Patchwork Yokohama
18. Culinary Yokohama
by Pencil Louis
Vince and Connie Patchwork often received visitors who were
passing through Japan as part of some Asian tour. Vince was
patient but slightly exasperated by their one-dimensional
view of the country. If they stayed there for a week or
less, the Japanese were the most warm-hearted people on the
planet. If they remained longer, the locals became the
biggest bunch of ratbags the world had ever known. He also
knew from past experience that these people would be the
most vocal experts on Japan when they returned to Australia,
laying blanket fact on blanket fact about the place. He had
had similar experiences with Japanese tourists who had
lectured him on the finer points of Australian culture,
after only five days in the country on a New
Zealand/Australia group tour that took in Melbourne, Phillip
Island, Sydney and the Gold Coast. For Vince, the more he
stayed in the country, the less he could say he knew and he
believed that this was the way it should be.
Such short-term tourists also assumed that the first
cultural accomplishment of anyone in Japan should be the
language. He would patiently try to explain that food was
the first cultural hurdle anyone had to overcome. They'd
look at him with disbelief as they turned up their nose at
octopus balls, tuna sushi or natto fermented soya beans.
They had seen the McDonald's and the Kentucky Fried Chicken
in front of every railway station. It was obvious that
western food was more popular here than it was in the west.
Admittedly, the first experience most visitors had of food
in Japan was in restaurants. Vince and Connie had been lucky
to stay their first week in the country with a family. The
mother, Mrs. Suzuki, had insisted on providing Vince with
such a wide variety of dishes that he had learned to love
Japanese foods, particularly mentaiko with rice and nori
laver and oden stew.
If you came at Japanese food through the restaurants of
outer Tokyo, you soon discovered that Japanese restaurants
fell into two categories - those that plunged you right into
the heart of Japan and those that Vince referred to as Tokyo
Escapes.
The former could be found everywhere. They were the little
ramenya, the sobaya, the teppanyaki shops down narrow
alleys, around every corner, all through the underground
arcades near the subways. Vince knew enough of these places.
He often went to a shabu shabu place with Connie where they
dipped finely sliced meat into hot stock and dipping sauce.
He had a favourite sushiya where he and the Atsukawas went
on a regular basis. It was called Okinozushiya and had
introduced Vince to such delicacies as jellyfish and the red
akagai shellfish which Osamu warned him were dangerous. He
loved soba restaurants with their rich noodle dishes and the
refreshing soba cooking juices which he drank afterwards.
Vince actually found the tenpura he had tasted in Australia
was far better than the normal tenpura served in Japan. This
was probably because it was more freshly cooked.
However, for all the restaurants in Yokohama, the one that
amazed him most was Ichiban Sakaba. Sakaba really meant pub,
in this case, a working man's pub and this was where you
found the ordinary grub like the meat pies and pasties of
old pubs back home, those ones that didn't feel they had to
offer something more culinarily exquisite.
It was a rowdy joint and Connie for one soon realised that
she was the only woman there apart from the waitresses. Each
table was crammed and there were men waiting at the doors
for a vacant seat. Osamu had really romanticised Ichiban
Sakaba. The food here was excellent, it was like nothing
you'd ever tasted, far better than any food you could get in
Australia or America or France. Vince looked around at the
other clientele. They hardly looked like connoisseurs,
finicketty gourmets. Indeed, they appeared too drunk to even
taste the food.
As soon as they were seated, Osamu ordered two platters of
horumonyaki, which he told Vince was the finest dish in the
house.
Vince would point to an item on the menu and ask what the
kanji stood for, "What's that?"
"That's cow ovaries, but horumonyaki is much better."
"And what about the one below it?"
"Pigs' ears, but horumonyaki is much better." ett
"And below that?"
"Cartilage, but ..."
"Yes, I know, but horumonyaki is much better." tte
When the two platters of horumonyaki finally did arrive,
Connie took one look and promptly excused herself.
"Osamu," she said politely, "I'm not going to eat that. In
fact, I'm not even going to look at it. I'm going home."
If Osamu was at all upset by Connie's sudden departure, then
it was more than made up for by the sight of two magnificent
oval plates brimming with horumonyaki. Vince had to admit
that he had never seen anything quite like it. It was a
slimy substance consisting of cow's liver, stomach and
intestine marinated in a sauce that contained more garlic
than anything else. You could, Osamu assured him, also get
chicken or pork horumonyaki, but he knew that Vince would
like this best as westerners traditionally preferred beef.
