Hating Natto – a Dying Osaka Tradition

There’s so much about Japanese food that I love, but natto (納豆, fermented soybeans) is a culinary minefield. I can understand its health benefits and could probably even get used to the taste of the stuff, but (and this is no doubt a personal failing on my part) I can’t get past the fact that it smells like a foot infection. I’ve been here long enough to know that plenty of foreigners love natto and plenty of Japanese can’t stand it. The default opinion, though, is that “we Japanese love natto, and foreigners can’t eat it.”

It wasn’t always the case, at least in Kansai. In fact, when I first started working in Osaka, c.1989, the standard answer to the textbook question, “Do you like natto?” was “No – that’s Kanto food. We Osakans can’t eat it.” A bit of clever marketing in the early 90s changed that, nearly overnight. Dissenters, of course, still exist, but they keep their opinions to themselves.

Fifteen years on, it’s available in every supermarket or convenience store in Osaka, and it’s on the menu of many a diner, especially the lunch counters that cater to salarymen. I stopped by a gyudon  shop for lunch the other day (gyudon is a bowl of thin-sliced beef and green onions on rice), and while waiting for my order to arrive, I looked around to see which of the  tired-looking, middle-aged men in the shop had taken off his socks. Naturally, it was just the man on my right stirring up and tucking into his side-dish of natto and raw egg. I didn’t enjoy my lunch.

An import shop in Tennoji tried to popularize Thai tempeh a few years ago, but since I was apparently the only one buying it, they gave up. Tempeh is essentially the same food as natto (although I don’t know the difference, if any, between the fermenting agents used); the extra step, however, of pressing the tempeh into flat blocks during fermentation seems to take away the pong for which natto is so justly famed. I’ve only met one student who had ever eaten tempeh, and she complained that the smell and taste were too mild for her, and it felt funny in her mouth (unlike say, a bracing mouthful of tofu?). A dwindling number of old Kansai folk still audibly complain that natto stinks, has too strong a taste and … feels  funny in their mouth.

I’m with the old folks on this one, although it’s ironic that young Osakans (who live in an eternal present) assume it’s a sign of my foreignness that I can’t stand the stuff.

“A bad turn of some sort”

I was sitting on a JR Loop Line express train yesterday afternoon, en route to a private lesson in the sticks. My iPod was playing “C’est la Vie”, the weekly CBC Radio program about French Canada (sadly, thirty minutes a week is more news than most English Canadians can stand about French Canada). Just out of Shin-Imamiya station, an old man sitting across the aisle from me was making a slight commotion. At first, he just seemed a bit eccentric and talking to himself (which is not particularly unusual on the Loop Line). But then I realized that he was doing that very Osakan thing: describing the misfortune he was suffering as though he were observing it (“Oh, it seems I’ve just missed my train,” or “Oh, I’ve just pushed the wrong button. I don’t want to get off on that floor,” older Osakans say, perfectly audibly, to no one in particular: in fact, they’re surprised if anyone replies to it). I couldn’t catch it exactly, but he was saying something like: “Oh, dear, I do believe I’m taking a bad turn of some sort,” as he was having it. “It feels unpleasant and I will have to lie down,” he continued as he did just that, first sitting cross-legged in the aisle, then lying down in it, repeating in a mixture of polite Japanese and Osaka-ben, “sumimasen,ne – summahen, na,” (sorry, OK? – pardon me, OK?).

The middle-aged man standing in the aisle by the man’s feet looked away, muttered something like, “Oh, get a grip, uncle,” (the elderly are always addressed/ referred to here as ojisan – uncle – or obasan –aunt). Some older women rushed up to him. “Oh, uncle, are you all right? (Ojisan! Daijoubu desuka?)” “Where are you hurting?” “Maybe you should put your head on your jacket. Yes, like that.” And so on, the whole time the man describing his distress and confusion in a high, whiny voice.

