I think I'm turning Japanese

It’s May 11 and over two weeks since I have been in Tokyo. I am sitting in one of my favourite Starbucks in the hood, and someone said there are more Starbucks than noodle houses and I would have to agree. Like back home, it’s a common meeting place and there is free Wi-Fi, which is often hard to get in the city and not a given in one of the most connected cities in the world.

How do I feel after two weeks? I am turning Japanese, I really think so. And this is not just because I am consuming an incredible amount of Japanese food into my body and am immersed in Japanese life, but this is part of it. The thing is that I feel that I have had a long hunger for this food, and I can’t stop eating it or thinking about it.  The more I eat, the more I want. I believe this is because it goes beyond to feeding my hunger, it feeds my soul. Japanese is my soul food.

I am fascinated by how food can trigger memories that lay on the surface and deep down below the surface. Being here and seeing, smelling and tasting an incredible array of Japanese cuisine, brings back fond memories of growing up with this type of food when I was a child and reminds me of my mother who adored Japanese food. While she passed away over 25 years ago, it’s almost like she is here with me and I can hear her voice, encouraging me to try something because it’s oishii (tasty) or to be sure to buy this or that because you can’t get it at home.

Beyond nourishing me, the food here comforts me, makes me happy, and makes me feel like I am home and I don’t mean in a physical way because I have been in Canada all of my life. Being in Japan, reminds me where my roots come from and how deep they go. I feel I have some sort of connection here to the people. Of course you do you may be thinking because I look Japanese. It’s more complicated than that. While I know I have features that look like the people here and can understand them in some ways, I also feel like an impostor and I am not like them.

I am a third-generation Japanese Canadian and because my grandfather made the bold move to come over to Canada from Kobe to BC in the early 1900s, I am Canadian first and foremost. My first language is English and competing for second place is French and Japanese.

So where do I stand you may wonder being Japanese-looking but with blondish hair. Last time I came to Japan, I melded in much more and this time people don’t know what I am and give me a curious look at times. I guess their first reaction is to consider me a foreigner than one of them and that is probably more accurate as I am somewhere between the two. I  can understand Japanese about 75% and can speak it about 50%, thanks to my mom who put me through Japanese language school, took me to Japan and spoke to me in Japanese when I was a child, especially when she was angry.

When I was a child, I desperately wanted to fit into the classroom and didn’t want to be different so I thought I was being cool by replying back in English to my mom. However, this leaves me today being a bit stuck when I need to speak Japanese as the words are in my mind but don't come out of my mouth very easily. But with each taste of Japanese food and life, the words are coming out more and more easily, and I am turning Japanese.

 

 

Zen moment

Meditation here this morning in the middle of Tokyo

Food is love = monja

 

May 7, 2015

  

My friend Makiko asked me what I wanted to eat in Tokyo. I have eaten so much and there is much more I want to eat, but the first thing that popped in my mind was okonomiyaki! I loved eating it with Yuki when I was last in Tokyo and have never forgotten about it and the experience. Every city has their own version of okonomiyaki, including Tokyo, and there is even a certain area of town where you go eat it called Tskukishima. 

 

We arrived in the area, filled with ancient restaurants that haven't changed much over the years except for the exterior neon signs and found the same restaurant that Yuki and I had went to last time and loved. When we sat down, Makiko asked hesitantly if I wanted to try monja. You can order okonomiyaki or monja. I said nanedemo suki (I love everything) namedemo tabemasu (I eat everything). She cocked her head in the way that the Japanese do when trying to making a decision and say nan de and/or make sounds as they are concerned what to do and they don't want to offend you by making the wrong decision. 

She made the courageous decision to let me try monja. You see, the Japanese are a bit shy about letting foreigners try things like monja because it's not pretty like the usual Japanese food, actually quite ugly looking, it's gooey, and from their experience either people love or hate it, and they would hate to offend anyone. 

Okonomiyaki is often referred to as similar to a pancake or pizza, but it is much different. It's made with flour, nagaimono (mountain yam), dashi, eggs, cabbage and a variety of ingredients that you can pick from. Monja has more liquid and is a runnier version of this.

Monja is only made in Tokyo and those who love it, really love it. I really loved it and now I am now a full fledged monja addict! We had our monja with mochi, and being a mochi addict already, I was jumping in excitement!

 

We started the meal off with ramune, which I loved from my childhood visits to Japan with my mother.It's a bubbly Japanese lemonade in a stylish glass bottle that is pressurized with a marble. I think that is so cool!

At the restaurant where we were at, there is a grill at each table and the server makes it for you or starts you off. You use a mini metal lifter to eat monja right off of the grill. It's gooey like cheese and the toasty brown bits formed from cooking are prized. 

Afterwards, we had okonomiyaki and it was good but seemed tame in comparison.The Tokyo style looks more like a pancake-pizza. There is a sauce that is put over it (like a sweet thick worchestire sauce), in addition to aonori (seaweed), katsuoboshi (bonito) and Japanese mayo. You slice it into sections to eat. Both monja and okonomiyaki are meant to be shared and it's more fun that way anyway. Food and fun, my favourite combination!

