The Magnificent Tourist Trap in Halong Bay.

Halong bay is the most utterly gorgeous tourist trap I have ever visited. To appreciate it, one must charter a cruise and venture out on the water, where the natural splendor outside of the boat will distract you from your urge to abandon ship to escape the lack of substance within it.

Halong bay is made by the same forces that carved the Grand Canyon, yet is so different in composition it boggles the mind. As we sailed past massive boulders spattered with lush vegetation and hidden caves, I couldn’t help but think of the creatures that must live in the 1,969 islands. If Japan (where I currently live) is the land of Kaiju crashing through mountain passes into cityscapes; Vietnam is the home of dinosaurs. As our boat cruised between massive thrusts of limestone, I kept my eyes peeled, sure I would see a pterodactyl hunting a giant squid. It’s a place from another time, a world all of its own that can only be appreciated by chartering a boat, and going in, but therein lies the paradox: It is impossible to appreciate Halong Bay—kayaking through caves into hidden coves, boulders big as skyscrapers floating past each other, the screech of caca monkeys at sunset—without crowding onto a boat with exactly the things we go in to nature to avoid: drunken Spaniards, pretentious Frenchmen, and loudmouthed Australians.

Really I felt like the people on our boat must typify every experience that has ever taken place on a tour bus, boat or any other confined place with limited choice of weapons.

There were: a gaggle of horny, wine drinking Spaniards, an adorable family from Korea with adorable children that needed constant reaffirmation of their own adorableness, a British photographer bent on convincing me photographs weren’t realistic, loud mouthed Aussies, a French family that hated the food, various honeymooners desperate to hide from the rest, and us- the sneering tattooed American hipsters.

So close to paradise, and yet so far away

While we cruised around the bay, desperate for a glimpse of a rare caca monkey or perhaps a brachiosaurus, I overheard debates about the history of the word selfie, complaints about how the Australian booze was—surprise!—more expensive than the local brew, and lamented how my fellow travelers’ comparison of the food on the ship to a TGIFriday’s was appropriate, but their enthusiasm for the same meal was not. 

But the bay was always there, eager to reveal hidden secrets that have been discovered a thousand times over by a thousand different people and will inspire a thousand more thoughts of our humble place in the natural world.

And, despite the company, we still managed to have a good time. When the crew offered to take us swimming, and the men on the boat (your narrator included) eyed each other warily, no one wanting to jump in and no one wanting to lose face in front of his lady on this tropical cruise, Raquel dove over the edge of the boat without so much as removing her glasses. Everyone shrieked in surprise, and despite my best efforts to follow her, the two French teenagers managed to pause the games on their cellphones, strip down, and dive in next to my grinning wife before I could so much as get my shirt off.

Oysters so fresh you need box cutters to get inside

When the cruise took us to a fishing family’s floating home, we all laughed at the family dog that lived on the nearby island, enjoyed the strong-as-battery-acid rice wine, and let our jaws drop at the enormous fish the family was fattening up to be sold on the mainland. I was first in line for the oyster the grandmother of the family dredged up from the bay and handed to her son to be cracked open with a box cutter. It was seasoned only with the salt of the Pacific Ocean, and grown by this last of the fishing families. It was delicious. Once the bay was filled with whole communities of people like this, complete with schools and shops, but Vietnam—in its communist glory—deemed the natural splendor of the bay and all its creatures and coves more valuable than the traditional lifestyle it once afforded the Vietnamese. Aussies, Europeans and the errant American are willing to pay enough money so that the people here can protect the creatures instead of hunt them.

The quagmire of this family being allowed to stay on the bay because of their ties with the tourism industry that pushed the ‘genuine’ fishermen out bothered me less after seeing the oil floating around the houseboat’s engine. I don’t know if it’s a good thing exactly, but hey, it makes for glorious views and protected habitat.

The contradiction of clinging to a traditional lifestyle and embracing the conveniences of the 21^st century is a way of life in Vietnam. It doesn’t seem the façade that Japan sometimes touts so proudly. People here harvest their rice by hand because they have to, not because it’s the way grandmother did it. Our guide in Sapa had a cell phone, while in the capital of Hanoi entire city blocks sometimes have to go without power. That seems to be life in this crazy country, where a cheap beer costs $.30 and an expensive one costs 50,000 Vietnamese Dong. I don’t know if my presence as a tourist helps or hurts, but I know it’s a hell of a lot better than America’s history over here, and if all they want from me is a few extra bucks so I can experience the magnificence of Halong Bay, what am I to do but pony up with other tourists, snap as many pictures as I can, and tip handsomely.

Good evening Vietnam. I can’t wait to come back.

J. Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama Gifu with his darling wife. This is the third installment of a series on Viet Nam. Read about the rice paddies of Sapa or about Hanoi the communist capital

 

The Sounds of Tokyo

The sounds of Tokyo are what I remember most. We arrived in Shibuya to the sounds of chanting and pounding drums. We found traditional Japanese drummers dancing under neon and flashing lights, screaming for their ancestors in a part of the city bright enough to keep away any ghosts.

We crowded into a bar with about ten other people surrounding two sushi chefs who quietly slapped fish onto rice. “Aji! Hotate!” “Samon! Maduro,” “Sake kurasai!” the patrons chanted. The chef silently placed our food on an enormous bamboo leaf. I ate, relishing the sound of raw squid popping between my teeth.

