Miserere Mei - 申し訳ありません｡

I'm so very sorry for being away so long. Traveling so much has taken its toll, and I have been very busy trying to get my dissertation proposal completed and presented. In reality, I didn't have sufficient internet access to post until I got to Boston, and was too overwhelmed with work until now to update. More about school later. First, let me catch everyone up on a month of absolutely wonderful eating.

Before I left Paraguay, we had a feijoada with my extended family. There was nothing fake about this joada. I had to prepare the beans in two different pots in order to make enough, and, while one pot didn't turn out quite right, the other pot turned out exactly like the feijoada that my Brazilian friend Ana made for her going away party in Cambridge and that both David and I have been dreaming about ever since. I hid the truth about the other pot from my cousin Mari, who is from bellavista--a city that lies on either side of the boarder separating the department of Amambay, Paraguay and Mato Grosso do Sul,Brazil--and whose house I am always eager to visit at meal time. But the truth is that the pot was neglected too long while I ran to the store to get mandioca and bread and it ran out of water and nearly getting scorched, thus never acquiring the thick creamy consistency that takes many, many hours to develop and makes this dish much more than Brazilian pork and beans. I'm making myself hungry writing about this!

Here is everyone at the table, waiting to eat and wanting desperately for David to finish taking the pictures.
Here is the plated feijoada with all of the appropriate side dishes, bread, rice, orange slices (apparently eaten to help digestion), collard greens, farofa (yuca flour toasted with garlic and butter), mandioca, and vinegary tomato-green pepper relish or molho de campanha (chimichurri in paraguay).
I then spent a very brief week in Boston, madly completing my Fulbright proposal and application before going to Japan. I was lucky enough to stay with my friends Abby and Sam. They might have gotten a hint about heirloom tomatoes from my posts in Paraguay, because they greeted me with a meal that would have satisfied a condemned man's last request for tomatoes: two salads of heirloom tomatoes, steamed mussels, and penne with peppers and sausage. You can see the pictures of this and the other excellent meals I've had at Sam and Abby's house on their food blog. An invitation to their kitchen is quite a treat. Sam has got a fantastic knack for planning impressive and very well balanced meals in which each element really compliments and enhances the others. He also has the kind of talent for plating and presentation that always makes you feel like a very special and honored guest.

Upon arriving in Tokyo, I wasted no time in satisfying my tremendous anticipation for two weeks of gastronomic exploration and discovery (oh wait, I was there for a workshop on sustainable forestry and regional development). I got to the hotel the first night after more than 16 hours of traveling and desperately in need of a shower. As I was headed to the elevator I was greeted by one of the program staff and invited to join the other participants for dinner. Despite the protests of my apparently starving dinner companions, I decided I should take said shower, as much for their sake as my own, and rushed back down to join them on what turned out to be a 40 minute hike through Shinagawa for Okonimyaki. Here we are waiting for our meal.
As you will see, the Japanese are very fond of table top preparation. The most special meals we had all involved cooking them yourself. Okonomiyaki are what Americans inevitably lack any word but 'pancakes' to describe, but what we would call a tortilla in south america, that are filled with all manner of different meats and vegetables but typically contain a lot of cabbage. You order what you like, and the waiter brings you a bowl that contains the requested ingredients. This bowl contains cabbage and cod roe, in addition to the eggs, flour, water, and other standard ingredients. You then blend all these ingredients and pour the batter onto the griddle.
Flipping such things is always a bit of a challenge, apparently even for Japanese, and okonomiyaki are quite thick and are still soft when they need flipping, so there were a couple Julia-Child-like repair operations, but the results were still delicious. After flipping, the pancakes are covered with a Japanese barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed powder, and bonito flakes. The Japanese love of mayonnaise, while sometimes manifesting itself in unexpected ways, warmed my heart and pleased my belly after living most of my life with what I can only describe as the absurd squeamishness that many Americans have regarding this delicious and indispensable condiment.

Here is a professional making some loaded okonomiyaki in asakusa.

