imagine you discovered that you had family in japan. imagine that they were breadmakers in a countryside town nestled in a quaint valley between immense green grassy mountains. learn that while you were rolling your tricycle around paved streets in the neighborhood, cousins grew up catching bugs in tall nets and watching fireflies dance over the river in mid-june. and then take a train and arrive at their doorstep. speak japanese. make bread.
shigenori-san is a breadmaker trained in france and germany, whose renowned bread shop is indicated on the yufuin city map. those in the know come early. at opening time customers lined up outside the door flood in. the first hour is a flurried rush of "irashaiimase!!" and customers requesting bag fulls of the different kinds of specialty bread. one favorite, "raisin cabocha" (raisin pumpkin bread with a just a hint of sweetness), sells out in a matter of minutes. in the afternoon, it's an-pan fresh out of the oven, a japanese specialty, small round buns with the outsides slightly toasted, and inside warm azuki bean (red bean) filling.
and then there's me, bagging bread trying frantically to keep up with the "hitotsu"/"futatsu", "iko"/"niko" requests, and trying not to make it overly obvious that i don't know what i'm doing.
midori-san, my mother's cousin, is immensely friendly and willing to strike up conversation at any given time with friends, neighbors, shopowners. she takes me around and introduces me with with something to the tune of, "this is stefanie, from america. she's staying with us." and as their eyes get wide, she adds, "nandemo tabemasu!" (she will eat anything.)
and man did i eat.
one of the regional specialties is river fish, particularly ayu ("sweetfish") and yamame. midori and shigenori take me out to eat one night, and we drive up the winding road to yufuin to a two hundred year old house tucked into the hills. a stream runs alongside the house, and strategically placed boards and nets help to contain the fish so that they swim in circles right outside the back door of the house. just one woman runs the place, a middle aged woman with a warm smile, and after greeting us she ducks into the kitchen to catch and prepare our meal.
then she brings out dish after dish of river fish prepared in every possible way. there's shio yaki ayu, grilled and salted sweetfish that is prepared as if it's jumping off the plate. and then there's deep fried yamame, yamame soaked in sweet-shoyu and yamame sashimi. all this accompanied by ochazuke, rice with tea poured over it, and a sprinkling of the shells of shiso seeds.
this was just one of the many delicious meals i had in the area, others including sushi (with a skilled woman sushi chef... the first i've seen, gives me hope for my secret dream of becoming a sushi chef) and tempura (of incredible palate teasing varieties... egg, goya, and edamame included). drop me a line if you are planning to go to the area, and i can try harder to find out the names of these places.
but perhaps the best moments were unexpected. shizuko-san, my grandmother's sister, breaks open an album of old photos that midori-san and i start to look through. and there, shizuko-san and my grandmother, both young and sharply dressed, strike a pose with by the golden pavillion in kyoto. my grandmother's parents come to life, resting on a picnic blanket with my grandmother's brother as a child in my great grandfather's lap. and strangely, me-- a baby laughing at the table next to shizuko-san in her visit to los angeles. somehow all these years i had been there, amongst these memories in a place i'd never known.
after a week of immersion in delicious foods and incredibly loving and generous family, this has been one of the hardest places for me to leave so far.
pictures of food and family here.