We found an Irish bar and I sipped a Guiness while Irish-accented English rained down all around us. Our American accents embarrassed me into silence, so we left.

The bells of winning and the synchronized slaps of arcade dancers called us into an arcade. We boogied to anime theme songs and shrieked gleefully as Mario screamed when I shot him with a turtle shell.  

We sat down for a quiet breath on the third floor of a forsaken hotdog stand. I ordered the seaweed and mayo, Raquel the pickled onions. We listened to American music recorded in Australia while the glass kept the sounds of the city out. We watched the streets, silent vignettes of life in Tokyo. A group strolled through the city, then one collapsed, too drunk to continue. Her friends laughed and one of the men hoisted her onto his back. She slumbered on.

We followed the loud drone of a bass drum and found a club hidden beneath a thrift store with people lined up to get in. But we heard too much English, so we abandoned it for a deserted dance club where the bouncer screamed our drink orders over the blaring cumbia masic.

“What are you drinking?”

Kirin’s fine! I yelled over the music.

“We have a cheaper beer, you want that instead?”

The DJ kept the Latin beat as we sipped our Black Ninja lager. The bouncer and a smiling Japanese woman trounced a Latin couple at darts as they encouraged them to take more shots. Two Japanese men danced at the bar.   

“You know this song?” A dancing Japanese asked, fist pumping in time to the bass.

I nodded.

Satisfied, he danced away.

Exhausted, we checked into an internet café filled with the muffled sounds of Karaoke. Our residency cards earned us a room on the top floor so small I had to lay down diagonally to fit. We fell asleep to the sounds of keyboards typing and the man in the cubicle next to us snoring in fits.

We rode the train to the fish market at six AM, hoping to hear men bartering over tuna in another language. We raced crowds to get on the train, then found ourselves crammed in with droves of children in Mickey Mouse ears and teenage girls humming Disney princess songs.

We pressed on, only to discover the fish market was closed. We allowed ourselves to be lured into a tiny sushi place by an elderly couple who promised us English and fresh seafood. I ate sea urchin, tuna roe, and different cuts of tuna on a bed of rice. I drowned it all in hot tea and a bowl miso soup overflowing with seaweed; it seemed more decadent than fish after living in the mountains for three months.

I slept to the mumbled conversations of the Japanese as we rode the train to Akihabara. Raquel woke me with a whisper, and we ventured out to the videogame and arcade district of Tokyo. A sound stage promised a show at noon. Maids promised an escape from the madness of the streets in their cafes. We fell for the false promise on an arcade. We clanked coins into claw machines, and fought each other’s avatars as an announcer said “ready, fight!” and, “Way TO go!” in English thick with a Japanese accent.  

Back on the street, crowds jostled for space at the sound stage. Japanese women dressed in elaborate costumes sullenly moved to prerecorded voice tracks of their characters introducing themselves. Only the girl with the gun looked happy. With all the girls on stage and looking miserable, the announcer revealed a new pachinko machine that promised animated versions of the women standing before us. Most people crowded closer, we slipped away into a maid café.

If you ever go to Japan, go to a maid café. It is one the most bizarre things I have ever experienced. We walked in, and the head maid announced us, and all of the diners applauded. The maid taught us how to order. We had to pretend to clean our faces and say “meow, meow,” like a kitten. The maid vanished. We watched other people meow-meow, couples, old ladies, even a table of leather-clad bikers.

Thirsty, we cleaned our whiskers and meow-meowed. The entire café responded, “Kawai!” and shook their hands like our cuteness might make them explode. Our waitress arrived with water, took our order for coffee, and taught us to say kawai anytime someone meow-meowed. Now we would be able to overwhelm new diners, and pay the experience forward. She put rabbit ears on Raquel and cat ears on me and left us once more. The bikers laughed mercilessly at me, so the maids put ears on them and silenced their laughter. Finally the head maid dimmed the light, and began her maid dance. We were lucky to witness it. Normally one must pay double and stay for two hours instead of one, but another table had paid her for the show, so we got to watch, voyeurs of cuteness. She bounced back and forth, twirled around, and sang high pitched Japanese lyrics. It was the most adorable thing I have ever seen an adult do. The lights came back on. We snapped polaroids with the maids and caught a train to Harajuku.

Harajuku’s biggest shops had people boasting outside, begging us to enter; the smallest shops had persistent shop-keeps, who dared us to try their style. Overwhelmed, I hung on to Raquel as she whirred from shop to shop, like a song bird listening to competing males defend their territory.

We piled back on the bus home. Our bus driver was a tiny old man who whispered to us like a grandfather who didn’t wish to wake his youngest grandchild. He only spoke Japanese but I think he wished us dreams of soft blankets and kittens, and perhaps reminded us it was OK to have a cookie before bed. We woke to his gentle voice in Takayama, he waved goodbye and whispered “Gon ban wa.”

We crashed into our bed, hearing nothing but the sounds of the crickets, and the babbling creek at the end of our street, thankful for the noise of Tokyo, and the quiet of Takayama.  

If you want to read more about sightseeing in Japan, maybe visit Kyoto or Nagoya with Joe and his wife, or stay in Takayama for an amazing weekend.

