by Tracy Slater
“Congratulation!” Toru said, his voice like a bright bell through the phone line. “You know,” he said, “I feel proud you.”
And just like that, I could feel his presence, his heat with me, although he was halfway across the world. The directness of his emotion came to me through his words and tone so plainly then, as if, without sophisticated vocabulary or complex commentary, I could feel his pride and support right next to me, unadorned, straightforward, pure. Nothing, I realized, would ever feel as warm to me as that. I didn’t know why, but I knew it to be true.
• • •
WITH TIM’S HELP, the charm of the Enormous Room, my sister’s and my own academic contacts, and my obsession with a seamless plan, Four Stories opened to a standing-room-only crowd. Before the event began, I slipped into a clingy top, swiped my lids with sparkly shadow, and downed a God in Small Pieces cocktail. Then I got up onstage, grabbed the microphone, mispronounced the names of a few literary figures, and introduced the night’s readers. And people laughed! I drank another God in Small Pieces and admitted to choosing one of the authors because I thought he was cute. People laughed some more! Then I circulated Four-Stories-logoed question cards, encouraged people to ask each reader the funniest, most creative, or dirtiest question, and promised free drinks to the audience members whose queries I picked. I started in on my third cocktail and went with dirtiest. Soon the Boston Globe was quoting the director of the literary organization PEN New England, who claimed that Four Stories was “fast becoming the place to be.”
Fired up by the sudden success of the reading series, I secured two additional career opportunities before I left for Japan that winter. The university had hired me to do some writing for their website, so I could work remotely and continue to earn income even when I wasn’t teaching. I’d also managed to interest the food editor at one of Boston’s major newspapers in an article about Osaka: a city famous for its unique but unpretentious food and its rough-and-tumble character, at least compared to the fierce refinement of Kyoto and Tokyo. Toru’s hometown was known by the motto kuidaore, which I’d heard alternately translated as “eat yourself bankrupt” and “eat so much that you die and go to heaven happy.”
Sitting in my office at school one fall day, I typed off a quick pitch to the editor mentioning my Japanese connections, my upcoming return to Osaka, and a previous publication (my first nonacademic piece) that had recently been accepted by a literary magazine. Though that article was about being a woman teaching in a men’s prison, I must have made an adequate case for my track record writing about “other worlds”—prison, Japan, whatever—and she bit.
She e-mailed back the next day saying she’d be delighted to see my food article when it was finished. I was thrilled, ignoring that she’d failed to mention anything about meal budgets, contracts, or deadlines. But it felt like the beginning of a new self: bicontinental modern woman, half of a nationally and ethically blended couple, and now global food writer. Could it really be this easy? Exotic meals. Fashionable outfits at the latest restaurant openings in cities across the planet. Maître d’s recognizing me with discreet glances. I was happy to fund a few meals on my own as an investment in my new career. In a whole new, more exciting me.
The idea sparked a little ember in my brain, even as my more practical mind tried to swat it away as foolish, a clichéd misconception. Staring off into space, looking at but not seeing the streaked computer screen in front of me, I would not have admitted these thoughts and feelings out loud, wanting to believe I was somehow above the silly trap of thinking that a new place could magically make you a different person.
But as I arranged my upcoming trip, the quiet glow of excitement burned on inside me. I mapped my first few weeks back in Japan, planning which restaurants to visit, what foods to profile. In the mornings, I fantasized, I’d bring my laptop to one of my neighborhood cafés and make lists or write up notes, and at night, Toru and I would eat. We’d taste, sip, discuss, and critique my way into a new international identity.
SIX
WHEN WE REUNITED at Osaka’s Kansai Airport, it took only a few moments to feel myself melting back into shape beside Toru. His presence in my consciousness had been so large over the previous months that, as he came toward me in the crowded terminal, I felt momentarily surprised to remember that he was my height, not taller. But when I hugged him to me, bending my head slightly to bury it in the corner between his neck and shoulder, his warmth was expansive.
“Thank you for coming to here again,” he said.
