Safe in a Crazy World …

I specially created this blog entry to post excerpts from a book I am currently reading. It’s titled "Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat", by Naomi Moriyama. The title may sound a little shallow, but it is definitely not a diet book. It merely celebrates the spirit of Japanese home cooking through many anecdotes by the Japanese author and her American husband. Below are some excerpts I especially like. Here goes …

My mother, a short, black-haired, ultra-high-energy Japanese woman, is making our family dinner with the speed of a panther, the confidence of Martha Stewart and the precision of a NASA scientist.

Green tea is brewing in an earthenware pot.

Fresh green and yellow vegetables are simmering in dashi, a clear broth made from bonito flakes, kelp and mushrooms. Fluffy rice is plumping up in the rice cooker, steaming out a rich nutty flavour.

My mother grills small slices of fish with a light touch of lemon and rapeseed oil, then polishes little squares of tofu with a brown sauce before lining up bowls of simmering miso soup made from scratch. They look like jewel boxes.

What comes out of my mother’s kitchen is not complicated sushi or elaborate, formal kaiseki dishes. This is good old-fashioned, hard-core everyday Japanese mum’s cooking.

It’s what tens of millions of Japanese mothers and wives serve their families every day. It is the food my mother fed me as a little girl, as a high school student and even as a young executive trainee in my first office job in Tokyo, when she would sometimes chase down the street after me with a piece of toast if I rushed out of the apartment without eating.

My mum’s Tokyo kitchen is tiny, about 1.8 by 3.6 metres. It is jam-packed and piled high with cooking utensils, plates and seasoning stuff. She has virtually no worktop space.

When my good friend Susan came to Tokyo to visit for a couple of days from New York on the way to Hong Kong, she witnessed my mum whip up a few fantastic dishes out of thin air, in a scene right out of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Susan still talks about it ten years later.

When I was growing up, we rarely ate out or brought take-away foods home. My mum said she could do it better and cheaper. She did - and she still does.

She shops for ingredients from a variety of places - from local supermarkets, department store food halls, downtown Tokyo specialist stores and the Tsukiji fish market. Every day she goes to local stores for fresh fish, meat and vegetables, and back when there was a family-owned tofu store nearby that made fresh tofu on the premises, she even bought her tofu fresh. She often does not decide what dishes to make before she goes grocery shopping. Only after she’s looked over the market’s offerings and has seen what looks fresh and fabulous that day does she devise her menu plan. For perishables, ‘freshness’ is a Tokyo kitchen mantra. Whether it is fish, fruits, vegetables or herbs, if it is in season and available fresh, that’s what Japanese women buy. If it’s not fresh, they stay away.

From ages twelve to eighteen, my younger sister, Miki, and I went to an all-girls private school in Kawasaki.

On the first day of school all the mothers and daughters were seated in the auditorium and a teacher at the podium made an orientation speech:

                      We request that every mother make lunch for

                      your daughter everyday. Our main theme at this

                      school is to help our students learn to be giving

                      and loving. One of the ways your daughter learns

                      this is from your love-packed lunch box.

My mother took this speech very seriously.

For years, she woke up at 6 a.m. and cooked small portions of fish, veggies, eggs and meat for us, sliced them up and packed them neatly and elegantly along with a sheet of nori seaweed over a bed of rice in a small airtight Tupperware lunch box.

She wrapped up the lunch in a cloth napkin with my name and flowers embroidered in a corner. She made these napkins too.

Every day the lunch box contained different side dishes, sandwiches or rice balls. She made every lunch box with total dedication and passion.

One day, I untied the napkin, opened the clingfilm and started eating a sandwich. I was surprised to find a sheet of nori seaweed on top of the ham and cheese.

My schoolmates and I were accustomed to British-style sandwiches, with lettuce, thinly sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, ham and cheese. Nori seaweed was something we ate in Japanese dishes, never in a sandwich. As a self-conscious teenager, I was awfully embarrassed to be seen eating that seaweed in front of my schoolmates.

I went home and said to my mother, ‘Nobody puts seaweed in a sandwich!’

She said, ‘Well, seaweed is good for you, but I will try not to do it again.’

Today I realise that I was too young to appreciate her creatvity.

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This is so heart-warming! I can’t help but want to share some of the good stuff over here. Sorry if some of you found it boring, but to those who enjoyed it, you may wish to consider reading the book. I really admire the Japanese people’s spirit and dedication towards food. Now, I shall continue my journey in further exploring this amazing culture! The mere description of the food ingredients made me hungry … haha! So, itadakimasu!! 

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