Untangling My Chopsticks (32 page)

• 2 cups hot cooked rice (
  page 32
  )
  

• 4 ounces sushi-quality salmon fillet
  

• 2 tablespoons loose Japanese green tea (such as sencha)
  

• 2 tablespoons salmon roe
  

• 1 teaspoon toasted unhulled white sesame seeds
  

• 2 tablespoons shredded nori (available in packages)
  

• Coarse salt
  

• Wasabi (available in tubes)
  

1. Prepare the rice.
   

2. Remove the skin from the salmon and then cut the fillet into thin matchstick-like slices.
   

3. Place the loose tea in a small teapot, then add 2 cups boilingwater.
   

4. While the tea steeps, heap the cooked rice into two large bowls. Arrange the salmon over the rice so that it forms a thin (not thick and clumpy) cap. Scatter the roe over the salmon, followed by the sesame seeds. Garnish each serving with a pinch of nori.
   

5. To serve, let each person pour half of the tea over the rice to cook the salmon. Season with coarse salt and wasabi to taste.
   

Makes 2 servings

Matcha (powdered green tea), which is available in select tea stores and Japanese markets, adds marvelous flavor and brilliant emerald-green color to homemade ice cream, which in Japan signals the arrival of warm weather. Enjoy the ice cream plain, or topped with chunks of melon, pineapple, and bananas and a dollop of whipped cream.

• 3½ tablespoons matcha
  

• 3 large eggs
  

• 1 cup sugar
  

• Pinch coarse salt
  

• 1¾ cups heavy cream
  

• 2 cups 2 percent milk
  

1. Place the matcha in a small bowl. Add ¼ cup boiling water and whisk until the matcha has completely dissolved. Let cool.
   

2. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, and salt in a large bowl until well combined. Place the cream and milk in a medium saucepan and bring just to a simmer. Gradually whisk the hot cream mixture into the egg mixture. Whisk in the cooled matcha mixture to form the ice-cream base, then transfer it back to the saucepan. Cook the ice-cream base over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon, about 5 minutes. Pour through a sieve into a large bowl and let cool. Place the ice-cream base in the refrigerator until cold, about 2 hours, before freezing in an ice-cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions.
   

Makes 4 cups

20.

t began as an ordinary June evening. I arrived home after a day of teaching and changed into a white T-shirt and pair of worn black pants. Then I opened a beer.

The late afternoon sun poured into the tatami room like liquid caramel, lighting up the walls with a bronzy glow. One of the most poetic aspects of a traditional Japanese home is the play of sunlight throughout the interior during the day. Light and dark shadows shift along the tan stucco walls. Brightness and coolness enter and exit rooms, casting long and short beams of color upon the polished wood planks. Paper screens filter an artistic array of yellow, ivory, and white light onto the tawny straw mats.

A gentle breeze blew in from the window, ruffling the pages of the
Newsweek
I was using as a coaster. I pushed open the screen
wider to gaze at the view: a cool forest of trees, dappled with rocks, plunging down to a rushing creek.

After taking a sip of beer, I began thinking about the fabulous new teaching position I had just been offered. A friend of Mr. Tsuki, the head of The New School where I taught, had recently opened the Japan Health Sports Academy in Kyoto. The friend needed several language teachers to round out his fitness program and Mr. Tsuki had given him my name. After a cursory interview, I had been offered the job, which came with a generous salary and the use of the gym and indoor pool.

The job also came with a twelve-month contract, which got me thinking about how long I wanted to stay in Kyoto. Now that I could finally speak Japanese, my world had expanded. The tofu maker down the street knew my name. The women at the sento had begun to chat with me. And the children around the neighborhood waved back when I walked by. Luck had brought me into the welcoming embrace of a Japanese family and the elite world of Mushanokoji. Teaching had helped me make friends and understand the culture. I loved the food. Adored the weather. And lived in what felt like a tatami paradise. In short, it seemed life could not get any better.