“Could somebody push the (emergency) button?” one of the women asked. Others watched passively, nosily, or turned away.
–    Oh, he really should be looked at. They should take him off the train.
–    Please push the button somebody.
–    Ne. (‘ne’ – or in Osaka, ‘na!’ is the general agreement sound. It can be used like ‘right?’ or ‘OK?’ or the Canadian, ‘eh’,  it can be similar to a tag question – ‘isn’t it?’ – ,or in this case ‘yes, someone should’)
–    The conductor should be told.
–    Ne. (‘he should, shouldn’t he?’)
–    Ojisan, don’t give up.
–    Summahen, na. Gomen-na.

And it occurred to me, sitting there, with all this going on behind me, that this was all taking a long time, that the man, if he was on the verge of having a heart attack, needed help soon. Perhaps it was happening very quickly, but time had slowed down. Finally, we heard the bell from the alarm being pulled, and the train ground to a halt on a bridge over a canal.

“Well, he could have stopped at a station!” exclaimed one of the obachans. “Ne!” replied the others. People began to get antsy (of course, commuters in the other carriages had no idea why we had stopped). After what seemed like five minutes (which is unlikely), a weedy young conductor came in and squeezed past everyone to see the old man. He asked him what was wrong and where he had got on. The answer, Shin-Imamiya, made several listeners give a ‘might’ve known’ look (Shin-Imamiya is home to the largest homeless community in Japan, many elderly day labourers who can’t get work anymore – much alcoholism, mental illness, or at least reputedly).  The conductor went back up front (what was he doing there? They’re usually in back, now that I think of it). A few minutes later, a woman hurried into the carriage, possibly a nurse (it then dawned on me that the conductor had probably left us to shout, “is there a doctor in the house?” and we forgave him his rushing away). She looked him over professionally, asked him useful questions reassuringly.

Eventually, the train began moving again, finally stopping at Bentencho station. Doors opened. Passengers began flooding in, then stopped at the sight of the prone old man (who by this time looked more embarrassed at all the attention than in pain – to an old Japanese man, all the attention would almost be worse than the pain). A young otaku, oblivious to the affairs of other carbon-based life forms, stepped over him and shuffled to the doors on the opposite side. Station staff arrived, with a stretcher. Someone asked him if he’d mind standing up and getting onto the stretcher, and he replied quite sincerely that it would be rather difficult, sorry ‘bout that. With the help of the motherly ladies and the nurse, he was eventually placed on the stretcher and lifted to the platform. Then, at a signal from a conductor, the waiting passengers got on, and the train took off again. As the doors closed, we heard from the platform, “Summahen-ne! Moshiagenai-ne!” (Sorry! I really have no excuse!)

Nagai Park – 1/15th of the Marathon of Life

The first sports stadium was built in Nagai Park (at Midosuji Nagai Station) in 1964, just in time to host a few Olympic soccer matches. The stadium has been replaced twice over the years, most recently to host three (three!) soccer World Cup matches in 2002. The now-looming structure’s 50,000 seats have rarely been filled since then, but it is the home of Cerezo, the presently lukewarm J-League Soccer team, which gives it something to do.

(from an article which originally appeared in Kansai Scene, September 2008; click here to read the rest).

Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri 2008

The Danjiri Matsuri (held every year in Kishiwada, a city in southern Osaka Prefecture) is a huge festival, but it still somehow keeps a small-town feel about it (as opposed to the Samurai-Does-Vegas mood of Osaka City’s Tenjin Matsuri). After going there in 2003, 2006 and 2007, I went there yet again on the 14th, and took a lot of pictures. Danjiri are the large, wheeled, wooden portable shrines which are pushed and pulled through every neighbourhood of the city. The big fad among the girls in the festival this year seems to have been braiding their hair tightly. Someone who accompanied me remarked that, at times, it looked more like a Jamaican festival than a Japanese one, what with all the “plaits”.