Cynthia, a fellow MIT student and participant in the University of Tokyo Intensive Program on Sustainability, and I took advantage of our intense 12-hour jetlag to visit one of Tokyo's must sees (even for the non-food obsessed): Tsukiji fish market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and one of the most economically and gastronomically impressive places I have ever been. The market was immense; really, "market" just does not convey the scale of this place which is for fish what Manhattan is for finance. I'm afraid my camera was running out of batteries at this point, so I didn't get too many good shots. But here is one of the hundreds of aisles that stretch the enormous distance of the main warehouse and are lined with stalls selling all that the world's oceans produced that day. We arrived a bit late (7:30am), but lifts and carts still zoomed about, narrowly dodging wide-eyed tourists like myself, and a flurry of packing and unpacking, gutting and cleaning, and buying and selling revealed the gears of the global fisheries market as thousands of individuals transacted so that the world's most piscivorous nation could satisfy its demand.

The fish seemed to be generally of very high quality and very fresh, and of tremendous variety as well.

Quite a large amount of octopus.


Outside of this main warehouse were other stalls selling produce, kitchen equipment, and other ingredients. It was like seeing a book or magazine article come to life for me, or stepping through the television screen into iron chef, where familiar characters like fresh wasabi, or matsutake mushrooms were suddenly within my reach.

Matsutake Mushrooms

It was very difficult for me to be in the world's marine garden of eden and know that I had no kitchen available to me and that I would not have an opportunity to cook. The pain was only assuaged by the knowledge that only a few feet away, my breakfast of the freshest and most authentic sushi of my life was hopefully waiting for me at one of the many tightly packed restaurants inside the market. Lacking any Japanese skills whatsoever, I had no choice but to order the 10 piece set and hope for the best. I was not disappointed. Except for a battleship sushi that overflowed a bit too much with its cargo of sea urchin roe, this was one the most delicious experiences I had while in Japan. The exquisite texture and flavor of the fish left no doubt about its freshness. The highlights included the creamy and delicate anago, or simmered salt-water eel (not the typically barbecued fresh-water unagi that is also common in Japan and readily available in the U.S.), the mackerel, and of course the fatty tuna. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in the restaurant for some reason.


That afternoon, the group of participants left for Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost major island, where the University of Tokyo Forest is located and where we would spend the two weeks of the program. My fears that they would either skimp on the food budget, as often happens in the U.S., or that they would somehow try to accommodate the very wide range of non-Japanese palates was quickly allayed, as even the lunch box we got before boarding the airplane contained a tasty assortment of sandwiches that were more high tea than gate gourmet.

Our first meal upon arriving at the university forest in Hokkaido was also impeccable for what was essentially cafeteria food. It included (from the bottom left) steamed salmon with shitake and inoki mushrooms, what I believe was spinach stuffed cabbage rolls, seafood and vegetable tempura, japanese pickes, a mixed salad, and tofu miso soup (not shown).
The next evening was the welcome party, which began with Mongolian hotpot and large amounts of beer and sake. The hotpot consisted of a dome-shaped grill surrounded by a broth-filled trough. slices of mutton are grilled on top, while cabbage, onions, beansprouts, peppers, and onions are cooked in the broth.
What appeared to be an uninspired desert turned out to be a life-altering experience. Hokkaido is japan's main agricultural area, and despite highly unfavorable conditions, its small farmers have survived and continue to compete with much cheaper imported products by forming production and marketing cooperatives and specializing in very high-quality high-value produce. One such product is melon. Mind you, I had had quite a lot to drink, but this was no ordinary cantaloupe. It was the perfect fruit. The platonic ideal of melonhood. It was sweet and perfumed, but not cloying; it was juicy but still rich and not watery, and above all, it had a texture unlike any melon I've ever tasted. Somehow firm and silky or at the same time, not tough or squishy or slimy as melon is apt to be, but imparting a luxurious sensation as you bit through the flesh and swirled it around your tongue. Clearly, I enjoyed this more than anyone else.



Another local specialty is lavender, and, while the fields were not in bloom, a lavender theme park did have fields planted with other beautiful flowers and had the broadest variety of lavender products imaginable, including lavender-flavored ice cream.