Joe Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama with his darling wife, and wants to know:
What sounds are unique where you live?  

Learn to speak Australian! (very EXPLICIT)

CAUTION: This post has Australians in it, so there is gratuitous use of the word cunt. Sensitive cunts are advised to tune out.   

Our first few hours in Nagoya were spent driving around in a sweltering car listening to our GPS yell Japanese instructions on how to get to Immigration. Somehow, we found the place, and got our residency cards.

Yay! We get to stay. Time to celebrate.  

We arrived at the hotel ravenous and headed out in search of food without showers. Bad idea. We found a restaurant in a basement and were served dumplings by the Chinese chef’s children, who were raised in Japan and spoke English. Energized by the globalism of the experience, we pressed on.

My wife wanted to go shoe shopping, and after 2 days of festival drinking, I was obliged to go with her. She thinks the women’s fashion in Japan is lame except the shoes. “It’s all tan and pastel pink, but the shoes are boss.” Unfortunately she was a half an inch too big for every pair of shoes she found. She doesn’t even have big feet. She’d squeeze into some sweet spiky platforms, stand and pout. Too tight. Eventually Raquel’s stench overwhelmed her and the salt flats growing on my shirt betrayed my misery, so we went back to the hotel.

We showered, napped, and went out to a bar called the Elephant’s Nest after hitting up the arcade next door.

The Elephant’s nest wasn’t very crowded, so we sat a table next to a group of gaijin. We caught them glancing at us, and not knowing how else to make friends, we glanced back. After a few sips of beer they asked us to help settle a bet. They wanted to know where we were from. “America?” We nodded. Their friend lost the bet, but he left before buying the next round. “Where do you think we’re from?” the two remaining gaijin asked, sidling closer.

“England?” I guessed.

“England? Do we sound like a couple of English cunts to you?”

That makes two times we have switched the Aussies and the Brits. They both hate it. We kind of love pissing them off. 

They guessed what part of America we called home by asking what kind of food we liked.

“Cheese steak?”

No.

“Pizza?”

Uh-uh.

“Bar-B-Q?”

Bingo!

“Texas! You cunts are from Texas? We fucking love Texas! You cunts like the Rangers yeah?”

We pretended to care about baseball but the charade quickly fell apart.

“So you’re saying this cunt here’s been to more baseball games than you?”

We nodded, but explained that we were going to the Sumo tournament the next day, so it’s not like we didn’t like sports or anything. They were going too, and that somehow convinced them we were sports aficionados “Oh yeah, what sports do you like? Rugby?” No. “Cricket?” Nope. “You cunts would love cricket!” They showed us videos of glove-less catches while I tried to think of something else to talk about.

The beers set in and we talked of travel tips to our homelands, of kangaroo steak and the beauty of Sydney, of the pros and cons of 6^th street and the Bar-B-Q hierarchy in Austin. They explained the rankings of cunts in Australia (Good and bad cunts are both good, as is sick cunt, in fact cunt is a compliment unless you’re called the dreaded annoying cunt). The conversation only grew heated when it turned to the metric system.

I agreed with them mostly, the metric system is superior in a lot of ways. I mean, who really knows how many feet are in a mile? What’s the relationship between gallons and tablespoons? Why are their two kinds of ounces? But I would not budge on my love of the Fahrenheit scale. Fine, use Celsius for science, but for the weather, Fahrenheit is ideal. Each degree of the Celsius scale covers too much sweat. Fahrenheit is more precise. Why does Celsius use negative temperatures when it regularly gets that cold? Zero degrees in Farenheit means you’ll lose a toe, plain and simple. And why only use numbers up to 45? In Fahrenheit, if its triple digits, you know it’s damn hot or you need to go to the doctor. The Aussies didn’t agree.

“In Celsius it’s hot if it’s over 30.”

“But that’s not really that hot.”

“Yeah but in Celsius 30 degrees is 30% of the temperature of the water boiling on your stove.”
Right because that’s what I compare shorts-weather to: a pot of soup.

“Why bother have days that are negative?”

“Well we got a right smart cunt here don’t we?” One Aussie asked the other.

They tried to talk to us about politics. It’s mandatory to vote in Australia, so it’s probably mandatory to talk about politics, but I deftly changed the subject.

“Whoa is this 1-Direction?”

“This cunt likes 1-Direction! You fucking cunt, you!”

We all laughed and finished our beers and agreed to visit each other’s countries once we got home. We hoped to meet again at the Sumo match, but being sports fans, they had much better seats than us, and we didn't see them again.

“I can’t believe these American cunts are going to’ve seen more Sumo matches than Baseball games.”

 

Yup. That’s me. The American cunt at the Sumo Tournament.

Joe Darris lives in Japan with his darling wife. Normally he lives in Takayama, but sometimes the schools close down for a week to give the teachers a break, and he gets to travel. If you enjoyed this story, please +1, and share with any Aussies you know. SUBSCRIBE if you want more!

Tune in Thursday to hear about the Sumo match that almost ended our marriage!

Gion Festival: Eating, Drinking, Collecting

Kyoto holds a false glamor. It’s a tourist town, filled with expensive cameras, sweaty foreigners, and overpriced souvenirs. I’m sure this is unfair, but that’s what I experienced. Kyoto’s power emerges, like a cicada from its mystical slumber, during the festivals.

