Early summer is the prime time for high-quality salmon fisheries. Perhaps the most famous of all are the Copper River kings and sockeyes, while the Yukon River kings are favorites of many salmon connoisseurs. The salmon must travel a long distance in these rivers, requiring them to store energy in their body fat. With the higher body-fat content, the fish are well marbled and have a distinct buttery flavor.
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Donald Keene’s memoirs, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (Columbia University Press, 2008), have an understated eloquence that befit the modest, witty and profoundly knowledgeable professor. This is one of the best books I’ve read about a person intimately connected to — and in a sense, between — two countries.
In Keene’s case, of course, those two countries are Japan and the US; even today, the octogenarian splits his time between New York City and Japan, typically teaching the spring term at Columbia, then spending the rest of the year in Japan. Though his love for that country is deep, he is a man of two cultures, as is revealed when friends prompt him to spend his last years in a Japanese retirement home. He confesses that one of the reasons he can’t do that is the thought of having his coffee and croissant replaced by a bowl of miso soup every morning.
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My mother was the first to take maternity leave and return to work at the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare.
When my parents found out that they were going to be parents in 1971, Japan was still enjoying the rapid economic growth that started in 1955. “I didn’t even think about quitting my job,” my mother said. “I can’t remember if it was common in Japan back then, but I was actually the first woman in my office to return to work after giving birth to a child. How long was the maternity leave? It was probably a total of six weeks before and after the birth.”
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Desserts and cold beverages using green tea have become popular in America. Green tea ice cream has been a staple at Japanese restaurants for a long time, but recently, even Starbucks has tried serving green tea frappucino. It’s a nice option to have here in America for someone like me from Kyoto, where green tea is the dominant flavor for many sweets.
Amatou is a type of café that serves Japanese sweets. There are many such cafes in Japan, especially in Kyoto. The menu typically features items with matcha, which is the fine-ground young green tea traditionally used in the tea ceremony. Although green tea ice cream is also common there, the typical dessert is often more traditional fare such as matcha shiruko — mochi balls in green tea and azuki bean syrup — or my favorite, uji kintoki, which is a bowl full of shaved ice topped with vibrantly colored green tea syrup and azuki beans (see the photo).
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The red banner on the side of the road read “brakku basu ryori.” Largemouth bass cuisine has come to Japan.
I saw a few banners like that as my friend and I were driving along the shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. I came to realize that largemouth bass, known in Japanese as brakku basu, is now being promoted as fish for eating in the area surrounding the biggest lake in Japan. I learned that the fisherman’s co-op, which is similar to a state fish and wildlife department in the US, is trying to promote “catch and keep or kill” by buying the bass from the anglers.
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My grandmother in a black suit with my mother holding my hand and my father holding my brother at Sumiyoshi Shrine. We celebrated Shichi-Go-San, a popular traditional event to pray for the longevity and health of three- and five-year-old boys and three- and seven-year-old girls. I was three when this photo was taken by my grandfather.
My paternal grandmother, Sumie Ono, is a funny character. She took deep pride in her work as a treasurer at a local post office and enjoyed working with numbers until her retirement at 64. She received a high-school diploma by completing the curriculum in a distant-learning program when she was in her late 60s. She took care of her mother-in-law, who passed away at the age of 99, and she used to hike and run a lot until she injured her knees running in her late 70s. She taught me how to use the abacus and is still good at numbers at the age of 83, even though she suffers from dementia. But she usually kept her true feelings under wraps and became the very affectionate grandmother whenever my brother and I were around.
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Political analyst Minoru Morita was a fixture on a Fuji TV morning news program until several years ago. He would appear clad in kimono and deliver his erudite political commentary, which was typically laced with ancient proverbs and historical observations. But Morita, now 75, was also a harsh critic of the once wildly popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. While the rest of the media fawned over the “lion-maned” prime minister, Morita had a different interpretation:
“In my view, Koizumi was the most irresponsible and frivolous prime minister in Japan’s postwar history.”
Not one to mince words, Morita went on TV in the late summer of 2005 and called the dissolution of the Diet by Koizumi “unconstitutional.” Here’s how Morita describes what happened next in his upcoming book, Curing Japan’s America Addiction:
Forget sushi and ramen noodles — the Mega Mac is hot in Japan. Ever since the beefed up version of the Big Mac with four patties and an extra slice of cheese was introduced to the Japanese, McDonald’s Japan has enjoyed a major increase in sales, up 11% in 2007 to $3.5 billion.
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A photo of my grandmother and my mother in front of their house in Ashiya in 1948.
When my maternal grandmother, Sugayo, passed away in 2001 shortly after 9/11, my mom told me not to fly back to Japan for the funeral. “I don’t want to be worried about your safety on an airplane flying back to Japan.” I understood my mother’s concern and decided to stay in Seattle, but I had a hard time with the fact that the grandmother with whom I shared some girlish secrets — secrets I couldn’t even tell my own mother as I was growing up — was no longer with us in this world.
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In case you missed it, The New York Times featured the latest fad from Japan — cellphone novels — on its front page recently. The gist of the piece was that cellphone novels republished as books have begun to dominate the best-seller lists in Japan. Five of the 10 best-selling novels of 2007 were originally cellphone novels. Twenty-one-year-old cellphone novelist Rin’s first novel sold 400,000 copies last year. “My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” she told the Times.
Will Americans soon be reading Grisham on their phones or getting weekly updates of the latest Stephen King novel via text message? We may laugh at the idea, but then again, I remember plenty of my fellow countrymen scoffing at the idea of Americans sending text messages nearly10 years ago, when the trend swept Japan.
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