My Japanese Table. Debra Samuels
in classes to learn Japanese homestyle (katei) cooking.
The famous Tsukiji fish market was just across the Sumida River, which ran next to our apartment building. Our neighbors there adopted us. No one spoke English and my Japanese was still tentative. I would not have survived but for the “kindness of these strangers.” I have never forgotten how they embraced our family, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to reciprocate by helping others who find themselves in similar situations. As I settled into the rhythms of Japanese life, I began looking forward to the sound of the tofu vendor’s horn on his bicycle, to the rhythmic call of the roasted sweet potato hawker in his rickety truck, and to the daily banter with the local shopkeepers. My love affair with Japanese food was well underway. Daily shopping made me appreciate serving the freshest food possible. Each new ingredient provided an opportunity for mini cooking lessons with my neighbors. They showed me how to put together a chicken hot pot (mizutaki) and lent me the clay pot (donabe) to do it. I learned how to rinse short grain rice until the freezing cold water ran clear or my reddened hands seized up.
Half way through our stay we moved from downtown Tokyo to the suburbs. Brad went to Japanese nursery school, I went to work, and Dick finished his dissertation. We returned to the States with a three-year-old and a baby on the way.
In the mid-1980s we returned to Japan when Dick began research for a new book. Now we had two boys in tow—Brad was 6 and Alex was 3. I marketed daily at the small shops in Hamadayama, a Tokyo suburb. My bicycle had a grocery basket in the front and a seat for Alex in the back. With him perched on his little throne, we would cruise up and down the high street, buying ingredients for dinner. Alex quickly became fluent in Japanese and soon knew that the locals found him different and cute (kawaii). He was quick enough to know that if he said “ oishii-sō ” (that looks so yummy!) while staring directly at a mountain of just-fried chicken, the granny behind the counter would offer him a crispy piece. Then he would bow and say “ domo ” (thanks), and out would come another one! The kid had his routine perfected, and by the time we were on the way home he was full.
Brad was a first grader at the local elementary school, so I learned to prepare Japanese-style boxed lunch (bento) for him. These box lunches were culinary masterpieces—at least when in the ways the other moms prepared them. Brad made it clear that American-style peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a brown paper bag just wouldn’t do! Far from thinking these moms were mad to be spending an hour preparing cute lunches for their kids, I embraced the idea. I bought myself a Japanese book called 100 Obento Ideas and a little blue plastic bento box in the shape of a car for Brad. For the rest of the school year I made my way through that book, letting him pick his lunches by looking at the pictures. Maybe I was mad too, but he always finished his lunches.
This was also when I started taking Japanese cooking classes at the home of Michiko Odagiri, an elegant and well-known cooking teacher who, like Julia Child, taught cooking on Japan’s public television network, NHK. Her class was aimed at Japanese women, and I was the only foreigner in attendance. I could understand her oral instructions, but her recipes were written in Japanese, which I had not fully mastered. Fortunately, my fellow students read the recipes to me after each class, and I translated and transcribed them into my notebook. These recipes formed the base of my practical training, and many appear in some form in this cookbook with the kind permission of Odagiri Sensei’s daughter Shigeko.
Here is where I learned to make Dashi (Fish Stock) (p. 35), my first sushi roll, and the delicate sanbaizu vinegar dressing. The first class I spent on knife skills cutting paper-thin slices of ginger. Another was spent separating the whites and yolks from hard-boiled eggs and then pressing them through a wire mesh tool that acted as a ricer, to create a decorative flower garnish. The attention to detail was paramount. How would I ever keep this up?
About that same time, I bought The Simple Art of Japanese Cooking by Shizuo Tsuji, first published in 1983 by Kodansha International. It was, and in my opinion still is, the go to reference on standard Japanese cuisine. It just was revised and re-issued in 2008.
We left Japan after another year. By now I had a solid technical base in Japanese cuisine. I began teaching and doing workshops upon my return to Boston.
We returned again in the 90’s for another of Dick’s book projects and this time I spent a year learning the food of everyday meals: Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl (Oyako Donburi), our favorite Stuffed Savory Pancake (Okonomiyaki), Chunky Miso Chowder (Tonjiru). Brad and Alex were now middle and high school students.
By the time Dick and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, we had lived in Japan on and off for nearly a decade. We marked the occasion at a hot spring onsen in the mountains of Nagano known for its healing waters, its elegant pottery, and its amazing food. Each meal was designed to mirror nature in miniature—each morsel was a delight and each dish was exquisite. One memorable dish was a small roasted trout, set upon a dish resembling a river and looking as though it had paused midstream. We reflected on the arc of our life in Japan together. Our sons had been in nursery, elementary, and high school in Japan, and we had lived all over the Tokyo metropolitan area, as well as in Kyoto and Kyushu. Japan had long since become our second home. With each decade that passed I had a new persona in Japan. In the early 1970s, the neighborhood kids called me oneesan (elder sister); a decade later I had become “ Buraado-kun to Arekisu-kun no okaasan (Brad and Alex’s mom); by the 1990s I was Debi obasan (Auntie Debbie). These days my friends in Japan all ask if I am an obaachan (grandmother) yet.
All that reminiscing brought us back to the ways in which Japanese foods and aesthetics are not solely the domain of elegant and isolated retreats. It is often said that in Japan “one eats with one’s eyes,” and that every customer is an “honored guest” (okyakusama). Quality and presentation of the food are important, even in prepared foods in supermarkets and urban convenience stores. Slices of tuna atop a bed of shredded white daikon radish with a perfect pinch of grated ginger—placed just-off-center—are thoughtfully designed for take out at even the most unassuming market.
Nor is Japanese food just a matter of daily consumption; it is also about gift giving. Most department store basements (depachika) have two levels, one entirely devoted to food for gift giving. Railway stations across the country offer themed, regional specialties in the form of “station box lunches” (eki-ben). Some are consumed on the trip and others are brought along as gifts for fortunate friends and relatives. But their passions embrace more than just their native cuisine.
Japan has been adapting foreign cuisines to local tastes and sensibilities for centuries. Many dishes that originated abroad are now part of the repertoire of both home cooks and restaurants alike: Curry rice, originally from South Asia;