During the day, Raquel and I went sightseeing like the tourists we were. We saw the Golden Pavilion overrun by Germans and hiked across the city to find Kiyomizudera Temple covered in tarps. The only thing I really liked was Inari Shrine.

Inari Shrine is home to more Torii Gates than any other place in Japan. There’s thousands of them, each paid for by someone (corporations included) eager to appease the gods. It might sound hokey, but I like it. Millions of dollars are spent to be part of this place’s power, and you can feel it. It’s not just me either, more people were praying at Inari than anywhere else I’ve been in Japan.

Walking up the mountain path, through the gates, is glorious. Tourists huddle here and there, and they add to the magic of the place. Because of their presence, you truly notice the moments when you round a bend and find no one. No family. No Germans. No National Geographic Photographers. All of a sudden you’re alone, with 1000 Torii Gates to yourself. When this happened to us, we’d do what any good tourists would do, I waxed philosophic about the timelessness and beauty and blah blah blah while Raquel shamelessly shot videos on her phone.

The real fun of Kyoto comes out at the festivals.

Raquel was eager for street food and I was excited to buy tallboys of Asahi “The Extra” and drink them on the street.

Crowds overflowed the Gion festival. People of all ages were dressed in Kimonos: beautiful couples, young women with exquisite hair and self-conscious men with that special look of pride and foolishness that only comes when a man knows he’s doing something to get laid. There were respectable older women taking pictures of floats, single twenty-somethings preening around for other single twenty-somethings, grandiose old men, adorable children and more beautiful women. There were so many people that one point that crowd simply stopped moving, completely, for 3 long minutes. No one seemed to know why, but we were all glad to escape the crush.

Everyone was there to see the floats. The floats are astounding. They tower over the crowds, decked in lights. Each is unique, hundreds of years old and home to the Kami, Japanese deities somewhere between a God and a spirit. Each float had a stamp, and for the low low price of 100 yen, I too could have a stamp in my notebook! This confirmed my suspicion that collecting is a deep rooted part of the Japanese psyche. Figurines, pokemon, stamps of the Kami, they collect it all. I, a former pokemaster, queued up with the locals. I got seven stamps before I got too drunk to continue, and I’m damn proud of that entire statement.

Meanwhile, Raquel was hunting for food. We bought ayu earlier (read more) but we also ate stir-fried noodles, crepe on a stick, tentacle on a stick, meat on a stick, and Raquel’s favorite,cucumber on a stick. It was lightly salted and served ice cold. She was in heaven.  

 

Other entertainment of the night included catching fish with paper nets, a task as impossible as it sounds. I am a pet addict, and could not pass up the opportunity. Drunk, I mangled my paper net in seconds. I resorted to dunking my bowl into the kiddie pool of dying fish. Victorious, the carnie (do you call them carnies in Japan?) bagged my catch and sent me on my way.

Raquel was not happy.

“What are you going to do with those stupid fish?” she fumed.

I laughed and boasted but quickly realized she was right. In my drunken stupor I believed I could get them back to Takayama without issue, but once there I’d need to buy a pump, a filter…

“Darling, do we have any big glass bowls or vases?”

“You are not putting those stupid fish in a Kitchen bowl.”

These fish were going to eat into my beer money. I needed to dump them, and fast.

Adults are for the most part, rational, sane human beings, so I targeted the exception: parents. “Sumimasen!” I’d yell to a dad already carrying a bag of fish and hold up my catch. They cursed me with cold smiles, then politely declined before their children realized I was offering them more heartbreak they’d have to flush down the toilet.

Then, I saw them. A young couple, sitting on the curb, holding plastic bags of water up to the light of a thousand paper lanterns.

“Sumimasen!” I said, and held up my bag of fish.

The woman hopped up and held out her own bag, eager to compare our catches. They had turtles. Perfect. Getting turtles at a festival is even more irresponsible than getting fish. This was my moment. I held my fish to my chest, then extended them towards her. From me to you. She scratched her head, careful not to mess up her perfect hair. I repeated the gesture, gave a little bow. Thank the Kami. She understood.

She slowly reached out for my bag of fish. I shoved them into her hands, desperate to be rid of the commitment and the guilt I’d feel at their eventual death.

“Arigato Gozaimas!” I yelled, and got the hell out. I glanced back and saw her boyfriend staring at the fish, terrified of all the time and money the little bag implied, of all the work and energy I had escaped, then I lost them to the paper lanterns and silk.

We stumbled back to the hotel, carefree, drunk on irresponsibility and “The Extra,” glad to have experienced Kyoto, and glad to leave.

 

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan with his wife where eats weird things, drinks too much, and generally makes an embaressment of himself. If you enjoyed this story please +1, share and subscribe for more! 

Man vs. Fish, Round 2!

“Ayu!” Raquel screamed through the throngs of people. We’d found it, the allegedly delicious river fish served whole, complete with guts, brains and bones. Tucked in between a fried noodles place and an ancient Japanese float, home of the Kami, Japanese Gods of Nature, a woman was grilling fresh ayu. Two Japanese teenagers had ordered one of the eight inch fish, caught in a nearby mossy river, then skewered and salted. The chef held their order over a bed of hot coals and carefully turned the fish back and forth before handing it to the young couple. They looked apprehensive as they sized up their meal.