The Goodfellas of Kurashiki (revisited)

Tsutaya, the Japanese movie-rental behemoth, was having a half-price “campaign” (sic) on old movies this weekend, so I toddled down to the local shop near Nagai Station and rented Goodfellas, a movie I hadn’t seen since its theatrical release in 1990. I watched it last night and it seemed as though two DVD commentaries were running simultaneously in my head the whole time (an image I wouldn’t / couldn’t have used the first time I watched it because there was no such thing as a DVD).

The first commentary was, naturally, me comparing my reaction to that of the first time I saw the film. Often you can be disappointed when watching a favourite film years later (in college, I thought Amadeus the best movie I’d ever seen – yet the last time I tried to watch it, this past February, I could barely stay awake till the end). There are misremembered lines of dialogue, scenes whose sequence you’d confused and scenes you’d forgotten completely – but there was little of that when I watched Goodfellas. The movie had made such an impact on me that I remembered it virtually scene by scene. The violence didn’t shock me as much – was that because I now always knew when it was coming, or because nearly 18 years of the real thing on the internet have left me callous and jaded? The sequence (to the tune of “Layla”) where De Niro’s character has his accomplices bumped off in various interesting ways disturbed me deeply in 1990 – so much so that I replayed the whole thing in my dreams for years afterward. This time, I paused after they found the guy hanging from the butcher’s hook in the refrigerated truck, and unironically went to get some more Coke from the fridge.

Watching it the first time, you never know what Joe Pesci’s increasingly psychopathic character, Tommy, will do next. It is probably the last really unpredictable performance I’ve seen in a movie, so naturally, my eyes followed him the whole time in 1990. Second time round, I realized how strong the supporting performances were (and this is always one of Scorcese’s strengths – bringing out the ensemble-cast feel) – especially Lorraine Bracco as Henry Hill’s wife and Paul Sorvino as Paulie, the understatedly threatening mob boss. I noticed the camera work this time – the brilliant tracking shots, the very long, tense confrontation scenes, the disjointedness and speed of the action as Henry (the minor wiseguy from whose point of view the story is told) gets more paranoid from cocaine. The movie didn’t disappoint – it still holds up well.

There was however, one puzzling difference: the scene in which {SPOILER ALERT} Tommy enters a room and realizes that he’s not being made a full member of the Mafia family, but instead is about to be whacked. For 18 years, I’ve remembered his last words being, “Aw, shit!” But when I saw it last night, he said nothing. Misremembered, or second thoughts on Scorsese’s part when the DVD edition was released? {END OF SPOILER ALERT}

That was the first running commentary. The second one was comparing the contexts of both times I watched the movie. In November, 1990, a friend of mine invited me to Kurashiki for the long weekend of the then-new Emperor’s Enthronement ceremony (the Daijousai – it was declared a one-off national holiday that year). After seeing the sights of beautiful, downtown Kurashiki, we still had 2.5 more days to kill. The video shops had been picked clean (nobody watches these royal ceremonies, although they are duly televised – I’ve been told that video rentals were also brisk during Emperor Showa’s mourning period and drawn-out funeral). Goodfellas was playing on Saturday night at the non-cineplex movie house. We’d never heard of it, but knew De Niro. Bought tickets.

I still remember the pasta we ate beforehand (dinner and a movie! How last century can you get!), the cappucino which, in those pre-Starbucks days, was still a relative novelty outside of Tokyo, the acquaintances of my friend, who joined us for the movie (one of whom un-ironically stated, for some long-forgotten reason, “well, we must always protect our interests”; yes, some Americans talked like that even then, in the presence of impertinent foreigners like me). The theatre was old (at least that’s how I remember it). There might have been a dozen people there – it wasn’t a big hit. In those bucolic surroundings, watching Goodfellas was a bit surreal. But I never forgot it.