The platters were as yet raw and Osamu showed Vince how to
cook this gooey mix by placing it with chopsticks on the
yakinikku grill. Vince hadn't eaten liver or tripe since he
was a boy and could remember that they were hardly
delicacies. He noted as Osamu placed the offal on the grill
that a good part of it oozed through into the tray
underneath and burnt to cinders there. Other flacks of cow
innards adhered to the grill. Vince wasn't particularly
upset by this. In fact, he preferred the thought of losing a
sizable portion of his meal in the tray than later in the
evening. The very thought of it travelling through his
throat twice was enough to turn his stomach.
Osamu drooled as he watched this concoction bubble away
sticking to the grill. Before it was even cooked, he had
scooped it into a bowl of rice and was bucketing down
horumonyaki domburi. Vince took it more tenderly. For
someone who prided himself on being able to stomach
anything, he felt distinctly queasy. He needn't have worried
about the taste. The garlic was too strong. It was the
texture that he found harder to take, the chewiness. He had
never really liked liver, but now he found himself picking
out the pieces of ox-fry to eat.
"Oishii ne?" Osamu said, as he ordered yet another platter.
"No, no, no," Vince pleaded, "have some of mine."
But Osamu couldn't possibly steal such delicacies out of
Vince's mouth. Somehow, Vince managed to get through his one
platter of horumonyaki and prevented Osamu who was on his
third from ordering him another one.
Quite unwittingly, Vince got his revenge. When they left
Ichiban Sakaba, Vince was surprised to discover that it was
still only 8:00 p.m. It was time, he announced to Osamu, he
tried good old-fashioned, Australian tucker. Osamu might
have assumed that he was safe from such delicacies in
Yokohama, but, as it turned out, Vince knew just the place
only three stops away on the Negishi line.
Aussie was indeed just around the corner from Ishikawacho
station, very close to Yokohama's fashionable Motomachi
Shopping Mall. Of all the Australian pubs Vince had seen in
Japan, it was the most fair dinkum. It was the only one that
has any Australian staff and the bar was cluttered in true
pub style with Australian memorabilia, everything from
"Koalas Next Four Kilometres" signs to souvenirs of the 1983
America's Cup win.
Aussie offered a menu that has kept pace with real
Australian taste buds. The meat pies, lamb chops and
fish'n'chips were there, but so too were calamari and chips,
chicken satay, foil baked fish, oysters natural, garlic
prawns and roast chicken. And you couldn't beat the Aussie
seafood, beef or lamb barbecues.
The manager, Chikako Nakano, had opened the restaurant in
1985 after working in Australia for several years. She
always made a point of coming over to talk to Vince, and was
always quick to tell him that she wanted to retire in
Sydney. Vince had been born in Melbourne and had a natural
animosity towards the more northern city. He was never game
to enlighten Chikako about this prejudice.
Chikako was the first to admit that most Australian food
didn't appeal to Japanese tastes. A case in point had to be
Osamu himself. He was obviously full to the gills with
horumonyaki, but Vince made a point of ordering a good old
Aussie meat pie complete with tomato sauce for him to taste.
Osamu examined the small bronzed oval thick with pastry with
brown meat sauce inside and a dash of read on top for some
moments
Finally, he prodded it with a fork, "Is this an Australian
delicacy?"
"Well," Vince admitted, "not exactly. It's to Australians
what grilled squid on a stick is to the Japanese, or hot
dogs are to the Americans. It's the sort of food you'd eat
at the cricket or the footy."
"Oh!" Osamu prodded at it again.
In the end, Osamu declined to try the pie and Vince had to
eat it. The pie didn't sit well on a full stomach of
horumonyaki and he had to admit that it didn't taste the
best either. The idea of an Australian restaurant in Japan
still fascinated him. Like most Australians, he was
bewildered that anyone would want to eat his native food.
The final word on Australian food in Yokohama came with the
bill. A pie in Australia would cost less than $2.00. Here in
Japan, it weighed in at over 2000. So, Osamu's horumonyaki
feast had cost less than 1500 with four bottles of beer
while their half hour stop at Aussie came to over 4000.