An online journal of my cultural experiences in Japan during my time as an NSF and JSPS fellow. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Last night a friend who is visiting from the states for work and I decided to search out an adventurous meal. We settled on Fugu, which is the Japanese word for pufferfish. For those of you who don’t know, pufferfish produce an extremely lethal neurotoxin (called tetrodotoxin) that has no known antidote. The poison basically paralyzes your muscles while you are still conscious; eventually you’ll be unable to breath, but you’ll be completely aware of what is happening to you until you asphyxiate to death. Needless to say, this is both a dangerous dish to prepare and, of more concern to me, can be a dangerous dish to consume. To prepare fugu you have to be trained and licensed, and all of the fish that isn’t safe to eat must be carefully disposed of. In fact, before all of these regulations were put into effect, it wasn’t uncommon for someone to die because they were going through a restaurant’s garbage in search of recyclables and they happened upon something sharp that had also been next to fugu remains.
So why would anyone want to eat this stuff? Well, it is considered a delicacy in Japan for a couple of reasons. Some people claim to love it because of the taste. Others surely enjoy fugu simply because it can be a dangerous experience. It’s like playing a game of chicken with your food. And occasionally (about 45 times per year in Japan), the fugu wins. Seriously. But for the most part, all of these regulations have resulted in fugu being extremely safe to eat when prepared by a trained professional.
So anyway, first we were tasked with finding a restaurant that would serve us fugu. I was a little worried about this, because fugu is highly seasonal, and it is currently out of season. But I needn’t have worried, because the first fugu restaurant we went to had a huge tank full of large fugu swimming around for passersby to see. Success!
Since we were taking a chance on our lives, we decided we should at least go out in style. We decided to start with a couple of bottles of delicious cold sake and then move on to a huge 7-course fugu meal. The presentation of the meal was pretty amazing. Basically, they brought out an appetizer and a couple of different sauces, and then a big bowl of water that they boiled on a burner in the middle of our table. Then, they brought out a huge plate full of freshly cut raw fugu, tofu, and vegetables. The fugu was so fresh that we could still see the raw meat twitching. That meat, the veggies, and fugu skin all went into the boiling water to cook while we ate our first few courses. In addition to the appetizer, we were treated to delicious fugu sashimi (raw fugu), sliced so thin that you could see through it, as well as fried fugu (which tastes quite a bit like fried crappie, but crappie is full of tiny bones and fugu isn't.) We were also served a rice porridge and, for dessert, fresh fruit.
So what’s the verdict? My favorite was by far the fugu sashimi, and while the flavor was subtle, it was definitely delicious. My favorite thing about the sashimi is that, in addition to the flavor, you get this very odd feeling on your tongue when you eat it… it’s like a tingling, numbing sensation. There is a lot of debate in the scientific community about what causes this. Most people who eat fugu say that this is a result of traces of the neurotoxin that you’re consuming. However, most scientists say that if you have consumed enough tetrodotoxin to feel anything, it’s already too late for you and you’re about to die; they then chalk up this tingling feeling to a number of other causes, from general nervousness to group hysteria. I don’t know what causes the feeling, but both my friend and I experienced it, and I think it’s real. In fact, I even felt it on my lips at one point.
Ladies first! Like a true gentleman, I let Marylinn taste-test the fugu before I have my first bite.
Anyway, the entire experience was really fun. The fugu was tasty, and I would definitely do it again. There are many different fugu dishes to try, and rumor is that the most dangerous dishes are also the most delicious. (For instance, fugu liver has the highest amount of toxin, and was banned in Japan years ago, but people apparently love it.) Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it) fugu isn’t cheap, so it’s not something I could afford on a regular basis.
This weekend a large group of us went to see a day of sumo wrestling in Nagoya, which is a couple of hours from Tokyo by train. It turns out that sumo is cool beyond words, and I learned so much about the sport in just a day. First of all, sumo is actually very much like the “king of the hill” game, except the participants are on a flat mound of dirt and are wearing much less clothing. The goal is to eitheryou’re your opponent to fall onto the ground within the ring, or to get him to exit the ring. There are only a few sumo tournaments a year, and this tournament in Nagoya is the only tournament that will happen while I’m in Japan. Each tournament lasts about 2 weeks, and each wrestler competes no more than once per day during the tournament (and usually not every day.) So imagine being a professional sumo wrestler… you spend months “preparing” (which, as I understand, means eating a special soup twice daily, sleeping a lot, and I’m sure getting some workouts in there). After months of preparation, you have a torment, and you show up on the day you have a match, you walk into the ring, and literally within 30 seconds you are done. It’s often very fast, and only a few matches last more than a few seconds.