 

Not wanting to get discouraged, I hastily ordered one of the ayu and a beer to wash it down. (My last experience with the fish was anything but pleasant).  The chef selected an ayu, already crusted in salt, and lowered it over the bed of coals. To my dismay, she grilled the fish for less than a minute before handing it to me. Wait! I wanted to say. That can’t be enough time to fully cook the viscera! But my Japanese skills are laughable, so instead I politely nodded and paid her for the fish.

 
 

I sized up the ayu. Its bony face stared back at me with eyes crusted in salt. Its fins looked like they’d choke me as soon as I tried to swallow one. Unsure of where to start, I bit into the plumpest part of the fish, its belly. Hot guts flowed into my mouth. It was salty and fishy and, actually, not that bad. Am I chewing intestines? I pondered as I masticated the strangely textured organs. Do fish even have intestines?

A note to eaters of ayu: Don’t look into the fish’s abdomen. I did, and immediately regretted it.  At the back of an empty cavity, dotted with brown and green specks of fish guts, the spine and ribs joined together, daring me to eat the bony cage. Sanity returned before I ate the fish’s eyes or brains, and I remembered: people normally eat the sides of the fish, not the guts! I sunk my teeth into the ayu’s tiny flank.

Oishi! It was salty and rich! Reminiscent of salmon perhaps, but different, delicious! The bones added a nice crunchy texture to the tasty meat. Half the fish was gone before I remembered to offer my wife a bite. She nibbled the ayu’s side and smiled. This really was a tasty fish!

I enjoyed every bite of that delicious ayu (the spine and fins were crunchy and especially delicious) until I chomped into the gills. They tasted how I imagine the filter of poorly maintained fish tank would taste, like rotten algae and fish shit. Isn’t that what gills are? They’re oxygen filters. Eating gills is like eating the lungs from a chain-smoking monkey. I gagged at the thought, then chugged beer, desperate to be rid of the vile taste.

 

The nearby Japanese teenagers noticed my disgust and politely giggled to eachother. I wanted to explain, possibly through pantomime, that the fish was delicious, just the gills were nasty, but I didn’t bother. I think everyone likes that feeling of belonging, of being home. That feeling that one only really gets when foreigners get excited or confused or even repulsed by something the locals take for granted. So I said nothing, and let them belong.

Instead I wandered off in search of the Gods and the delicious sights and sounds the mortals of the festival were offering them.

 

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan. If you enjoyed this story, please +1 and share with your friends and family!

 

Try the Moss Flavored Fish Organs!

Japanese people, like hipsters and bleeding hearts, like to eat seasonally. If I ask about a fruit or vegetable in the wrong seasons my students are completely confused. After tedious explanation, one of them inevitably looks up the word on their phone and understanding dawns.

“Ah, radishes! Hai, hai. Radishes now? Radish is a winter vegetable.”

“But they’re so big, and cheap! The grocery store is overflowing with them!” I reason.

“Hai, hai. Radishes are a winter vegetable. Very delicious. Hai, hai.”

Whatever, it works for me. We used to frequent the Farmer’s Market, so I can dig seasonal vegetables. Though in Japan, seasonally means more than just tomatoes in the summer and radishes in the winter.

The current seasonal specialty is ayu. It’s a river fish about 8 inches long that is typically skewered, salted and grilled whole. It’s known for its “delicious organs flavored from river moss that grow in limpid streams,” Yum! I mean, who can resist that? I tried an ayu, moss flavored organs and everything, and I thought it was disgusting. But I blame the unagi.

I love of unagi, or bar-b-q’d river eel. You’re probably tried some at a sushi restaurant. It’s that grilled piece of deliciousness often wrapped with a nori belt and slathered in sauce. I’ve never eaten more than a piece or two at once, but there are restaurants here that sell nothing more than slabs of unagi. They’re easy to spot; they’re the places belching clouds of wonderfully greasy smoke into the air.

My wife and I went to an unagi place our first week and got the “medium-sized” portion.

The chef presented us with a bowl of rice and huge chunks of delicious unagi. I happily inhaled mine, marveling at the richness and fastness of the eel, pausing only to sip at the ubiquitous miso soup and inescapable vegetable jello (I’m all for being adventurous, but vegetable jello is disgusting. I’ll take the horse-hoof variety any day). Beyond satisfied, we happily paid our tab, and stepped out of the air-conditioned restaurant into the heat of Tajimi city.

Immediately my heart began to pump faster, desperate to keep the oxygen flowing through the rivers of grease. We both began to sweat. Normally, my wife’s armpits lure me in with the tantalizing aroma of cantaloupe and sweet onions. But today, something was wrong. No overripe cantaloupe tickled my olfactory senses, no tangy and slightly acrid onion balanced out her sweaty bouquet. Instead, my nostrils were assaulted with just one pungent musk: unagi.

Delirious, we began to wander. We needed to buy something. Lunchboxes? Chop sticks? Samurai swords? None of it made sense anymore. I’ve only ever felt that way from food twice before. Once from The Buffet in Las Vegas (enough said) and once from a sandwich from Big Bites. The sandwich was filled with chicken strips, cheese steak, fried pickles, onion rings, French fries, a block of cheese, and slathered in Bar-B-Q and mayonnaise. I was high for hours. Tunnel vision, mood swings, nausea, hallucinations. The works.