My delight continued the next day as I opened my first Bento box, and marveled at what an ordinary lunch is like in Japan. To begin with, the rice by itself is excellent, and though I am not Japanese, I suspect its worth the tremendous amount of subsidies payed out by the Japanese government each year, largely to farmers in Hokkaido, so that this product of paramount cultural importance is not obliterated by the free market (liberal economists be damned!). As I write about the food in Japan, I am starting to believe that Japanese food is all about texture, because, again, the texture of rice in Japan is incomparable, even to the Japanese rice sold in the U.S. The box of rice is accompanied by a multitude of side dishes, which typically included a piece of grilled fish, something breaded and fried or what Japanese call 'cutlet,' some pickles, a salad, and some kind of fish roe. While it was undoubtedly better than peanut better and jelly everyday, I'm sorry to say my enthusiasm did wane a bit after about two weeks of nothing but bento for lunch, and, while I quite enjoy fish roe in many applications, I doubt that I'll ever have the Japanese appetite for it.

Another Japanese meal that I can't say I was enthusiastic about was oden. It is a rather bland assortment of vegetables, bean curd, and egg boiled in dashi and served with miso. I had it a second time from a street vendor in Tokyo with a group from the program, where it included fish cakes.

We had one free day during the course of the program, and I spent it as you might expect, eating and relaxing. The day began at the Hokkaido wine festival, where the regions wine-makers showcase and celebrate their produce. I can't say Hokkaido would be my top pick for wine-tasting, but some of it was surprisingly agreeable, and I would have had much more if I was not still getting over the miserable cold I caught in Paraguay. I also had an incredible bowl of soba noodles, which I maintain were handmade. Some of my companions laughed at this proposition, but, again, the texture was remarkable. The noodles' rough edge and their graininess suggested to me that this was not instant soba, and after all, they do grow buckwheat only a few kilometers away.

Contemplating the noodles.


I then very nearly won two bottles of local Furano wine, because there was a contest for the person who had come from farthest away. It was between me and two fellow participants, Niklas from Sweden, and Cau from Vietnam. Here we are being interviewed.



Sweden and Massachusetts are very nearly equidistant from Tokyo, at least in terms of flying time, and I felt a bit dishonest saying I had come form Paraguay since I technically did stay for four days in Boston. So Niklas was deemed the winner, getting two bottles of wine as well as his name and picture in the paper. I lost my chance at minor celebrity, but didn't miss out entirely on the wine as it later formed part of my final meal in Japan.

We stayed at the wine festival a bit longer in order to watch taiko drumming presentation


and then went off to find some lunch. The plan was sushi, but the wait was too long so we settled for a ramen shop, specializing in 'cheese ramen.' Hokkaido is especially known for its dairy products, including milk, custards, and cheese. Tempting as cheese ramen sounds, after a week, I was beginning to crave something spicier than standard Japanese food and went with the 'spicy' ramen, with korean chili sauce.


After the wine festival and getting lunch, our third order of business was to take the train to a nearby town for a highly relaxing afternoon at the natural hotspring. Niklas, Cau, and I enlisted one of our Japanese classmates to help plan our free day, and no one could have planned a better day for me. I have always wanted to visit a hot spring and had suspected that such natural luxury would be highly agreeable to my personality. After finally visiting one, I've got to say that the availability of hotsprings must make a substantial contribution to the Japanese quality of life that is not reflected in their GDP. This particular onsen consisted of ten different pools: a hot pool, an outdoor pool of the same temperature, a very hot pool, an extremely cold pool (which I did not enjoy), a slightly sulfurous cave pool, a pool with tiny bubbles, a sauna, an underwater recliner with massaging jets, large ceramic urns that held a single person and were the water was somehow highly buoyant, and--probably my favorite-- a stone stool above which a heavy stream of hot water fell upon your shoulders massaging your back. Access to all this cost less than $10. No clothing is allowed in the bath, so naturally, I took no pictures. Here we are with our Japanese friend Eiji on our way to the onsen.



