Rice, Noodle, Fish by Matt Goulding Read Free Book Online Page A

Two
OSAKA

    This is how it happens: You sit down at a long counter in a restaurant that feels like someone’s kitchen. You are alone, a bit nervous, uncertain whether to order a drink or ask the man behind the bar how his day went. He senses your apprehension (after all, he doesn’t see your kind around here too often), disappears for a second, then deposits an armful of half-drunk wine bottles before you. Close your eyes and point, he seems to be saying. You abide.
    Eventually, the restaurant fills out. A couple in the corner play footsy beneath the gentle heat of the warming griddle. A party of four, the men with spiked hair, the women with skirts and thick-rimmed glasses, slide into the counter seats next to you.
    With the first glass of wine, the stilted silence prevails. A plate of warm buffalo mozzarella appears, speckled with pink peppercorns, and something about that combination of tang and spice, cream and crunch, tells you that tonight will be different from the others you’ve spent in Japan.
    With the second glass of wine, your neighbors look over and offer a kanpai . Another plate arrives, this one a few pieces of seared octopus, the purple tentacles curled like crawling vines arounda warm mound of barely mashed potatoes.
    With the third glass of wine you begin to test your Japanese. Watashi wa Matt-o desu. California kara kimashita. Even the stone-faced salaryman eating pasta by himself in the corner cracks a smile. Glasses are emptied in your honor.
    By the time you move on to sake, you feel the sweat above your eyebrows. At first you figure it’s the spirited drinking and the aggressive round of selfies that has taken over the small restaurant, but then you see the old woman behind the counter testing the griddle, showering it with little drops of water that hiss on contact. She lays down a few strips of pork belly, then a ladleful of batter that she lovingly crisps in the sheen of rendered pork fat. She flips it, dresses it with a thick, dark sauce and shaved bonito flakes, which move like flamenco hands as they hit the hot surface, then slides it across the griddle toward you and smiles.
    By the time you ask for the bill, the couple has their family album open on the bar and the group of four has nuzzled their stools so close you can smell the pinot gris on their words. You make plans to eat hakozushi with one, an off-duty chef; another wants to show you a secret bar that serves only grilled offal. (Back at the hotel, four friend requests await you on Facebook.)
    When you leave, the entire restaurant stands to escort you out the door. The man shakes your hand vigorously. The woman hesitates, then wraps her arms around you. You stand there for a second, unsure of how to thank them for such a beautiful evening. Finally, you bow as low and as slowly as possible and step reluctantly away. As you reach the corner, you turn around one last time, just to make sure, and there they are, the entire restaurant, waiting calmly for you to disappear into the night.

    ç±³ 麺 魚

    A well-worn Japanese proverb has it that Tokyoites spend all their moneyon footwear, Kyotoites on kimonos and formal attire. But Osakans save their funds for food and drink. There’s a word for this Osakan propensity, kuidaore : to eat until you drop.
    Unfortunately, most visitors to Japan will never have the chance to eat themselves stupid in Osaka, because most visitors from the United States and Western Europe don’t come to Osaka. They go instead to Tokyo, to bask in the full bulk and breadth of the Japanese urban phenomenon. They travel by train to Kyoto, to tour temples and gardens and capture geisha with their zoom lenses. As well they should. Osaka can’t compete with Tokyo’s size or stature, and it doesn’t have the ancient culture and spellbinding beauty of Kyoto. Travel literature does little to stoke outsider interest. Lonely Planet warns readers that “Osaka is not an attractive