Dating Myself: Asakusa Street Food. Culture Day: Perhaps a Bigger Budget and a Production Manager

Street Food Just Up the Street

Time for a confession: I have been planning my weekday excursions around a table of Japanese street food that magically appears each weekday at 11 a.m., just around the corner and across from Aoyoma Gakuin University (very prestigious one I am told.) I discovered this resource by sheer accident early last week and their target audience is obviously the student body that wanders the streets in search of cheap eats, just as they do at Berkeley or any other school. The boxes are mostly rectangular--a couple are round--and they are the black plastic carry-out type we are all familiar with, except some have two sections. The vendor stacks them in perfect geometric form. It gladdens my heart just to look at them. Even though I have no idea what exactly is in them, I can take a guess, so I've been trying out a number of them.

I should mention here that each box comes with the most delicious side of rice I've ever had--in a separate container, of course and not those cheap-ass Chinese take-out white boxes that dries the rice out by the time you get home, but smaller versions of the entree carry-out sizes with proper fitting lids. The prices range from about $4-$6.00. Last week I had a chicken box with a sesame flavored sauce that was my absolute favorite; later, I tried a box that appeared to be perfectly soft scrambled eggs in the a delectable tomato sauce with a side of something julienned and green and nearly pepper-like; and, finally, a beef and vegetable bowl with rice at the bottom but with a plastic barrier between the top and the rice so that sauce mingles when the time is right and not when it's all slopped together.

So this morning I dragged my feet and spent a lot of time texting my friend Brian [because my own children are too busy] and then studying my guidebooks for the area I was headed to for the day, all the while waiting for my street food vendor to present her wares. At the stroke of 11 a.m., a 10000 yen bill and a bag in hand, I headed for the sidewalk table where I intended to buy several boxes--one for lunch and some for later. I wanted to repeat the chicken for dinner tonight and maybe the eggs for tomorrow's breakfast and wondering how I could ensure myself that I tried at least one of everything during my stay here. But, alas, no sidewalk vendor. No sign. No indication that she ever existed or would return. I am bereft.

Tomorrow, I will return at 11 a.m. and investigate the scene once again. I am hoping the problem is that she takes Monday off. But this is a vain hope to be sure. May I state for the record that I consider this to be cruel and needless suffering and if I am fortunate enough to meet up with any of our Embassy staff during my stay here, you can be assured that I will be bringing this issue to their attention. If she is not there tomorrow, I don't know if I can hold on.

Culture Day in Japan

After the aforementioned debacle over the local street food vendor, I took the Metro to Asakusa, a part of old Tokyo that features a compound of temples and shrines surrounded by pedestrian-only streets lined with shops selling all sorts of things, from sesame rice cakes to kimono's to those plastic food items you see in front of many Japanese restaurants. Always endeavoring to short circuit the difficulty in navigating unfamiliar terrain, I made the mistake of trying to follow a couple of Americans off the Metro and into the street fray, hoping they had been boy scouts in their earlier years and were headed to the shrine using the points of the sun or whatever it is that allows people an inner-navigation advantage as a guide. They probably were headed directly there because no sooner had we descended into the thick of things, merchants began calling out to the throngs and wonderful smells wafted about-- they didn't so much as look or even hesitate to see what they were passing up but kept marching doggedly along to what I presume were the grounds of the shrine. I abandoned my tourist stalking and, because I arrived hungry, set about to see what was available.

First up was a larger version of the red-bean stuffed pancake in the shape of a fish that I had tried at the school function on Friday. The stall was surrounded with benches and many Japanese sitting on them and enjoying whatever this was. I bought one, settled into a bench among my fellow stuffed pancake eaters, and consumed about half of it, but only to save room for what I hoped were more street food delights. Next up, soft ice cream. The options were: vanilla, pumpkin, green tea or a swirl of green tea and vanilla. I opted for the pumpkin--it is, after all, Spiced Pumpkin Latte season at Starbucks--and as I was paying for it, the clerk held up a sign written in English informing me that I was not to wander around the market eating and that an area just to the right of the stall was the proper place to consume my ice cream. And so it was that I enjoined a small army of fussing parents with children and giggling teenagers. For the record, three year old Japanese children insist on having their very own ice cream cone and they don't need anyone's help to eat it, thank-you-very-much.