One bowl of unagi did the same thing.

In our delirium we wandered into a Valor and what should I find but ayu. I’d heard all about this little fish and was determined to try it. It was already skewered, salted and roasted, completely whole. The head still attached to the spine, the viscera still inside. It had been prepped and cooked hours ago, then refrigerated. Raquel tried to dissuade me from eating this typical festival dish cold, but I was deafened by the unagi.

“Everyone says it’s delicious!” I protested.

“Yes, when it’s fresh! You shouldn’t eat it cold, and especially not after all that unagi.”

I ignored her. What did she know? She stunk like eel anyway. I purchased one of the fish, already skewered, roasted and packaged in plastic wrap. Some dim ray of wisdom shined through the cloud of unagi and I knew not to eat it then. So I brought it back to the hotel, victorious. My wifey passed out. I mindlessly flipped through Japanese TV,

Hours later I sampled the ayu’s moss-flavored organs. It was revolting. Second in its nastiness only to vegetable jello. The skin was chewy and the little meat there was was riddled with bones. Each bite had a different texture and consistency. One bite contained the chewy heart, the next, green goo that spattered as I bit into the cold flesh. The moss-flavor was especially strong in the… liver?

Disgusted, I put the remains of the fish aside. Maybe without any unagi in my stomach it’ll be more appetizing. But even after a night of sleep, the thought of eating the last of the ayu’s flesh, spine and intestines was repulsive, and I finally threw it away, defeated.

But mark my words, I’ll eat their moss flavored organs at the festival in Kyoto tomorrow, this time hot and fresh, without any unagi pumping through my veins.

Japan: Food, Fish, and Grocery Stores

It’s finally time for the topic all of America has been waiting for: Food.

One of biggest differences between America and Japan as the sheer abundance of seafood here. The grocery stores overflow with seafood. There’s tuna, salmon, cod, mackerel, shrimp, and squid. There are clams, scallops, oysters, eels, skewers of sardines, and dozens of others unidentifiable creatures.  There’s ugly fish with their heads still on, beautiful striped fish cut in half, bags of alfalfa sprout sized fry, and every sort of roe. You can buy already cut sashimi, or fully prepared sushi rolls, cheaper and better than all but the classiest joints in Austin.

If do you visit Japan, I’d put the grocery stores high on the list of “must-see” places. There’s two grocery stores we frequent in Takayama. Valor is the safer of the two. Valor is ridiculously clean, well-organized, and almost always empty. The thing I really love about Valor is the music. It’s different than what’s on the radio. It’s some sort of super-shopping-fun-pop. No matter what’s playing, I sachet through the grocery store, cheerfully piling mysterious bottles of condiments into my cart while Super Sonico blasts on the speakers. It’s marvelous.

Valor’s great, but it’s definitely not my favorite grocery store. That title belongs to Asumo.

Asumo is located under a dollar store/ramen place and next to the “Santa Shop,” a second hand store topped with a Santa Claus statue that’s open year round. I don’t get it either. In front of the Asumo is a food stand that fills the parking lot with the delicious smell of dangos. Dangos are balls of sticky rice dough that are skewered, slathered in salty soy sauce and roasted. Dangos cost around 75 cents for a stick of five salty balls, and are an appetizing way to start your grocery experience.

Once inside, Asumo seems like a regular grocery store. The entry way is filled with produce, and shelves of products march off to the right, but it’s so much more than that. Careful hunting reveals cheap quail eggs, fresh noodles, still breathing clams, pickled everything, delicious fried sweet potato paddies as well as more exotic items. We’ve found olives, hotel mayonnais, marinara sauce, strawberry jelly and tiny jars of overpriced peanut butter. They even have tortillas.

The imports are great but as I prowl through the store, I study the careful choices of the Japanese. Clerks regularly brings out fresh boxes of fruits, vegetables, mollusks and fish, and the old Japanese ladies politely crowd around the fresh catch.  If one old lady puts a vegetable in her basket, I’m intrigued, if two old ladies choose the same cut of fish, I’m interested and if three old ladies pick the same organism, I buy it and make The Wifey cook it for dinner.

My most recent Japanese inspired purchase was a kind of never before seen mollusk. I know it was a mollusk only because it was  near the clams, squid, and snails. But what was it? A sea slug? An octopus heart? Perhaps a scallop and an oyster spawned near the shores of Fukushima and this orange piece of meat was the radioactive result. Whatever it was, the old ladies were piling the tiny packages into their carts. I grabbed two packages--proudly declaring them Kaiju testicles--then paraded them under the Wifey’s nose and demanded that she cook them for dinner.

At home, my pitiful attempt at researching the Japanese Kanji on the package revealed nothing. Dejected, I snapped a picture and left for school.

 

“What is this?” I asked, showing them the picture of the Kaiju testicles.

Tareto was the answer. Ah. This, of course, answered nothing. As usual I was doomed by my total lack of Japanese linguistic skills. Deeper probing of what sort of meat tareto was and where it belonged in the animal kingdom proved fruitless. Changing tactics, I asked if it was delicious. They all nodded. Hai, hai. I don’t know if they’ll ever learn English if they refuse to even say yes. I nodded my thanks and continued the lesson, not trusting a word any of them said.