But then I thought about Stephen and David, who considered Kyoto their home. They knew the rules, had mastered the language, but still lived in a cultural limbo. Because they were not Japanese, Japan would forever remain a place where even the nature of secrets is a well-kept secret.

To most foreigners this sort of existence is intolerable. Unable to live on the fringe, they begin to despise the very place they once embraced. I could not bear the thought of that happening to me.

What's more, if I remained in Kyoto for another year, John might not be there when I finally returned. That evening I realized I had two choices: I could stay in Kyoto and gorge myself on all that lay piled on my plate, or I could leave slightly hungry with the desire to return.

I decided to let go of it all and leave Japan.

Suddenly, a tremendous sense of bliss washed over me. At that moment I realized I was taking home far more than I was leaving behind: I had become Japanese in my thinking. Through tea kaiseki I genuinely had come to believe that when you leave a meal, moment, or place not quite completely satisfied, you cherish it that much more because it was ephemeral and left you wanting.

That is how I wanted to remember Kyoto. So before I was ready to say good-bye, I left.

21.

hirteen years would pass before I returned to Japan. After I left Kyoto, I corresponded with friends from the Guesthouse, as well as Tomiko and Yasu. But over time our letters tapered off, as we all became busy with our own lives.

In the fall of the year after I returned, John and I continued to date. He worked in New York, while I job-hunted from my parents' home outside Boston, eventually landing a job in television production with the hope of working on a cooking show. Although there was distance between us, it had shortened. John and I lived for those moments when he or I would step off the train.

Almost a year later, when he was accepted to law school in Boston, we came face to face with our future: Should we commit ourselves and live together or continue to date and have separate apartments?

“I won't be easy to live with,” warned John. “You know what I'm like as a student.” I did know. We would rarely see one another. How long could this situation last? I wondered. How long could I last? After weeks of deliberation, we decided to share an apartment. If we could endure Japan, and then this, hope lay ahead.

By the spring of John's second year of law school, hope had given way to certainty. He proposed and I accepted. We married the summer he graduated from law school in August 1991.

Over the years, I thought a lot about Kyoto, especially in the beginning. Fragments of my time there would emerge from the shadows, stay with me, then retreat and disappear. For a while, I contemplated working for a Japanese organization. But in the end, I decided against it, sensing I might feel frustrated having to conform to certain conventions.

As I concentrated on producing and editing, the memories of that year faded. I thought less about Tomiko. Less about Stephen, Mushanokoji, and tea kaiseki. For a while, I even stopped eating sushi.

Then there came this pull. As I segued from a career in television production to one in writing, I began to think more about Japan, the food, and especially tea kaiseki. With the exception of the author of the out-of-print picture book
Kaiseki Zen Tastes in Japanese Cooking,
no one to my knowledge had shared this extraordinary culinary art form with the Western world. There were books about tea that touched upon tea kaiseki, but no one had explored it from the culinary side. And the handful of articles that attempted to explain tea kaiseki focused on the lavish party-style restaurant kaiseki that focuses on sake, not tea.

Whenever I talked with Japanese friends in America, I was
surprised to learn that some had never heard of tea kaiseki. And those who had heard of tea kaiseki knew very little about the ritual. Even among those Japanese who lived in Kyoto, their knowledge seemed limited.

In many ways, a tea kaiseki resembles a haiku, where the tea master is the poet and nature his muse. Each morsel of heartfelt prose has the power to move the diner in astonishing ways. But unless you know that the carp in your wanmori symbolizes the brave heartiness of boys, or a sweet white rice dumpling represents the perfection of enlightenment, how can you interpret the poem? Every ingredient means something, whether it captures the season, celebrates a festival, or acts as a fetish to prevent disease or bring good luck. But only the highly trained members of Kyoto's tea world truly understand and appreciate such profundity.

Since this population was aging rapidly, my desire to chronicle this kind of cooking became significant. Then it turned into a passion.