Inoda

I am living in the Land of Tea.  Tea in Japan is more than just a hot beverage; it has deep cultural significance that goes well beyond infusing leaves in boiling water.  One could go so far as to say all Japanese culture grows outward from tea.

But I'm not here to talk about tea.  That is a subject much too weighty for a Gaijin of 5 months to discuss intelligently.  I'm here to talk about coffee, Japanese coffee.

Inoda Coffee predates Starbucks by more than 30 years.  Founded in Kyoto in 1940, there are 11 locations across Japan, compared with Starbucks 20,000+ across the globe.  But I'm not here to compare Inoda and Starbucks (because there is no comparison).

Inoda harks back to an era before paper to-go cups, when attention to detail was paramount.  I have not been to the original Inoda, but the cafe on Sanjo-dori has a lovely mid-century charm to it with rosewood paneled walls, over-sized swivel stools in chocolate brown vinyl, and a sleek stainless steel kitchen.  The staff behind the large circular "kaunta" all wear white jackets with black bow ties and paper forage hats.  They do not chit-chat with the customers or among themselves.

It reminds me a bit of Cafe de Flore in Paris with its monogrammed cups, saucers, glasses and ashtrays.  In fact, like the Flore, you can purchase any of these items.  But you will not hear the waiters shouting, "Un express!" at Inoda because there is not an espresso machine to be found here.  This is classic drip coffee poured one order at a time with great care.  What?! Robert Wallace, the Cappuccino Kid, drinking drip coffee?!  This, I assure you, is no ordinary drip coffee.  It is not your home Mr. Coffee maker or your industrial Bunn machines.  This is pure, freshly roasted, perfectly brewed, gracefully poured goodness.  I might even say the Inoda "German-style" coffee is the best cup I've had anywhere.

I am guessing of course, but besides an obviously superior bean and excellent roast, it is the exactness of temperature that makes this cup of coffee so good.  The staff go to great lengths to make sure your cup of coffee is served at the optimum temperature.  There are half a dozen burners in the central island.  There are old-fashioned enamel coffee pots on some with a low, even flame and coffee ready to pour for the customer.  There are large pots of water just under boiling on others.  This water has two purposes.  It is ladled carefully through fabric filters containing precise measurements of ground coffee into giant enamel jugs.  This in turn is poured as needed into the smaller, more manageable coffee pots.  The hot water is also used to heat the cups before the coffee is poured.  Cups are gently dunked in the water.  The specialty blends, like my German-style, are made by pouring hot, but not boiling, water through paper filters into small glass pots, which are also pre-heated with hot water.

Everything is done with rhythmic precision to maintain that perfect temperature.  It may sound complicated, but it is really incredibly simple, and totally Japanese.

Katsura Rikyu (桂離宮)

After two on-line rejections of my application to see Katsura Rikyu, the Imperial Villa, I decided to visit the Imperial Household Agency in person.  
"When would you like to go?"
"Um...tomorrow, ashita."
"Okay.  No problem."
Sometimes the internet is good for nothing.

Completed in 1615, Katsura Rikyu is considered one of the great gardens of Kyoto.  So I didn't mind that it took two trains, a subway and almost an hour to get to this south-west corner of the city.  It was a rather chilly morning but the weather forecast called for sunshine and comfortably cool temperatures.  I was hoping to see some pre-spring splendor, sakura buds ready to burst.  What I got instead was a freakish late winter snow storm.

Unlike my last encounter with the Imperial Household Agency in the autumn when I visited Sento Gosho, the pace of this tour was a bit more hurried.  The shutterbugs that trailed behind were encouraged by a rather large security guard to keep it moving.  Maybe he was cold and just wanted to get indoors.

The snow began falling shortly after we entered the garden, but was light and pleasant beneath a still mostly blue sky.  It melted immediately.  About halfway through the tour it became a little more zealous, clinging to the trees and grass and bare heads of the visitors.  I was smiling, but others in the group were less amused by Mother Nature's trick.  No sooner had it begun to turn the garden a soft white than the sun came out and transformed it into sparkling silver water droplets.

This is spring.  As long as I have lived outside of the dull and predictable springs of southern California I have marveled at the battle between the seasons, winter trying desperately to hold on to what was his for the last 3 months, and spring pushing hard for an introduction.  It is literally a fight.  We, as spectators, should find a good seat and enjoy the match, maybe laugh a little.

Myoshinji (妙心寺): notes and impressions

Monks in indigo-dyed samue, wooden geta stone-clacking.  Smell of burning wood.  Temple as black as fire.  Gardeners busy, winter repairs ahead of the sakura.  First signs of spring.  Children innocently ignorant, their playground has 600 years of history.  Silver-gray skies.  Coats unbuttoned.  My paintings are here.

