The Pleasures and Peculiarities of Pallettes Abroad

The foundation of any foreign experience has got to be culinary.  So much of the history and personality of a particular place can be discovered in its food and the people's relationship with it.  Since arriving in Japan, I've done more eating than anything else, and while my experiences have ranged from exquisite to brow-raising, they have always been enriching and deeply satisfying.

I've made a point of eating as Japanese as possible, and so while the cuisine of every conceivable culture can find representation here (everything from Italian to Uzbekistani), my choice of dining (with great indulgence on the part of Nathan and Asami) has stayed largely within the confines of this island nation.  Asami typically takes me out to lunch where I am able to sample a fine array of dishes in the traditional Japanese style.  These usually consist of heaping bowls of rice or freshly made noodles, moderately sized portions of fish (often raw) or chicken (though beef and pork are also common), miso soup, and a variety of pickled vegetables, wasabi, or other flavor-enhancers.  The results have been unequivocally delightful!

Natto

However, as my my meals begin to span the gamut into more modern times, I find myself encountering Japanese foods which have emerged from a point of contact with the western world, and the results are often... interesting.  I see things like sweet potato ice cream, coffee jello, squid pizza, and a beverage called "Cow Piss,"all of which are surprisingly good!  There really is nothing like a foreign culture to open your eyes to new interpretations of things you've always taken for granted.

There is, however, one traditional Japanese food that has proven to be only border-line appetizing and certainly more bizarre in its experience than anything birthed from cross-cultural exchange.  That would be natto, a fermented soybean slime with roughly the consistency of chunky snot.  If you were to stick soybeans up your nose, leave them there for a few days, and then sneeze them back out you would have natto.  It has a strong odor, but even more jarring is its stickiness that inevitably leaves strings of goop running from chopstick to lip.

Braving dangerous new frontiers

A spiderweb of mucusy goo stretches from the plastic top upon opening the container.  There a pile of little brown beans sits nestled together in grayish viscosity.  I stir in a little packet of soy sauce and spicy mustard and continue to give it a good turning as that's supposed to improve the flavor.  Scooping up a glob on the end of my chopsticks, most of it oozes off the sides to leave a stringy mess dangling back into its styrofoam cup.  One deep breath later the remnants were in my mouth, chewed up, and swallowed.

Honestly, it wasn't bad.  It was certainly different, and I wouldn't say it was good, but supposedly its very healthy, and for that reason I would try it again.  They say natto is a kind of trial by fire to test a foreigners compatibility with Japanese culture.  I feel I passed the test, but not gloriously; I wouldn't say I stuck the landing.  It is encouraging though to know I've braved the toughest challenge Japanese food could throw at me and came out on top. 

Discovering Awareness of Space

There is definitely a discernible shift occurring in my consciousness after just a few days in Japan.  In an environment with both depth and intensity, the sensory stimuli can be overwhelming when one attempts to approach it from an old way of being.  In my old world there is a tendency to attach labels to things, and this is called "knowing."  In listening to one another speak people rush to conclusions as to the meanings of sounds, unconsciously assuming that a particular vocalized pattern inherently means whatever the associated mental box says it means, and as a result communication comes to function as a mathematical equation (A + B x 2C/3D = I disagree) and conversations become mechanical and depersonalized.  We inevitably get distracted from the individual in front of us; we are no longer present to their subjectivity and the possibility that their mental boxes do not reflect the same assumptions as ours.  We get trapped in this mental space that is neither here nor there, where we are neither in the world nor truly within ourselves, for whatever finite structure we project upon the world we must also project upon ourselves, abstraction supplanting reality and truth.  Yet it's a whole other story when you have no frame of reference for the emergent cultural and linguistic context in which you find yourself.

The old way of listening was largely a passive process, you pay attention just enough to pick up on the details that allow you to decide what box to place it in.  I don't speak Japanese, or at least very little, and have but a painfully limited understanding of the nuances of Japanese culture, so to attempt to engage in this environment on such a superficial level would leave me either void of any comprehension and continuity or overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance.   Though I've lived abroad before, I find myself now more deeply embedded in foreignness.  European environs reflect a kinship in their cultures to that of the United State, which hearkens back to their common origin.  In Japan that is largely not the case, though internationalization has done much to bridge the gap.  Whereas in Germany I could at least sound out the words I couldn't yet comprehend, in Japan I am at a loss, for they have not one but two phonetic alphabets, and these have only limited use in writing as most words are written as kanji, Chinese symbols with little to no phonetic correlation at all. 

As a result, I find as I enter into this world, the old practice of habitually attaching preconceptions onto the forms in my environment finds no footing, and so I find myself naturally shifting into a space where I let those old habits go and I simply become present to my circumstances.  I immerse myself in the experience without becoming entangled in associations.  My left-brained tendencies toward linear thought and structured reason recede to give way to a softer and more intuitive fluidity of consciousness.  Spoken language becomes music and its written word registers as would a work of art, my attention being drawn as much to the space in between as to the forms themselves.

My brain lets go of thoughts and analysis, opening wide to the full range of possible perspectives.  And I find that this foreign world seems to naturally lend itself to this frame of mind.  I find it in the temples and shrines with their vaulted spaces holding pockets of serenity within the confines of structures both massive and archaic.  They provide an immediate and dynamic contrast to the hustle and bustle of the omnipresent tangle of concrete and modernity.  I find it in the gardens that balance cultivated design with natural beauty.  I find it in the food that comes prepared to feed the eyes as well as the palette.  I see it in written language where words are drawn more than spelled.  It shocks the senses out of their ego-driven nether region of the mind into a state of awareness of something more.  It awakens something that is capable of seeing beyond the mental boxes, through the veil of assumptions and preconceptions into the very face of what is.  It is the very space of consciousness itself, the room out of and into which the thoughtforms emerge and are able to exist.

blue sky is hidden

behind the darkening clouds

sun shines unhindered

Breaking the seal

And so it begins...

Stepping into the roiling streets of Tokyo, the air was dense with heat and humidity, like being hit in the face with a sweaty pillow.  The evening was setting in, the sidewalks still bustling, and my senses were awash with all manner of sight, sound, and smell all vaguely familiar yet distinctly foreign.  Wow, I thought in a surreal mixture of confused awe and disbelief, I'm actually here! Wait, what?  I'm here?  Really here... in the flesh?  No joke?  Huh... wow!

It felt good to move my legs again after such a joint-stiffening flight trans-Pacific.  Even the awkwardly bulky duffle bag and its less-than-adequately supportive shoulder strap were a welcome change of pace as I hobbled my way down the sidewalk with a wrinkled Google Maps printout clutched tentatively in my hand.  I'd never wandered alone in Japan before, but with each passing landmark I felt surer of myself and placed each step with greater confidence and determination.  Down the street, up the big hill, around the bend, left at the shrine...  and then there it was, next to the Hotel Mari just as my parchment's scribbled notations had promised: Nathan and Asami's apartment.

I rang the bell and was quickly welcomed into their home, fed grapes and cold tea to refresh my wearied constitution.  After a wonderfully prepared meal that nourished both body and soul, and after some enthusiastic deliberation of sites to be seen, monuments to be visited, and experiences to be had, my eyes had grown itchy and tangled in sleep.  Then dragging my beleaguered body bedward, I sank upon a futon, and groaning a sigh of venerable conclusion I withdrew from waking and slumbered deeply.

What awaits me?  That I cannot answer with any worthwhile assurance.  I've only a temporal template upon which providence shall cast its maker's mark.  But whatever may come to pass, I know it will be purposeful, life-affirming, and profoundly beautiful.  And that will make it all worthwhile.