I am in Nikko in the mountains only a couple of hours from Tokyo, yet seemingly much further away. I am sitting here in my yukata, having just taken a hot bath in the large communal tub at my hotel Konishi, feeling reasonably mellow and not completely dead although the digital clock in the corner of this page tells me it is 4:25AM in Los Angeles.
The Konishi is a ryokan hotel, a slightly larger version of the traditional Japanese ryokan. English is only sparingly spoken here and all of the other patrons are Japanese. They seem to be more in search of Old Japan than even this gaijin. The hotel itself is at once tatty and luxurious, something out of Tanizaki. Here is Madeleine on her way in.
Later, mother helped daughter into her yukata. Everyone walks around in their robes at ryokans, to dinner and to the baths.Of course I had no idea how to put mine on and was always afraid it would fall open at the wrong moment.
Dinner was served in the ryotei. It was kaiseki (Japanese formal dining) of the Nikko region, which specializes in yuba, a molten tofu dish I had eaten once before in Los Angeles…
… and a mountain fish described as rainbow trout (I’m sure it wasn’t) plus several other dishes about whose ingredients I only have a vague notion at best. A locally grown rice, however, cooked with baby bamboo slivers was quite spectacular.
It’s great not be to be thinking about politics all the time for a few days. What is going on outside the Tokugawa Shogunate? (I’ll be back to it of course. Probably tomorrow.)
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16 Comments
1. richard mcenroe:World Goes to Hell in Handbasket. Women, Minorities Affected Most. Film at Eleven. And this Sunday, George Stephanopoulous’ guests on This Week are Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore…
Aug 19, 2005 - 7:16 am 2. Silicon valley Jim:Enjoy, Roger, enjoy. Don’t even worry about explaining what the difference is between a yukata and a kimono; I’ll ask one of my Japanese neighbors. This is your time. Enjoy.
Aug 19, 2005 - 7:19 am 3. Fausta:Have a wonderful time, Roger and family!
Aug 19, 2005 - 7:35 am 4. Jamie Irons:Roger,
As a life-long fly fisherman, I am close to 100% certain that the fish in the picture is not a rainbow trout.
Rainbow koi, maybe…
Jamie Irons
Aug 19, 2005 - 7:35 am 5. Charlie (Colorado):Man, you’re killing me. I’m sitting in a cubicle and you’re in an onsen.
Jim, “kimono” is generic, basically “clothes”. A yukata is specifically a summer kimono made of cotton, also used as pyjamas.
Here’s a nice page on Japanese clothes.
Aug 19, 2005 - 9:49 am 6. lindenen:I won’t eat anything that still has the head on it.
Aug 19, 2005 - 10:39 am 7. Charlie (Colorado):I won’t eat anything that still has the head on it.
So much for your sex life.
Aug 19, 2005 - 10:55 am 8. Macker:Japan is one country I’d like to visit someday.
Pictures! More Pictures!
What other areas of Japan do you plan on visiting?
Aug 19, 2005 - 11:31 am 9. PeterArgus:Have a wonderful vacation. Enjoying the pictures. Yet another opinion on your fish … there are trout native to Japan … it does look like some sort of trout to me. I unknowingly ate a pirhana once … I guess eat or be eaten. Well I figured it out once I saw those large teeth staring back at me from my plate.
Aug 19, 2005 - 12:01 pm 10. Nomennovum:Ouch!
I must really have that fish to have swallowed that pointy pole.
And that’s how you can tell it’s not any fly-eating trout.
I think it’s a male Pisces Vladis Impalens, to use the technical Latin name.
Aug 19, 2005 - 1:47 pm 11. ahem:Since Roger mentioned Tanizaki, I’ll suggest a couple of my favorite titles: The Makioka Sisters and Seven Japanese Tales–especially the Tattoo Artist. For those of you who have never heard of him: you’re talking about a much better writer that Mishima.
Aug 19, 2005 - 8:26 pm 12. john.cunningham:You lucky guys! I visited Nikko back in 1971, when I was teaching English in Nagano prefecture. Amazing shrines and temples. The grave of Tokugawa Ieyasu had just been opened to public visits, after being reserved for the Imperial court since 1638. Visiting the very plain grave was an awesome experience. I imagine you have it on your list of sites to visit.
Aug 19, 2005 - 9:07 pm 13. dan cliff:Learn your Japanese men and women, boys and girls; and then let’s talk Tanizaki. The best English translations of Japanese works worth our attention, in a word, suck. Nature of the beast. You surely are getting something, and who am I to say it is not of some benefit, in fact I believe it probably is; but like the old cave of lore, in the end it is all shadows and not the light itself. So a little humility japanophiles: “I have read not Tanizaki, but merely a pale, pale imitation,” repeated every so often…
Aug 19, 2005 - 9:57 pm 14. Cybrludite:I learned long ago to never ask just what was in my favorite asian dishes…
Aug 20, 2005 - 5:20 am 15. Sissy Willis:Mother and daughter in yukatas are to die for. Beautiful.
Aug 20, 2005 - 5:25 pm 16. Ephraim:A few comments (besides agreeing wholeheartedly with the grumbling and general gnashing of teeth about what a great time it looks like you are having):
Yuba is made from soymilk before it is made into tofu. Like cow’s milk, soy milk forms a skin on the surface when it is heated; to make yuba this skin is carefully removed and dried into sheets. It is very good, although I am not sure it is “molten”.
The fish in question is almost certainly an ayu which is usually defned in English dictionaries as “sweetfish”, a singularly appropriate name for such an exquisitely delicious delicacy. It is a relative of the trout and is not related to a koi (carp), so far as I know. Trout in general is called masu in Japanese, although the masu usually available at fishmongers in Japan is considerably larger than what we call a trout here; it looks more like a small salmon and has pink flesh. AFAIK, the river-going trout in Japan that we would recoignize as trout are referred to under the general rubric of iwana (”stone fish”). (A rainbow trout is called just that: niji masu.)
Unfortunately, like trout in the US, most ayu in Japan is farm-grown now (sob!), but occasionally wild ones can be obtained, and if you ever have the chance to have one, you should by no means miss it.
Yukata, once they are old and can no longer be worn in public, are used as pajamas at which time they are no longer referred to as yukata but as nemaki (”sleep wraps”).
Aug 22, 2005 - 9:56 pm