Festive Tokyo

The foot traffic in and out of Harajuku station was astounding. At several points between the platform and the exit -- a distance of about 200 meters altogether -- I was trapped for minutes at a time in the kind of human gridlock that invariably elicits a sarcastic, clichéd “moo” from someone in the crowd. Outside of the station was more pandemonium. Flocks of teenagers dressed in their lacy, black gothic gear collided with pockets of foreigners in loosely fitting Thai fisherman’s pants, with reggae T-shirts and short-brimmed hats.

It was Sunday, the final day of the Thai Festival.

I’d gone once before, long ago, and it had been of course crowded. But attendance then had not yet reached this level of craziness. I heard someone say that this year was the biggest turnout ever, and I believed it.

My good friend David was in town, and we’d planned to meet up with six others -- a task easier said than done. Somehow, despite the fact that the sheer number of people with cell phones in Yoyogi Park meant that none of us could get a signal, we all managed to find each other.

“I want those fried spring rolls,” I said, pointing to the first sign I saw featuring fried food.

“Oh, already sold out, dayo,” Yoshiko’s face wilted into an expression of comic disappointment, the kind of thing you do to indicate to a child that you’re “sad.”

“Damn,” I cursed. “Is this line actually moving?” The boys had gone off to find beers, and I imagined them blithely sipping Singhas beneath a tree somewhere, while we waited for plates filled with rapidly shrinking possibilities -- chicken, chicken, or chicken.

Eventually, we managed to get our hands on some comestibles: bowls of gooey meat-filled mochi-like dumplings doused with soy sauce and vinegar; crispy chicken wings in a sticky, sweet sauce; grilled chicken with Thai spices; thin rice vermicelli noodles in a piquant red broth; eggplant and mushrooms in a puddle of green coconut curry. If only there had been someplace to sit.

“Well, I haven’t finished reading it yet, but dozo,” Tetsuo handed us each a sheet from his Nikkei newspaper, and down we plopped, right in the middle of a walkway, with our food, sipping Singhas beneath a tree as people walked past us. I felt like a child looking up at adults.


“This festival used to be totally gay,” Tetsuo observed.

David let out a short, staccato guffaw and asked, “How can you tell if a Japanese guy is gay?”

“That’s easy,” he replied. “Short hair, stocky, horizontal striped shirt…You know gacchiri-mucchiri? It means like ‘stocky.’ We say, ‘gacchi-mucchi.’”

I giggled with delight. I love Testuo because he always teaches me the most hilarious Japanese phrases.

“Sometimes, people also say ‘gacchi-pocchi,’ means kind of chubby. But when people say that about themselves,” he turned to me and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow, “they’re fat.”

For the rest of the afternoon, we ate, drank, and made merry. By the end of it, we all agreed that it had been a great time, albeit one that need not be repeated any time soon.

“That was fun,” said Kazu, “but maybe next time we should just go to a Thai restaurant, ne.”

But don’t let my words discourage you. A big food festival in Tokyo is something that everyone should experience at least once. If the rain stops this weekend, I’ll be tempted to check out the Hibiya Oktoberfest in Hibiya Park. Never mind that it’s May. Time means nothing in the face of whimsy, and after a few heady German beers, you’re likely to forget all about it.

You can also head back to Yoyogi Park for the Laos Festival, if you dare.

Fret not, sake fans, the city hasn’t forgotten you. There’s a tasting at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Yurakucho on May 23rd, from 4 - 6pm.

Whatever you do, make sure you eat and drink something nice. I know I will.

When Inspiration Doesn't Strike

This past April, JP was accepted into a graduate program in socio-linguistics. It's a good thing, one of those logical career-building moves that will make him more attractive to potential employers and enable him to transition, if he so chooses, into other industries. The work will be stimulating and provide him with a direction to focus his energy. He will engage in academic discussions with a group of like-minded individuals. There's just one minor glitch: he's still somewhat unsure of what, exactly, socio-linguistics is.

I've heard that such confusion is not entirely uncommon among students in the field of socio-linguistics. Even so, the weight of this fact hit JP with full force last week when he received his first assignment -- a 4000-word paper on the topic of forensic grammar.