I didn't trust their taste because we'd gone to yakitori place two nights ago had paid handsomely to try delicacies that Americans normally grind up and feed to public school students. Yakitori is just meat and vegetables skewered and grilled, though in Japan meat is a broader term than in America. At first we ate delicious grilled beef and chicken, while we threw back shochu and sake. But as the plates stacked up, and the alcohol dulled my senses, our new friends began to order more “traditionally.” We tried chicken stomach (too chewy) chicken cartilage (crunchy but flavorful) and a bowl of purple slime.

“What is this?” I asked, the purple slime dangling from my chopsticks as the server brought out our next dish, a bowl of soup covered in dried fish flakes. The fish flakes quivered and squirmed as they rehydrated; this wasn’t doing much for my appetite

“Try a bite then take a shot of sake! That’s how to eat these!”

I smiled, readied my sake, and ate the slime. It tasted of soy sauce and a dirty beach, and was very chewy. The pieces were so small all I could really do was swallow it and hope it didn’t get stuck in my teeth. Yes, sake made it taste better, but sake makes everything better.

“So, how do you like fermented baby squid?” they asked me, grinning like idiots.

I prefer my sake straight.

So, though my students seemed to believe that tareto was delicious, it did little to assuage my fears.

I arrived home to discover the Wifey was on strike.

“I’m not cooking those. Do you even know what they are?”

Of course I do! They’re tareto! Delicious tareto!

Unmoved, she forced me to don an apron and cook ‘em up. I know little about cooking anything besides eggs, steak and grilled cheese sandwiches, but in Japan, overcooking anything is grounds for hari-kari. So, thinking of the little old ladies who inspired this meal, I focused all my attention on not overcooking the tareto, and adding enough butter.

I cooked the Kaiju testicles just until they changed color, added lemon, salt, parsley and more butter, then poured it all over soba noodles. I cautiously set a plate in front of the Wifey.

She sniffed it, smiled, and looked to me. I nodded encouragingly and rambled about the succulence and umami and blah blah blah. She lifted a tareto to her mouth, took a bite, and loved it! We devoured them all, leaving nothing for leftovers. Wifey even said I handled them well (whatever that means) but we both agreed, next time she’s cooking the scallops.

This Indepedence Day, Try "Sex Down Under!"

Happy 4^th of July America!

Independence Day is very special holiday to me. It’s a pool holiday (I was a lifeguard for years). It’s a BBQ holiday (I love hotdogs and beer!). But best of all  it’s a birthday holiday! When I was too little to understand the deep and sincere sense of patriotism that goes with the 4^th of July, my parents used to tell me they shot off the fireworks because it was finally going to be my birthday. Needless to say, it went to my head. I love the flags, the Sousa, the sparklers, and everything else America does in anticipation of my birth.  

Yesterday I found myself in Japan on this most American of holidays, and was homesick. No hotdogs, no drinking beer in a stars and stripes tank top. No fireworks. Nothing. So I did what any homesick American would do. I set out for the bars in hopes of finding fellow patriots.

I didn’t find any. Not one. There’s always Americans about in Takayama, but not last night. Instead I found the absolute worst thing an American can possibly find on the 4^th of July, a bar full of Brits. Well, not the entire bar, just a table really, but the bartender sat us down with them (At Red Hill she always sits you down with someone), not wanting to mix us with her dwindling group of regulars being deafened by drunken Englishmen.

My wife actually asked where they were from and they became quite indignant.

“We’re city boys aren’t we? Me an’ this (dis) here bloke’s from London, this (dis) bloke’s from Northern (Nor-vern) London, and these (dese) two’s from-“ blah blah bother.

They were complaining about the beer not being warm and were surprised when I told them I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the royal Family (OK maybe I didn’t used those exact words but I implied them). My forefathers fought a war so I wouldn’t have to hear about the Royal Family on the 4^th of July, and these blokes wouldn’t give it a rest! They had already cornered a poor Australian couple and a Brazilian, and were forcing us all to play a drinking game.

OK, the game was was actually the Australians’ idea, but dammit those Brits loved it.

I call it Sex Down Under. To play, you slap your knees while chanting “whee-a-whee-a-whee-a-whoop! Whee-a-whee-a-whee-a-WHOOP!” as a group. On the whoop, whoever started the round demonstrates their favorite sexual eccentricity (these are predetermined. My favorite of the evening was the fart in the eye, though the nipple twister was also quite popular), then on the WHOOP, you do someone else’s, then that person leads the next “whee-a-whee-a-whee-a-whoop!” This repeats, faster and faster, until everybody’s demonstrated their particular perversion. If you mess up, you drink, and if the round actually lasts through everyone’s eccentricities, everybody drinks.

It was a smashing good time and we were all quite stricken with it. So stricken in fact the owner of the bar had to keep asking us to keep it down and repeatedly tried to cut the Brits off.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any more clean glasses.”

“Well just fill this one up then!”

She’d smile and nod as her bar emptied out of everyone by the table of mad Englishmen (plus the two Australians, a Brazilian, and us).

