The 365th Day

February 3rd 2010

Exactly a quarter of my 365th day in Japan was mostly spent inside a huge shopping mall in Gakken-Nara-Tomigaoka. Eighty minutes of that was completely focused on helping a 50ish year old lady translate an Australian book, 1001 Inventions that Changed the World, into Japanese. The other interesting thing about the 3rd of February is that is it Bean Throwing Ceremony day, when many Japanese literally throw beans at their houses and walls to chase out any devilish spirits that may have made themselves at home during the preceding year. In fact, on my way home, numerous beans were visible on the streets near freshly exorcised houses. Some kind of blanshish nori roll also appears to be part of the ceremony. The only real lowlight of the day was predictibly on the Hankai Tram early in the morning, when some youngish dolt decided that his rideon the rails was the perfect time to thoroughly clean his pipe with a pipe-cleaner. The smell was revolting, but not quite at alarming as the tar that kept coming out of the rosewood bowl for the length of the trip. Simply awful.

My year in Japan has been interesting, amazing in patches, delicious, frustrating, hilarious, lazy, busy and rapid. I have taught the likes of  doctors, nurses, teachers, salarymen, executives, flight attendent trainees, the unemployed, the alcoholic, train conductors, bullet train hostesses, university students, highschool kids, tiny children, the flu ridden, a law professor, a seller of knives, several Shimano employees, the ugly, the beautiful, old ladies, ancient men, man-eaters, mountain climbers, marathon runners, tea ceremony teachers, tour guides, the insane, hotel workers, a belhop, midwives, chemical engineers, steel pipe makers, scientists, programmers, rock and rollers, the tired, the asleep, Koreans, magicians, scuba divers, a crazed Placido Domingo fan, Disney lovers, kindergarten teachers, a paper bag maker, the lonely, shop girls, salesmen, mothers, unhappy wives, grandfathers, gym managers, translators, law clerks, barmen, the interesting and the incredibly boring.

As a sartorial journey, my 365 days in Japan was pretty spectacular, with the occassional and the occasionally chronic lowlight. The clear winner for expanding my palatte was fish and related fishy catches from the sea. Depsite previously enjoying the occasional tray of sushi in Australia, I found the overseasoned rice a little sickening and the range of fish irritatingly small. In Japan though, the rice is addictive and the sheer variety incredible and impossible to list properly. I've mangaged to try most things including the raw and cooked - octopus, tuna of varying fattyness, salmon, sea urchin, yellowtail, bream, scallops, oysters, numerous roes, mackerel, vinegared mackeral, crab, surf clam, turban shell, raw beef, prawns, sardines and their allies, whale bacon (a moral lowpoint) and who knows what else. My sashimi highlight was a night of eating tuna in all its forms, right up to the crazily expensive tuna belly - needless to say it was also a financial lowlight. The other big surprise was my enjoyment of okonomiyaki and modanyaki both at home and in over-priced restaurants. Despite its bland ingredients, it somehow manages to be a delight, especially with a smothering on sauce and mayonnaise. In general, the food in Osaka has been spectacular and incredibly available. Even in the smallest of bars it is possible to get meals that would be impossible to replicate in Melbourne. One memorable night, I ordered the Autumn delight sanma and it was grilled before my eyes as a whole fish at a bar was big as a cupboard - outstanding. The lowlights of Japanese eating have been well-documented and they almost always involve attempts at Western food such as bread and pizza. One exception though was a simply awful udon curry which had been chilled to a teeth shattering temperature - I still shudder every time I stroll past that particular eatery.

After weeks of not writing this entry, I have finally accepted that my year in Japan boils down to food and people. Especially Rosie!

See you soon!

Rice Paddies and Grindcore

Saturday 22 August 2009

AM

Least: By 9:13am, I was once again stepping onto the Nankai local heading towards Mikunigaoka then Wakayama. At Mikunigaoka - the station without romanji - I was mildly rocked by the fact that I could recognise the people on the platform, the station masters and the women crowing from behind the counter of their sweets shop. This increasingly well worn path has seemingly also seared a neural pathway into my brain to ensure that there's no interesting surprises.

Most: Just after 10:00am, my train was clack clack clacking through rice paddies and market gardens. The rice had changed from a few weeks ago and was now nodding with the weight of seeds. It is somehow comforting to see the incredible uniformity of the rice crop and its perfect green -civilisation. I also noticed that a few leaves were beginning to turn yellow and orange as I got closer to Wakayama. I think that in  month or so, the scenery will be be interesting enough to take a photo of. Despite seeing the same people, smelling the same smells and hearing the same sounds on this trip every week, the landscape is different every time.

PM

Least: At about 12:35pm, I ran into the crushingly boring problem of forcing conversation out of an adult student for the next twenty minutes. We both knew that we had exhausted all available small talk and had covered the usuals - holidays (he had none), movies (he didn't watch movies), food (he was too busy to eat out). I went into autopilot and thought about my onigiri in the fridge.

Most: Some time around 11:00pm, Rosie and I blurred into Hokage in Shinsaibashi so that we could be pummelled by some Japanese grindcore. We spoke to some people in bands and a few guys who we knew from their tours to Australia. The bandroom was deep underground and the bar was even deeper. As we watched Corvus, it was interesting to see and hear a female vocalist destroy the crowd in such a male dominated scene. I took some red-soaked phone photos and caught the next band, only to be driven out by a techno-ish outfit and sheer drunkeness. It didn't help that we'd already been to Jokerman and Tee's Kitchen beforehand and that Toshi from Palm gave us extra drink cards on entry. A wild night.

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Food Note: At T's Kitchen, we stood at the bar and ordered several snackish meals including, freshly topped pizza, battered octopus, edemame, tuna sushimi and doteyaki. The last item was outstanding. The beef from the toughest and maybe unsaleable part of the beast had been cooked for hours and steeped in a sweet sweet sauce. I ordered two.