The tournament is almost all day long, but most people don’t show up except for the last two hours or so of wrestling (it ends by 6pm), because that’s when the really well-known, professional guys start wrestling. We showed up at around 11am, so we got to sit very close to the ring in someone else’s very expensive seats and watch the “junior leagues.” The junior leagues are often made up of smaller wrestlers, and the matches are generally much less aggressive, but they were very fun to watch. Junior league wrestlers are also afforded much less of the pageantry and ritual that the more professional wrestlers get. For instance, only the senior wrestlers can wear the flashy, colorful sumo outfits. Senior wrestlers are also all brought out and paraded around for the audience, with their names and hometowns announced; they also go back and forth from the middle of the ring to the side of the ring before the match starts to get salt and throw it on the ground. The salt is supposed to purify the ring, as I understand, and drive out evil spirits, or maybe protect from injury. The senior wrestlers sometimes do this a lot in what our sumo handbook called “mental warfare,” with the idea being that they are trying to psych each other out before the match begins. (In the photos below, the bottom left photo, white guy on the right is fairly famous throughout Japan. We saw lots of pictures of him on souvenirs.)
Each match also has what I would call a referee, but he really reminds me of a clown in a rodeo bullpen. He basically signals that the match can begin, but it is up to the wrestlers when to start (they both have to touch their hands to the ground before they can begin.) As soon as the match begins, the clown referee starts jumping around, trying not to be crushed underneath these huge guys, and yells weird things in Japanese (none of us could figure out what they were saying.) The referee also signals when there is a winner, assuming that there was no question about who won. If ever there is uncertainty about who touched first, there are five judges sitting around the ring that convene and decide. After a winner is declared, another interestingly dressed man comes into the wring and quickly sings something about east and west (each wrestler either represents the east side of the ring or the west side of the wing). I assume the song is about which direction won the match, but I can’t be sure.
One thing that surprised me was how many non-Japanese sumo wrestlers there are. In fact, we saw several white men, many of them part Russian, and they performed very well. This also broaches another point: despite what I would have thought, bigger isn’t always better in sumo. I did see some bigger sumo wrestlers basically just overpower some smaller wrestlers, but I also saw some smaller, more nimble wrestlers who dominated in the ring. I saw one small wrestler literally just dart out of the way of a charging opponent, who went barreling out of the ring. Others were just better at balancing, and were able to use the opponents weight against them.
Above: In between matches, several people run into the ring to sweep the dirt around. Not exactly sure what that’s all about.
Below: The more senior sumo wrestlers are being introduced to the crowd. Also, I got a photo with a wrestler who was at the tornament but not competing today (he told me he had a match the next day.) Anytime a sumo wrestler is in a public place, they have to wear this traditional sumo garb; if they are seen in public without it, they receive some kind of punishment/sanctions.
I was a bit worried that I would be bored after 7 hours of sumo, but I found it to be genuinely entertaining. In fact, I wish I could go back and see some more! As I was leaving the tornament, I got a text message from a Japanese friend that I met in Hiroshima. It said: “I was surprised!! When I was watching sumo tv, I see you on tv!” Apparently it’s easy to spot a tall white guy with a mohawk at a sumo tournament.
I took tons of video throughout the day. Here is the video of the final match, the one everyone had been waiting for. The guy on the right (Hakuho) is undefeated so far in this tornament, and he won again today. Leading up to the match, all the little kids in the stadium were screaming "HAKUHOOOO HAKUHOOO!!". The match was pretty short, but it was exciting :) After the end of the match, you'll also see the day's closing ceremony, which basically consists of some sort of funny sword dance.
I didn't have breakfast this morning, and all I can think about is food as I wait for lunchtime... So here is a recap of two yummy meals I enjoyed this week!