Cut to 2008. I’m sitting in my room, eating smoked salmon and avocado on English muffins (the first ingredient unaffordable, the other two virtually unknown in Japan, c.1990), watching a movie in a medium that didn’t exist the last time I saw it, able to pause the movie at will and look up info about cast, crew, on the IMDB or Wikipedia. I wonder whether the movie would have had the same impact on me had this been the first time to watch it. I doubt it – as much as I enjoyed it, I was too easily distracted, knowing that I could always pause, rewind, look up, go for a pee. It’s a totally different aesthetic experience. Don’t worry – I’m not going to get all Luddite now and say one is better than the other. But still.

A semi-related afterthought: I just recalled my grandmother’s little movie notebook, which she came across in a drawer some years ago, and showed me. In the 1930s, she and her school friends would take in movies all the time. She would make a note of what she saw, where she saw it, who she saw it with, the cast, and a comment or two. Although going to the pictures was cheap entertainment, it was still the Depression and no one would dream of spending a good quarter to see the same movie twice. Seventy years later, she can still relate some of those stories, describe long-forgotten starlets.

“Get your own damn salaryman!”

Shortly after arriving for my first stint in Osaka, I discovered, as all new arrivals did, the Pig and Whistle, an ersatz British pub in Shinsaibashi. It was then (c. 1989) the only place one could get an order of fish and chips, and beer in a pint glass. It was also one of the first actual gaijin bars in the city (this was in the days when “Gaijin dame!” – no foreigners! – was a not untraditional greeting in the drinking quarters of cheery old Naniwa). Salarymen, in those heady, Bubble Economy days, were always working hard to use up their then-generous expense accounts, and it was quite trendy to go to the Pig and try to start up conversation with a gaijin sensei or two. By 10 PM, it was usually standing room only, the ratio of Japanese to foreigners nearly 50-50. If they were middle-aged managers or bosses (so not really salarymen, although we weren’t aware of the difference at the time) they’d also bring an underling salesman or a few OLs and treat them to a drink and the passing parade. I find it hard to think of myself as exotic (it’s not an adjective that clings naturally to anything from Nova Scotia), but I guess we were, to them. In 1989. Hard to believe now.

Besides the one-time-only gawkers, there were a few regular Japanese patrons, salarymen, whom you’d notice there at least once a week. They did not all look alike, but back then they certainly tried to, and it must be said that many of them succeeded. They would introduce themselves once, and you were expected, like a Japanese businessman must, to remember their name for the rest of your life, though of course I rarely did. I spoke next to nothing, literally a few sentences of Japanese (including those sure-fire conversation starters, “Where is the subway station?” and “How much is the beer?”). I couldn’t even follow Japanese-accented English (now I can barely understand anything else…). More often than not I would miss the name several times until the guy helpfully took out his business card and showed me his name, written not in English, but kanji. Big help.

At any rate, it got you meeting people, and the Pig was sort of a halfway house to acclimatize newbies to Japan and enable Japanese to meet actual foreigners at close range, under controlled conditions (it was also a pick-up joint, but it didn’t become primarily so until somewhat later, when it became sleazy and boring and we deserted it for Tin’s Hall). It didn’t seem so bad at the time.

I had been in Japan about a month when, dropping into the Pig after work, a gray-haired man in a pinstripe suit and a meticulous comb-over (bar-code, the kids call it here) struck up a conversation with me. I have no idea what we spoke about, he seemed friendly enough, and he offered to buy me a beer. I accepted with feigned reluctance (I had learned that much Japanese etiquette in a month), and he had barely walked over to the bar when a stocky foreigner, also in a suit, brushed past me and muttered in my ear.

“Hey, pal,” he said, ” get your own damn salaryman. He’s been buying me drinks for the past week.”

There’s no point to this story. I was just reminded of it by another blog I’ve just read. I do remember drinking the beer anyway, naturally. As for the ale-whore, he eventually went up to the man, bowed ingratiatingly, and got his beer too, throwing me a smug look in the process. Luckily, I started making Japanese friends and going to izakaya (居酒屋, Japanese pubs) around then, and my quality of life (if not my liver’s) improved exponentially.

