The Land od the Rising Yen

dressed in
blue jeans; but one cannot wear a kimono as if it were blue jeans. One
cannot play the hichiriki as if it were the electric guitar.

TEMPURA MUTANTUR
     
    On another subject, however, I am fully repentant: on
Japanese food. I think it is delicious. It is not only the most original
cuisine, really unlike anything to be found anywhere else — but also the most
underrated.
    At my first encounter with Japanese
food I found it beautiful, like American food, but just as tasteless. Its smell
was most appetizing, its sound — you must eat noisily to show your appreciation
— most melodious. In other words, Japanese food seemed to me pleasing to the
eye, the nose and the ear. It was its taste, and its taste only, to which I
objected.
    Japanese cooking is related to
Chinese as English is related to French. Both are overshadowed by their great,
Continental neighbours. The dullness of English and Japanese food became so
proverbial that people have failed to notice that both have improved beyond
recognition in the last decade or so. On second thoughts, it is not my opinion
that has changed: it is Japanese food. My advice to all visitors is: be
adventurous and try the most exotic dishes and the chances are that you are in
for an exciting, pleasing and completely novel kind of gastronomic experience.
The taste of Japanese food has improved, and its beauty remains. Everything is
served — usually even in the more modest places — with great aesthetic care.
Every lunch is a food ceremony; every plate is an elaborate food-arrangement.
They seem to employ not only cooks in their kitchens but also sculptors and
plate-decorators.
    The one Japanese dish which is well
known all over the world is sukiyaki, and that is not Japanese at all:
it is of Chinese origin. It is prepared from scores of ingredients and is
cooked at the table on a little open flame, by the diners themselves. It has
quite a few variations: shabu-shabu is one; the Genghis Khan barbecue —
a variety of meats and delicious vegetables grilled at your table — is another.
All this is great fun socially and quite delightful gastronomically but
somewhat touristic and not the true food of Japan.
    The true native food of Japan is fish. We abhor the idea of raw fish and exclaim: ‘How barbaric 1 ’ Then we go out to eat oysters, roll-mops and steak
tar tare. Japanese raw fish — always fresh, beautifully cut in front of you,
served with a piquant sauce and followed by heavenly pickles — is a great
delicacy and I became a convert to both sashimi (plain raw fish) and sushi (slices of raw fish wrapped around small rice-balls). I even graduated to raw
chicken; a thin slice of raw, marinated chicken is delicious indeed. The yakitoriya
— the chicken restaurant — is another glory of Japan: you get chicken
prepared in front of you in dozens of ways.
    The fried fish, the tempura, is much nearer to our Western ideas. In a mediocre restaurant this can be a
disappointment. You must choose your place carefully and you will find that
there are endless, excellent varieties of tempura. As a great scholar, a
student of both classical literature and Japanese cooking, so rightly remarked: Tempura mutantur.
    A word about sake, their
famous rice wine. Some people say that they dislike sake and speak
contemptuously about it, saying that they can drink any number of those tiny
glasses without feeling any effect. But there is sake and sake, just as there is wine and wine: the varieties are many, the difference between
good and bad sake is no smaller than the difference between third-rate
retsina and a superb French claret. And as for taking any amount... well, some
people carry their drink better than others. But remember: cold sake is
(1) tasteless and (2) can be taken in large doses — although it’s hardly worth
taking it at all. Warm sake is incomparably better and knocks you out
incomparably more quickly.
    I love chopsticks, and don’t mind
eating sitting on the floor (as you have to if you choose a very Japanese
restaurant, otherwise you sit on chairs). I must admit that squatting is an
acquired skill and I am less than a beginner. I am normally rather clumsy with
my hands but I have a natural, native skill with chopsticks. I can use them
with the ease and assurance of an elderly samurai.
    Sitting on the floor eating small
bits of food and lumps of rice with chopsticks cured me of one of my little
failings. Never, not once, did I drop a greasy bit of food on the lapel