I had this last night at a restaurant about a block and a half from my apartment. I've passed by this place several times but never stopped because it always seemed so busy. But tonight I decided to go in, and I'm glad I did. As you can tell by the photo, I ordered entirely too much food. The pictures made the portions look smaller, and I like variety, which is why I ordered so many things. On the right is a seafood and vegetable dish over fried rice, next to some kind of soup (that I didn't know came with my meal). The seafood dish had a fresh scallop and a quail egg in it, both of which were delicious. On top is a delicious eggplant dish that they prepared right in front of me (a benefit of dining alone is that you are often seated at the bar overlooking the kitchen.) And on the far left, fried sesame seed balls for dessert. So if you haven't figured it out yet, this restaurant is Chinese-style. Not very Japanese at all, but very delicious. I got all of this food for about 1100 yen (about $12 or so) and they prepared it fresh within about 3 minutes of taking my order. I'm definitely going back to this place!
This is another restaurant very close to my apartment that I neglected for far too long. The service was very fast and the food is both reasonably priced and delicious. This place's deal is a set of tempura over rice with cold noodles (udon or soba). You also get a hot miso soup (top left). The little vase-like thing on the bottom right holds the cold broth. You pour that into the cup to its left, mix in the fresh scallions and ginger, and then you dip the cold noodles in. On a hot day, you can't beat this. MMmmmmm!
Okay, I think I'm going to go have Indian food for lunch.
According to Wikipedia, Tanabata means "evening of the seventh." On the seventh day of the seventh month of the year (July 7), the Japanese celebrate by writing wishes on paper and attaching them to a tree, kind of like a bamboo Christmas tree. It's not a major holiday, and to my knowledge people don't get off of work. But we also had a small party at work with beer, snacks (dried squid, cooked squid, squid-flavored cheese... are you noticing a pattern here?), and sweets (in this case, little cakes filled with Japanese sweet potato.) When I asked why they celebrate Tanabata, one person said he didn't know, and another said the following: "There is the milky way, and the prince and princess are up there. Only on this evening of the year there is alignment so that the prince and princess can see each other." Someone else said "it's more of a holiday for lovers, like Valentine's day."
Afterwards, a few of us went out for drinks and dinner. At my request, we went to an Okonomiyaki restaurant (Okonomiyaki is like a Japanese savory pancake.) I ate (and posted about) Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki when I was in Osaka, but I discovered tonight that there are different kinds. The place we went served Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki, which has more vegetables in it; in my opinion, it was better than what I had in Osaka. So a little bit about the restaurant... there are these tables with large griddles in them, and you sit on the floor while your feet hang beneath the table. They turn on the griddle and bring your order to you, and you watch it cook in front of you. We had delicious Okonomiyaki, Takoyaki, fried noodles, and some of the most delicious scallops I've ever eaten, among other things. Very tasty!
Okonomiyaki before and mid-way through being cooked.
Left: Fully cooked Takoyaki (pancake balls) and Okonomiyaki... kind of like Japanese pizza, you just add different sauces and toppings (BBQ sauce, mayo, dried fish, dried seaweed, etc.) Right: Mushrooms and sprouts sauteing in butter, and what I like to call the Japanese version of a grilled cheese. It's basically fish cake (or as one of my Japanese friends calls it in English, "fish homogenate") with cheese in the middle. It was good.
Left: My favorite dish of the night, fresh scallops sauteed in butter with sprouts. Scallops are probably my favorite meat, but in the US they are very expensive. Not so in Japan! Right: More lab mates at the table next to ours eating Okonomiyaki.
One of my favorite aspects of Japanese food culture has to be Bento. Bento boxes are basically pre-made, ready-to-eat lunchboxes; but they differ from any kind of American equivalent in that they are usually very fresh, offer a great variety of foods in each package, and are often quite delicious. Oh, and did I mention that they're often very cheap? When I have a busy day at the lab (or, before I got to Tokyo, whenever I was going to be on a train for half a day), I like to grab a bento for abou 400 yen (~$5). This usually comes with one or more types of meat, several different kinds of vegetables, and rice and/or noodles. I like to think of bento as the working-man's lunch, but you can also find a lot of "specialty" bentos that are priced anywhere from 1,000 yen to over 3,000 yen (that's over 30 bucks). Here are some of my favorite bentos that I've had so far:
Went to Yoyogi Park last weekend. A local described it at "Tokyo's Central Park," but it is much smaller than Central Park in NYC. Still very enjoyable. Lots of people come out to sunbathe, play sports, and practice music. The coolest thing, I thought, was that groups of Greasers hang out at the park entrance near the Harajuku Bridge. These folks look like they are straight out of the Grease movie, and they strut around with their hair slicked back, and they dance. There are even baby greasers, which reminded me a lot of the greaser kids from the movie Cry-Baby.