"How the hell am I going to write 4000 words about grammar?" he asked suddenly, shaking his head and drooping heavily as he gripped the white plastic safety rings on the train. "What am I going to say?"

"Well," I began, "seeing as you have yet to read any of your course material, there's no way you could know. I believe that the objective is to read the stuff first, and then generate ideas? Once you've actually started the class, it will all become clear."

My words of reassurance had little effect. He seemed stunned.

"Forensic grammar," he muttered blankly.

"Don't worry," I said. "Something will come to you as you go through the course work. Inspiration doesn't just fall from the sky."

I am, of course, a hypocrite.

I'd been sitting at the table for an hour, distractedly tapping my pen and waiting for apercus to appear, like magic (or rather, Godot), on the blank page before me. Nothing. An earthquake in northern Japan sent out tremors that shook the house, and still I sat.

I was supposed to be writing a food essay, a relatively easy assignment, but I'd fallen into a rut the size of the San Andreas Fault. In desperate need of inspiration, I started reading. I re-read stories by David Sedaris and David Rakoff to analyze elements of memoir writing. I picked up old issues of the New Yorker for examples of in-depth reporting. I re-read pieces by Lara Vapnyar to understand narrative arc, and how to build a human story around food.

Then, I started cooking.


Although I abhor waste in the kitchen, I've been a bit slack recently. Odd bits and pieces -- a cucumber here, slices of roast pork there -- had been languishing in the corners of my refrigerator and I took to using them up with zeal. I chopped up sprigs of watercress and a lonely stalk of celery and threw them into a tuna salad. I made a guacamole spread out of half an avocado, some cream cheese and a moribund lime. I fried slivers of garlic with salt-brined, five-spice-rubbed pork left over from dinner a few nights ago and tossed them with pasta, scallions, cilantro, and the last of the Vietnamese pickles I'd made last week. Oinuma-sensei had given us a sizable fresh bamboo shoot, so I boiled it (a time-consuming process that I'll explain later) and coated the slices, along with two grilled eggplants and half a red pepper, in an anchovy and garlic sauce. I roasted an orange pepper and made a quinoa salad with shrimp, avocado, dill, red onion, cucumber and olives. I worked methodically, enjoying the same feeling of satisfaction that a Type A person gets from cleaning out her closet.

As we sat down to dinner with a bottle of fresh and berry-kissed Les Terres du Sud Rose (what else could ever hope to contend with a spread like this?), an idea came to me at last. Funny how great ideas usually come to me after a few glasses of sake or wine.

Inspiration doesn't fall from the sky. It's always around us; you just have to look around to find it. But if all that fails, start drinking.

Prepare Your Palates: Ginjo Shinshu Festival 2010

Just a quick reminder to everyone out there who's planning to attend the 2010 Ginjo Shinshu Sake Festival: It's just around the corner, scheduled for May 11, and there are exactly 2 days left to purchase advance tickets for Y2000 (Y2500 at the door).

For those unfamiliar with the event, it's one of the biggest sake tastings in Tokyo all year, and it's your best chance to sample the newly released shinshu spring brews.

So start sniffing those flowers and munching those fruits to prepare your palate, and get ready to face a serious crowd, especially at the evening session. The good news is that they do provide spit buckets, but the bad news is that there will be no food to speak of. Plan accordingly.

Starting June 1st, the organizers of the event, the Japan Gijnjo-shu Association, will host a series of special bar nights every weekend until the end of August at the Shimbashi branch of one of my favorite sake spots, Kuri. If these events are like the others I've attended, you'll be given a stamp card to chart your progress as you sip your way across Japan, and after about 20 stamps, you'll get a free drink. Daunting work, for sure, but you mustn't lose heart. I know for a fact that the free drink is an attainable goal.

Apologies for the long silence, but I promise to be back again soon with more tales of sake, wine and mayhem. In the meantime, take a look at my interview with the creators of the wine manga Kami no Shizuku (Les Gouttes de Dieu), or check out a shortlist of my favorite foods on CNNGO.