Musing

Life delineates itself on the canvas called time, and time never repeats; once gone, forever gone; and so is an act once done, it is never undone. Life is a sumiye-painting which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil painting, which can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. With a sumiye-painting any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have committed to deeds; Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going, neither before nor after. It is an act of one instant. This fleeting, unrepeatable and ungraspable character of life is delineated graphically by Zen masters who have compared it to lightning or sparks produced by percussion of stones.

The idea of direct method appealed to by masters is to get hold of this fleeting life as it flees and not after it has flown.

- D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, vol. 1 

Easygoing

Sometimes you just know.  You open the door, next to the usual umbrellas there's a skateboard.  There's bossa nova on the stereo.  You see the proprietor - scruffy gray beard, a wool beanie, cigarette.  You sit down at the long bar.  There are fresh vegetables in various bowls and baskets, not for display, but to be used in the kitchen, which happens to be just the other side of the bar.  Well-used pots and pans hang from the ceiling.  The heavy, cast-iron stove is from another century.  It is caked with decades of blackened food splatter.  The walls and cupboards are stained with time and distillates of meals past.  There is a vague organization to this perfectly disorganized workspace.

This is the kind of cafe/bar that would probably not pass a California Health Department inspection, and would make most Americans (even some Japanese) U-turn out the door.  I smile.  Somehow, remarkably, there is nothing dirty about it.  It is age and love that marks everything, not filth.

Akira, the proprietor, speaks some English and we talk about the nearby temple Myoshin-ji from which I've just come.  He shows me photos of some of the temples he has been to in the Kansai region and his nokyocho (a sort of passport book for collecting temple stamps).  We talk about cooking too.  Photography is his hobby, but cooking is his passion.  There is a warmth and calmness to him, something unassuming, reverent.

Without looking at the menu I ask him to make me something.  As I expected he approaches cooking like an artist.  It is a joy to watch, not because he is a showman, but because you can see he has a real feeling for food and its preparation, and he cooks with flair, moving around his kitchen in a fluid rhythm.  The meal is simple and tasty.

Some other people arrive including his teenage daughter and her friends.  He introduces me to each person, as if we were old friends: my name, where I grew up, where I'm living, what I do, etc.  He and the others conspire to find a way to extend my visa and keep me in Kyoto.  He offers a room in his house above the cafe, or at the temple - he has friends there.

"Raku Raku" is the name of the cafe which means something like "easygoing".  Yeah, Raku Raku.

Ryoanji revisited

"I learn only to be contented"

- Mitsukuni Mito (1628-1700)

54 second meditation on light

Accidental sashimi

I received a wonderful cookbook for my birthday in January called "Japanese Cooking A simple Art" by Shizuo Tsuji.  This book was first published in 1980, so it is a veritable classic and considered the "bible of Japanese cooking".  It is as much a primer on Japanese cuisine as a collection of recipes.

As most of you know I studied French patisserie and boulangerie in Paris a number of years ago.  So I am no stranger to the kitchen.  Despite the fact I specialized in the sweet part of French cuisine, I have tackled many a complicated savory dish.  But I honestly had no clue about Japanese cooking.  And when you are living in Japan this is a problem.  A trip to the market is a comedy.  I can identify tomatoes and onions, chicken and beef visually.  But anything packaged, anything with a label is a huge shoulder shrug. 

So armed with this new cookbook I have set out to learn something about Japanese cooking.  I've become a bit more adventurous in the market, buying things I never would have before.  I ask a lot of questions of the staff: "Bonito wa doko desu ka?", "Kore wa mirin desu ka?"

So yesterday I bought a lovely piece of fish.  I'm not very good at identifying fish, even in English, but I'm guessing it was Sea Bream.  I'd found a recipe in my book and was preparing to pan-fry it.  When you buy fish or meat in a Japanese market, besides the lovely decoration in the package, there is often a seasoning packet or condiment.  I'd tried the little packet that came with the pork cutlets I had bought once; it was all right, but nothing special.  When I peeled back the cellophane of the styrofoam tray, besides the fish there was a little mound of shredded daikon radish and a packet of something.  Curious, I opened it and tasted it.  Wasabi.  I put it all together.  The beautiful cut of fish, the daikon garnish, wasabi.  This was sashimi.  This was meant to be eaten raw, uncooked.  I was about to murder this fish.  Oh-la-la, quelle massacre!

But what did I know of preparing sashimi.  I quickly looked up sashimi in my "Japanese Cooking" book.  I read the section, studied the diagrams and took my knife, which was most definitely not a sashimi-bocho, and sliced up the fish.  Now anyone that is a sushi connoisseur knows cutting indeed affects the flavor of the fish.  Paper-thin slices taste differently than thicker slices.  I thought of the Simpsons episode when Lisa convinces the family to go out for sushi.  When the master sushi chef is indisposed Homer eats a piece of sashimi that is poisonous because it was incorrectly cut by the apprentice chef.

Well, I'm sure a master chef would be horrified at my slicing of this fish.  He may even be horrified at the quality and freshness of it.  But for my first attempt at sashimi I have to say, おいし かった (it was delicious).