oh yeah, hiking, I said. The night before the hike was the first time I slept in the sleeper car hostel that Big Up manages. It was a really fun experience, and by fun I mean I went to bed at 0100, cramped in small sleeping quarters with small blankets only to wake up 3 hours later to go for a four hour car ride.

The hike was a real challenge, but in the same way it was truly rewarding. The mountain, Hijitake, was extremely cold and the trail was poorly marked, which made us heighten our senses to the sparse pieces of yellow and red tape in the midst of our beautiful surroundings. When we neared the summit of Hijitake, the clouds became thick and the wind strong. A frosty, frozen coating of ice blanketed the mountainside as the moist air blew through the thick foliage. It was getting colder. When we finally reached the top the rice in our bento had become cold and almost impossible to grasp with the disposable wooden chopsticks from the convenient store. After sacrificing the feeling of our hands to feed our hungry stomachs we all took a moment to soak up the serenity of the surrounding mountains, got a chest full of crisp mountain air and headed down for the frigid descent. The onsen never felt so good.

I was not nearly as sore from Hijitake as I though I was going to be. This was a relief to me, especially because the following week I had a number of obligations that required me to be on my feet: cooking class and Akune’s annual Bontan road race.

This month Ms. Matsumoto was kind enough to cater the cooking class to my Kosher eating habits, so instead of a making a juicy pork roast, we made a seasonally savvy meat loaf. The side dishes were my favourite part of last cooking class though. For the salad we used renkon (lotus root) and daikon (gigantic white radish) and mixed it with mayonnaise, sesame paste and horseradish, which made for a very fragrant and crunchy side. But it was the soup side that enticed my cooking interests. Instead of soba noodles in soup we made soba dumplings. If you add just a bit of boiling water to a cup or so of soba powder you can make a fancy looking, nutritious soup.

Although this month’s cooking class was a truly savory session, it helped me get into the health conscious mind-set that I needed to complete the annual Akune Bontan Road Race, which was fast approaching. What is a bontan? Commonly known as the Shaddock fruit and looking similar to the pomelo fruit, the bontan fruit was introduced to Japan in the Edo period (1602-1867) after a Chinese merchant ship washed ashore the Satsuma region on the island of Kyushu (my current location). After being rescued by the friendly people of Satsuma, the captain of the merchant ship, named Buntan, offered an abnormally large, yellow citrus fruit as a token of his appreciate and gratitude. And so, as humans all over the world did for ages before and do so well now, the people of Satsuma cultivated the bontan fruit and have been harnessing its deliciousness-and shipping it across Japan-for centuries.

Akune is particularly famous for its bontan and to make sure everyone in the region remembers that, the city sponsors an annual Bontan Road Race, which consists of full and half-marathon, 10-kilometer, 5-kilometer and 3-kilometer races. I opted for the 5-kilometer race seeing as I have not hit the pavement running in the literal sense since my second year of university.

I ran the 5 km with a slow steady pace, coming in 7th place for the 29 and under bracket. After crossing the finish line all runners, including myself, indulged in the free baked potatoes, pickles, grilled fish and, of course, bontant provided by various farms, fisherman and the like, all local eats.

Just as I thought I was running out of fuel for this term Chanukah-or however you wish to spell it-came along to remind to burn brighter and longer even in times of doubt. It was a fabulous Chanukah, although I was lacking a few things: family; friends; latkes; and the lingering smell of latkes the week after Chanukah. I managed to light the menorah and sing a couple songs in my chilly apartment, but, needless to say, it just was not the same. I was thinking of a way to bring Chanukah to Akune and possibly even to school when I remembered the joy of dreidles. Of course, I thought to myself, dreidle tournament in class.

When I tell people in Akune that I do not celebrate Christmas, they do not really get it, they cannot seem to grasp this fact of religious diversity. However, this creates a great opportunity for me to tell the world-of Akune-about Chanukah as well as Judaism in general. The day that I introduced Chanukah to the kids the classroom was silent. The kids’ eyes were locked on the chalkboard as I wrote “Nun”, “Gimmel”, “Hey” and “Shin” in big bold script. I told them of the miracle that Chanukah celebrates and in response received this reply, ”Heeeeeeeeh?”, which is the equivalent of an American, “Ooooo, aaaaaah.” When it was time to make dreidles the classroom erupted in a frenzy of the laughter, mixed with a bit of confusion, but always followed by a pump of the fist, at least for those who landed on gimmel.

I made mochi (rice cakes) today at Omaru kouminkan, my neighborhood community centre. Mochi is one of the staples of New Years food and it is a tradition in most places to make this sticky, hot confection in the warm company of family, friends or, like today, close neighbors. For such a soft and delicate morsel, mochi requires an immense amount of strength. After cooking glutinous rice has been steamed it is emptied in a stone pestle (some people use wood pestles, but with the amount of pounding that is needed to make the mochi, the wood version can only withstand so many years of punishment, sweet delicious punishment). Then with a large wooden hammer, the piping hot mochi rice is pounded and turned nearly 50 times until it becomes smooth as silk, hence the Japanese phrase, mochi skin. The fresh mochi was delicious and if you put a little bit of anko, sweet bean paste, in the center the mochi becomes a delectable dessert.

As I sat on the porch of the community center, I pondered to myself how lucky I was to have been able to participate in such an in-group event like mochi making. I thought today, and not for the first time, that I was getting to Akune pretty well. Then a young man sitting beside me, slurping his instant noodles turned to me and asked where I came from. I made a joke and said Omaru (my neighborhood). He laughed, thank goodness. I told him I was from Seattle and he immediately replied, as all Japanese do.
“Oh, the place where Ichiro plays baseball, right?”
He then inquired how long I plan on staying in Akune.
“Well, my contract is one year”, I started, ”but I do have a chance to stay longer if I wish.”
To this the man replied in a way I would have never expected a young man to do so. I would like to share this mans words with you:

石の上にも三年 (ishino uenimo sannen)

Literally translated, this Japanese proverb means, “Sit on the top of a stone for three year.”
How the young man explained it to me today, however, was something more along the lines of, if you don’t try something, live somewhere, or commit for three years, you have no idea of what that thing, place or job truly is.

Thank you, young man.

Until next time.

Thanksgiving Dinner



Soba dumplings in the pot and renkon salad in the bowl



Preparing the garnish for the meatloaf



My Saturday lunch: Soba noodles with cured plum, green onions and wasabi, peanuts with miso katsuo flakes and mirin and shiitake sauteed with garlic stems



Kimchi



Hijitake



Summit of Hijitake



At the Wedding party, with the bride



The final product



Bringing Chanukah to the classroom



The first night



Bontan Road Race



Harvesting bontan at the Captain's older sister's house