Getting lost is an art; staying lost is folly.

Honestly, I try the best I can to follow what I think are the streets to where I want to go, but in case I didn't mention this before, only the main streets have names and the further you get from the big commercial centers like Shibuya where I am staying, the less likely the street signs appear in English. If I had to do this over again, I might have studied a bit of kanji before I came. But as in the past, I find that if I wander around long enough and try to keep some sort of celestial map in my head, eventually I end up somewhere, though not necessarily where I had planned.

Culture Day

Yesterday's kismet moment came at the grounds of the temple, which is large and impressive but which I frankly just stumbled on and could have easily missed had it not been for the drumming. It was "Culture Day" in Japan and the shrine was in the midst of some sort of ceremony involving women wearing swan-like costumes, children in costumes and make up, and a small musical ensemble in a wheeled cart. After an interpretive dance by the swan ensemble, all of the performers lined up and to the drumbeat of the orchestra's dual percussion section, paraded off down the street as hundreds of Japanese captured the event on cameras and Iphones. Perhaps Culture Day is a big and important holiday because the shrine grounds were mobbed, but if this level of entertainment was what everyone had come to see, I might suggest a production designer for next year's pageant. But the costumes were nice.

Street Food Heaven

Once this sea of humanity parted, a vision from street food heaven appeared. All around me were dozens of vendors with stacks of seafood and meats and other arcane offerings.

I particularly liked the

frozen bananas dipped in blue

and pink coatings. Kids everywhere were walking about with pink and blue lips.

Stewed Beef Sinew--As Promised

Stewed beef sinew with noodles

Out beyond the predictable confines of the temple grounds I found a street stall that, for some inexplicable reason, just appealed to me. It had a menu in Japanese and sort-of-English that listed the house speciality as, "Stewed Beef Sinew," which, of course, I assumed to be one of those lost-in-translation descriptions and which I also assumed was probably beef shank or short ribs or something equally flavorful.

And so I seated myself, ordered the "Stewed Beef Sinew with noodles" and waited for its arrival next to a guy smoking a cigarette and drinking a bottle of "Hoppy." My bowl arrived, ladened with what can only be described as stewed beef sinew, green onions, something gelatinous that didn't melt in the broth and big, fat slurppy noodles. The broth and noodles were worthy of the entire meal itself, never mind the beef sinew I had to eat around.

Once I downed what I could, I ordered a side of kim chi, recalling my previous experience in being denied some from the vendor back at the Tsukiji market last week. My skirmishes in street food must have been providing some sort of amusement to the smoker-Hoppy-drinker next to me, because he kept grunting and muttering to himself as though he were wearing a wire and sending play-by-play descriptions back to the Home Office. Maybe just my own insecurities that I am making a fool of myself in front of the natives, but he took a real interest in my lunch. The kim chi was just what I expected and after several appreciative "oiishi's" I paid my $7 and left to try to navigate my way back to the Metro station. Any Metro station.

Is Street Food the Coward's Way Out?

I have decided that Japanese street food is much more intriguing and attractive to me than venturing into a restaurant. It may be the coward's way of eating since street vendors generally just sell one thing or, if it's a number of items, I can at least know what it looks like and have some expectation of what it's going to taste like. I know from experience that I remember street food dishes from all over the world--India and China both are standouts--long after I have forgotten expensive meals consumed in a restaurant. Same in San Francisco. Except for eating at Steve & Brian's, my favorite haunt is Tu Lan or a Mission burrito. I am, alas, a culinary plebeian. And this American commoner can't wait to hit the streets today to discover even more food on sticks, in bowls and recently-dead.