Strangely enough, the hotspring was located in a suburban strip mall, so before catching the train back to Furano we killed sometime at a large supermarket, another element of a free day made especially for me. I'm probably the only person who could find an hour too little time at supermarket even when I wasn't there to shop. Indeed, my friends had to drag me out so we would make the train in time. The fish section was impressive

and included whole Alaskan king crabs, which I'd only seen in pictures.
We then returned to Furano and the sushi place that we had abandoned at lunch time. There was still a bit of a wait, but none of us wanted too pass it up a second time. Conveyor belt sushi is apparently the cheaper alternative to a true sushi bar, but I enthusiastically gorged myself on sushi of much higher quality and much lower cost than you'd find in the U.S. I always say that cheap or even moderately priced sushi isn't worth it, because you get what you pay for, and if you are going to eat sushi you might as well cough up what a delicious meal is really worth. Except in Japan, where all the excellent sushi I could eat (well actually, i could have eaten this sushi until it killed me) cost me less than $17.

We had the privileged position in the shop, the first booth next to the wall, so we could be the first to pull whatever we liked from the conveyor belt, which included the widest variety that I've been able to try in a single meal: yellowtail, tuna, shrimp, squid, fried octopus, snapper, tuna with grilled mayonnaise, egg, abalone . . . At the end of the meal, the waitress just adds up the number of plates of each color, representing the different price categories, and totals your bill.
The Japanese clearly share my priorities in life, because the program ended with another awesome party centered around Korean barbecue. Each table had a pit filled with charcoal and covered by a grate upon which we grilled the combination of chicken and beef skewers, whole scallops, prawns, and tripe they brought out to us. Generally not a big fan of the cow's digestive organs, I was surprised to really enjoy the small intestine that we call chinchulín in Paraguay.The grill was very hot, and the room was filled with them, so you couldn't help but consume tremendous amounts of the incredibly refreshing and constantly flowing beer, and the mood became very festive very quickly.





After returning to Tokyo, we had one last outing all together to a Persian restaurant, which can only be described as the most insane dining experience of my entire life. The restaurant's proprietor ran about the restaurant yelling at his guests to eat more, literally pelting food at us, at one point placing a chicken in front of me, yelling violently and incomprehensively to me to give it back, and serving a portion of it to a separate party of guests at another table before bringing the chicken back to me, dragging unwilling guests by their ankles on the ground to dance with the belly dancer, lifting a friend of ours onto his shoulders and taking an inexplicable and uncomfortable liking for my MIT friend cynthia.

After the program ended I spent a couple of extra days in Tokyo and enjoying the excellent hospitality of my new friend Yosuke. I had an awesome time and made the most of the little bit of time I had there because Yosuke was willing to show me around. Here we are at Asakusa, a temple and tourist destination in Tokyo


where they sell lots of Japanese souvenirs and snacks.

Here we saw gentlemen hand making little cakes filled with red bean. It was amazing how quickly he moved and how coordinated the whole process was. They were delicious hot off the griddle.

Despite their less than appealing appearance, even more delicious were little fritters filled with red bean. They were like jelly donuts, deliciously crisp and sweet and still hot from the oil.


Yosuke and I also visited a sushi restaurant where we had an awesome rice bowl topped with anago and wasabi.

bonito tataki,


and an assortment of hand formed sushi.

This is, of course, not a food blog, but a cooking blog, meaning that it's not really about the meals I eat but about the meals that I cook. So I'll end my post with pictures of the way I ended my trip. The only meal I cooked the whole time was for Yosuke and his friends to thank him for his friendship and hospitality while I was in Tokyo. I wanted to make pasta with pesto, but fresh herbs are scarce and outrageously expensive, so I went with a seafood pasta with mojo de ajo. To my surprise, the ajo in Japan was unlike any garlic I had ever seen. Unlike garlic in the US and latin america, it didn't have any individual 'teeth,' consisting instead of one large clove. For this application it worked perfectly, saving a great deal of peeling time and energy.
Here was the final product, which contained copious amounts of cuttle fish, grilled shrimp, and shimeji and king oyster mushrooms. Niklas also brought his bottle of prize furano wine, and we made sangría to go with the Mexican theme.
Here we are posing for the camera at my final celebration in Tokyo.

This was an unbelievable experience. I only wrote about the food-related aspects here, but I am so very grateful for all the friends I made and for the chance to engage with students from all over Asia and the world about sustainable development. It really did remind me why I do what I do and convinced me that there is value in a Ph.D. in social science--something I was sorely in need of at this stage in my education. It is hard to keep motivated and stay focussed, and my time in Japan has definitely helped feel prepared for the hard times ahead.

Thanks to everyone who gave me this opportunity!