October 16th, 2006
116097955128502067
Dry beans in a gourd
Today I’m feeling subdued, with several seconds of latency in my thoughts and communication. It could be that I’m tired from the undoukai yesterday. Or it could be that I’m getting sick. Elan would reply to these assumptions, “Yes.”
I went to Ootoya for lunch, which has apparently made a move about three-tenths of a point upscale to distance themselves from all the other picture-menu diner chains. You don’t pay when you order/enter, and the decor has been tweaked ever so slightly. Things are a more robust hazelnut hue, the lighting isn’t quite as garish, and a soothing mix of classical music and light jazz plays in the background. Maybe just because it was after two, but it seemed more quiet and pensive than usual. I’d say Ootoya got a brush of Starbucks. The only two points I can speak poorly of are the fact that tax is not included in the posted prices (virtually all other restaurants do this), and they still have long-tabled, cafeteria style seating to conserve space. The longer I work as a salaryman, the more I crave a quiet corner where I can sit with my back to the wall and be undisturbed. Today, by no small chance, another foreigner sat across from me. Since I’m a little more emotionally raw than usual today, it set me on end and kept me from the deep rumination I selected the restaurant for. He wasn’t doing anything, and it was all my problem, but I noticed things out of the corner of my eye. He spoke in uncharacteristically soft Japanese. He ordered natto with his grilled salmon. He cleaned the flesh from the bone meticulously. He brought his own chopsticks. This guy was good; real good.
In any case, I was distracted and didn’t get through my thinking as much as I hoped for. This thinking is nothing trivial; well not trivial in the sense I don’t really need it, but it was trivial in the sense of twirling a pen over my fingers to calm me down. It’s my standard listing of all the things I think I need to do before some fixed point in time, forty to sixty percent of which will be accomplished, twenty of which are just “Yeah-ands” on the orderly bandwagon. It’s this closing of mental drawers in my mind that is a sort of intangible cleaning that gives me a feeling of control over my life. I take all the things that may or may not be on my periphery, or have slid lately, and file them away in neatly-pressed bullet points for consumption. It’s like looking around one’s room for stray socks or t-shirts: on the floor, over the chair, under the sofa.
Back to the food at Ootoya, it’s good. It’s clean and tidy like the rest of the restaurant. The best part is it doesn’t try to be anything unnecessary, like so many tiny cubes of tofu with perfectly-adjusted spice leaves. It is what it is, but it does it well and you notice the detail in the separate dishes that all have actual uses and compliment the flavors selected for presentation. A poster on the wall even says that their aim is to provide spirit-satisfying food. How rare to find an establishment that matches the marketing. Exactly. A non-phony commercial product.
I rolled a dozen pin-width thoughts in my mind. How I love karashi, but how it covers the taste of everything else. Much like A.1., which so long ago I entrusted with the grave responsibility of making brussel sprouts palatable, but later appreciated my father’s rebuke for dousing the true flavor of the meat he so delicately prepared on the grill. I need to write Rodney. I need a change of scenery. I need more music, more cooking in subtle yellow light. I need a room where I can feel the taut corners. Very few things that droop and curl with age are appealing.
void