Kinki No More

Osaka is located in the Kansai (関西, western border) region of Japan, more specifically the urban area known as Kinki (近畿), which means roughly “around the capital,” and refers collectively to Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto (the old capital, before Tokyo). It is an ancient historical name with great cultural significance to the Japanese.

Well, that’s all very well and good, but you know how it sounds to an English speaker’s ears. The first sight of a branch of the Kinki Bank (“My bank, my Kinki”) never fails to break up the gaijin newcomer to Osaka. Likewise, Kinki Nippon Tourist gets its share of snickers (“You’ve been a very naughty tourist and won’t see the Louvre until those boots are licked clean!”). Tired, no doubt, of all those phone calls from intrigued, middle-aged Germans, Kinki Nippon Tourist (a subsidiary of Kintetsu, the former – wait for it – Kinki Nippon Railways) recently decided to move with the times and jump on the acronym bandwagon. Universal Studios Japan is now USJ; Japan Airlines is JAL; Japan Travel Bureau (the biggest travel agency here) is JTB; the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ is now (for reasons known but to God) MUFG. There’s a definite trend here.

Again, all well and good. But how do the good folks at Kinki Nippon Tourist expect us to pronounce this?

Although I’ve been called worse, I’m scared to even walk in the door.

Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri 2007

It didn’t rain in Kishiwada this year, in fact the sun was pretty strong, as my red scalp will attest. Click here for some photos of this year’s festival (matsuri, 祭). Click here for a description of the 2006 matsuri, and a link to more photos from 2006 and 2003.

The Man From Turkish TV

Today at lunchtime, we made our way to Seyhan Kebap, the little Turkish place in Namba, just across from the Prefectural Gymnasium (where the Sumo tournaments are held in February). It was jam-packed (i.e., two of the three little counters against the walls were full), and a tall, white-haired, elderly, but fit-looking man was chatting with the cook in Turkish. A younger woman (his daughter?) wore a headscarf and chatted with the Japanese waitress in English. We ordered – me, my usual Iskender kebap (kebab meat with yogurt and tomatoes) and Mike the Dürüm kebap (marinated meat wrapped in pita). While we were waiting for the food, the old man came over (well, wheeled around – it isn’t a very large place) and struck up a conversation.

Seems he was from Izmir, on the Aegean sea, was a retired engineer and did sports commentary for Turkish television as a sort of hobby. Naturally, he was in town for the IAAF Championships (which I’ll be going to see on Friday night). His English had an elegant, old-fashioned tinge to it (what broadcasters used to call “mid-Atlantic,”: not quite British, not quite American, and favoured for decades by Canadian newsreaders). We asked him whether this place served authentic Turkish food. He allowed that it did, but more specifically Anatolian food, from the Asian interior of Turkey (what they used to call Asia Minor). The food from his part of Turkey used more fish and olive oil, and many cold bean dishes, “very healthy, most healthy food,” he said more than once.

Mike asked him whether the fires from Greece had spread into Turkey. He misheard: “Oh no, it’s not that bad, that’s just politicians stirring things up. There are ferries between Greece and my city, many Greeks come to Izmir for the shopping. We and the Greeks just go about our business.”
Our food arrived. He saw the Iskender Kebap, served with a spicy tomato soup: “now that’s a real Turkish lunch!” he said, approvingly. He thanked us for our time, and then resumed his chat with the owner, through the door to the kitchen.

I wish someone had told me this 20 years ago

“Cartooning is for people who can’t quite draw and can’t quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.“

– Matt Groening, in a NY Times Magazine interview, July 22nd, 2007

Instead, I stapled a few quarter-talents together and became a teacher. Saw a lot of the world, though, mostly via Kansai International Airport. I’m off to visit Signor Piano’s sinking masterpiece later today, when I fly out to Canada for a month.