Start Where You Are

May 5, 2015 - Tokyo

Start where you are, says the Buddhist philosophy. I am sitting at a café called Frangipani in Roppongi, Tokyo with a VW beetle in the café. Beatles music is playing as I write this and drink my iced coffee, pronounced icu cohee in Japanese.

It is 4:22 pm here on Tuesday and 4:22 am on Tuesday back home in Ottawa. This still boggles my mind, time differences, in that you are sleeping, or trying to, and haven’t even started your day and I’m at the end of my day already. I’ve always wondered if I had a bad day, could I redo it, replay it, if I travelled to another time zone that hadn’t started their day yet? Anyway, this is the kind of things that I think about. If you’re still interested in what I have to say, read on…

I have wanted to start or restart blogging for a long time but things got in the way. Here is the short reason why I couldn’t get to the blog: shit happens! If you want the longer explanation, then read on…

For those of you who have known me for awhile, you may have followed me as I made a radical career change from a marketing communications consultant to chef school in NYC, starting up ZenKitchen, first as personal chefing business and monthly pop-up dinners with a surprise menu at various locations around town, and this evolved into the restaurant, which closed in November 2014.

In those beginning days, some seven years ago, I started a blog called Caroline Cooks and carried you, and you carried me, on travels that took me to chef school in NYC, trials and tribulations in interning/staging a various restaurants in NYC, San Francisco and Tokyo, and then starting up ZenKitchen. Starting up the restaurant, a long-lost dream, took me to places I never imagined, including successful monthly pop-up dinners that led to the community helping to build the restaurant, a 13-part documentary reality TV series and invitations to the prestigious Gold Medal Plates competitions!

When we signed on to the show, they asked me not to blog anymore so I wouldn’t give anything away when the show appeared and they wanted me to blog to the completed show. I didn’t realize then that there would be a time delay of a few years from this request, with the show being filmed for one year, then edited and produced, then on air, originally with the W Network, and then on to the Asian Food Channel and the Oprah Winfrey network  (OWN) in Canada.

So, I left the blog and thought I would be able to come back to it, like an old friend, but the TV show and my busy life at the restaurant got in the way, and I didn’t have enough time for sleeping, let alone blogging. Over the years I thought about my long lost friend, my blog, and missed him (I feel it was a he for some reason). I wanted to return but I was too exhausted and so much water had passed under the bridge and I didn’t even know where to begin. What would I say? What could I say? Could I say the truth? What is the truth? So like best laid intentions, it sat there on the back burner, waiting for me to return.

Now after two years after my official departure from the restaurant, I have had time to sleep more for one, travel, and write the book that I have wanted to write for a long time.  Over the years, many customers asked me about a cookbook but I couldn’t even imagine where I would find the time with all that I had on my “plate”, running the restaurant, coming up with new creations and menus, taking care of the finances, staffing, responding to media and community requests, and much much more.

For me food is much more than food. It is passion, it is love, it contains my creativity, ideas, learnings from my mom, dad and aunts, sensory experiences when travelling and childhood memories. The book is called the "Accidental Chef - Lessons Learned In and Out of the Kitchen" and contains vignettes focused on taste memories around my life-long obsession with food, with recipes, many from the restaurant.

The book is now done with the encouragement of many, in particular my dear friend Barb, my incredible editor Laura and the support of a team of people Barb calls Team Caroline. Stephen Cope, yoga teacher and psychologist, says that before willpower we must have community and I have lived that, am living that. Hoorah, I am grateful for team Caroline!

The editor and I are starting to submit the book to publishers and we look forward to the right publisher picking it up, with fingers crossed! I hope you’ll cross your fingers too or whatever method you want to use to support me. And just in case you are reading this and have some contacts in the publishing world or tips, please email me at chef.ishii@gmail.com

It took me a long and short time to write the book. First long because I have been writing daily for over two years so that I could include the most pertinent thoughts and memories into the book, and short because when I finally sat down to write it, it was only a few months, it came through me as many writers will say. It felt the same as the creation of ZenKitchen. I always felt that if ZenKitchen was meant to be, with a lot of hard work of course, then it would be. The same with the book. While writing it, I said if it’s meant to be for me to finish it and get it out to the world, then let it be, and it flowed though me and here it is.

I know this is a long explanation of why I am restarting the blog. Many of you followed me on the journey up until I left the restaurant, disappointed when I left and were heart broken when it closed, as I was. I felt it is time to reconnect with you, especially because I want you come with me on another journey. Nothing stays static in life although we think it does. Every moment we are changing, people change, our circumstances change, whether we want them or not. I have changed, am changing, and am recreating myself.

My goal has always been to nourish and inspire those that I love and care about with food and ideas. It is also important for me to connect with you and for you to connect one another, and in doing so, connect the dots so to speak in creating community. That has always been important to me from the first pop-up dinner I held some seven years ago, before the word pop-up was created. Why? I feel there is power and magic in working and playing together as community, and that’s one of the reasons ZenKitchen was so successful from its beginnings.

So for all these reasons and more, I want to stay connected with you and thus have started the blog again as another act of love. Will you come along with me? I start this blog in the same way I created ZenKitchen some seven years ago, from simple humble beginnings, a lot of passion, and the desire to have a place where you can reach me and I can reach you. I hope you will join me because there is so much to tell you from Tokyo and beyond, and as always, I’d love to hear from you.

Love, Caroline xoxoxo