Finally we left to, careful to slip out so the Brits wouldn’t follow us to the next bar. We had a great time with them, no doubt about it, but I’ll be damned if I talk about the Royal Family on the 4^th of July.

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Joe Darris currently lives in Takayama Japan with darling wife. He misses his parents, peanut butter, a good cup of coffee, and his cat.

#Independenceday #Happy4thofJuly #America #Japan #Takayama #TheBritisharecoming

Super Robot Soap Battle at Nagoya Castle!

I’ve been in Japan a week now. I’ve eaten raw fish from the grocery store, bought coffee from a vending machine, slept on the train and bashed my head into multiple exit signs. My darling wife and I have been living in a one room hotel and are heading out to Takayama, Gifu, in two more days. I’ve learned that I know nothing about this crazy place, but in typical western fashion, feel ready to share what I’ve learned on the internet. I'm feeling confident enough to boast because this morning I did laundry, which was in itself an entirely new experience.

We trudged down the hall and into the elevator (carefully stepping under the exit sign) and down to the first floor. I approached the washing machines with cautious optimism. I know how to wash clothes. It’s easy. You open the machine, add clothes, put in your money, the water starts to flow, finally add the detergent, and… Oh wait. I didn’t think to pack a jug of detergent into my already overstuffed luggage.

During an enlightening trip to the grocery store, my boss explained that in Japan, it’s polite to give people practical gifts. There are entire sections in grocery stores devoted to specially packaged gifts. People give their clients things like soba noodles, cooking oil, beer, and even laundry detergent as a way to say thank you for their patronage. The gift versions of these items come in fancy boxes (in other words, regular boxes) and cost much more than a regular 6-pack.

Unfortunately I have no business contacts. In practice I owed my boss a gift (He said it was unnecessary but thanked us for the jar of jalapeno-peach jelly wrapped in a Texas Flag all the same). Did I think to go and get a regular jug of soap? Of course not. My brain spun in empty circles about the strange yet altogether charming customs of the Japanese people and followed him out of the store.

So here I was. I had dirty laundry, a washer, coins to operate it, and no soap. A cursory inspection of the room showed no soap dispensers. The nearby vending machine didn’t carry any soap either. But something about the machine was… different. Cautiously, my wife and I loaded are clothes and fed the machine its metal biscuit. We waited in silence as the machine filled with water, and then, lo and behold, suds began to form!

That’s right, in Japan, the wash machines have their own soap.

We cheerfully loaded the other machine and again watched in stunned silence as it soaped itself. Who knows what else hides in Japanese technology? Would the dryer fold my clothes? Perhaps the elevator could sense what floor I wanted before I pressed a button. Alas, the adventure was over, and the rest of the clothing ritual proceeded as it would have in the states.

Thus is my existence in Japan. I get overly excited about the little things. Allow me to elaborate with an embarrassing anecdote.

First, I must explain: I had a professor in college who was obsessed with Japan. He had lived there for years, had a kid there, carried a float, the whole nine yards. He told us that people over there were obsessed with foreigners. Like if they see you on the street they’ll take your picture, that kind of thing. I’d read similar things in books. The word “gaijin,” which means foreign barbarian, is supposed to be thrown around quite a bit. So with all these outdated anecdotes swirling around my mind, we set out for Nagoya castle.

 

Nagoya Castle is unbelievably beautiful (check my instragram or google it if you don’t believe me). It’s not original, which means there’s such lovely conveniences inside like crappy air-conditioning and electric lights but the outside looks like something out of a samurai movie. The grounds themselves are surrounded in moats and 30 foot walls with trees growing on the tops of them that are older than my home town.

So here we are at Nagoya Castle, just generally being blown away by the beauty of it all. There’s tourists everywhere, snapping pictures, listening to tour guides, there’s even a reenactment of an ancient samurai battle taking place (I couldn’t tell you which battle because I only understand the Japanese you’d need in bars). Basically it’s glorious. If you ever visit Japan, something I, with my 5 days of experience, highly recommend, I would go see a castle your first day. They’re awe inspiring.

Anyways we’re there, taking in the sights, marveling at the history of the country, that kind of thing, when a particularly glorious sculpture catches my eye. Its of some Samurai, or Daimyo or something (again I have no idea because I don’t read Japanese). I start snapping pictures when this young Japanese man approaches us with a big grin on his face.

Ha! I laugh to myself, we haven’t even been off the plane 24 hours and already someone needs a picture of my red beard.

Sure enough, the young man asks if he can take our picture. I smile, nod graciously and share a wink with Raquel. Poor kid’s never seen a gaijin in his hometown. Must be nice, to get all excited about someone who looks a little different tromping around where he grew up.

Then my smile starts to fade. He’s holding out his hand, waiting for my camera. He was just being nice and offering to take our picture with the statue. I turned beat red, forced a smile for the camera (Raquel’s was genuine, believe me, she was laughing too hard for it not be) and tried not to be seem like a total fool. Turns out he wasn’t even from Nagoya, he was from Osaka, and was a tourist like us. But of course he was. Why else would a young man be hanging out at a tourist death trap like Nagoya Castle on Saturday afternoon?

 

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Not once did I hear the word gaijin, or have any strangers confront me (except when I needed help at the subway). I guess Japan’s different than what they say in the guidebooks, but they still have washing machines that add their own soap, and I have to stoop under every door.