Scanning the schedule board for buses back to the city, a white expanse crammed with black squiggles I couldn’t even begin to read, I felt myself surrender completely. The afternoon light was waning, the air cold and damp, and as we stood on the clean-swept sidewalk waiting to board our bus, around me flew snippets of an indecipherable language. The sound reminded me of a river running fast, only a modest gurgle rising up every now and then in whose echo I could trace some semblance of meaning. When the white-gloved attendant approached to load my luggage and inquire about our final stop, he looked only at Toru. My American identity as an independent, competent adult with an advanced degree, two challenging jobs, and a high level of cultural fluency receded back into its little corner, leaving in its wake a curious mix of diminishment and relief; I was once again a foreigner in Japan.
I’d found a subletter to cover my rent in Boston, and Toru had booked us another “weekly mansion” in the same building as before. This time, since we were renting for more than a month, he managed to secure one with a “full-sized” bed, only slightly wider than a twin. These apartments were designed for single working people who might occasionally have an overnight visitor. Like my room the previous summer, the studio was spare and tiny, outfitted with bare whitish-gray walls, one window, and the same sliver of a bathroom—where two people could not stand with the door open—plus hot plate, closet, mini-fridge, and diminutive set of drawers perched on wheels.
Once again, Toru kept all his clothes at his and his father’s house down the street, where every morning before work he would eat breakfast, shower, and dress. I kept half my clothes in the closet and drawers, and half in my suitcase under the bed, stuffing my heavy sweaters there and calculating how much shopping I could do before I would need to store things at Toru and Tetsunobu-san’s apartment, too.
As I had imagined, in the mornings, I would go to one of the neighborhood cafés I’d found the previous summer. The staff showed no signs of remembering me, although I couldn’t tell whether their obliviousness derived from Japanese manners—since conversations between strangers were to be avoided—or simply my lack of having made any lasting impression.
In preparation for my new food-writing career, I spent mornings flipping through the few entries in a Lonely Planet guide, a Frommer’s, and a Fodor’s and then searching the expat magazines for recommendations or even just advertisements. Since the Michelin guide to the area had yet to be published in Japanese or English, and the city’s Zagat guide appeared only in Japanese, I compiled minor notes based on Toru’s rough translation of the latter. “Yakitori,” he explained one night, “like chicken on stick. You might not like, though, at least not some.” Toru had kindly pretended not to notice the gaping flaw in my plan to play global food critic: my squeamish stomach. He referred only obliquely to it now.
“Some is like chicken . . . chicken ass,” he said, his brow knit in an attempt to describe chicken tail. Then he mentioned octopus balls.
“No way.” I shook my head, my eyes bulging with horror.
“You know, little dough balls with tako, octopus piece, inside,” he explained. “Like dumplings. Called takoyaki. Very famous in Osaka. Very Osaka food.”
At night, as we walked to the restaurants I had chosen, Toru would hold my hand, switching sides to buffer me even when the street was empty. As always, he’d do so quietly, as naturally as breath. He never once forgot or neglected to
protect me this way even if we were running late or immersed in conversation, as if he held some kind of homing device within his body, and home was wherever I might need shielding. Even more than my relief at being held by him again, than my skin’s sense of rightness next to his, Toru’s calm, instinctual protectiveness made me feel rooted in space alongside him, despite it being Osaka’s skyline around us, not Boston’s.
We went to a food stall at a neighborhood market and ate those fried octopus balls: crisp takoyaki, crunchy on the outside but gooey within, the chewy tentacles and slimy, half-cooked dough sliding down my throat in a disconcerting slip. Next we tried okonomiyaki, Japanese savory pancakes, at a restaurant nearby. Its walls were plastered with cards signed by famous Osakan comedians and musicians. At the table next to us, a group of teenagers in low-slung jeans and grunge-chic skirts played quarters and smoked, laughing loudly.
The pancakes were made with mountain potato flour, cabbage, and egg, then layered with sliced pork and Worcestershire sauce, a drizzle of mayonnaise, and dried salted seaweed. I was happily surprised that I actually liked the seaweed topping, hoping my taste buds were maturing into a new global sophistication.
Toru proudly explained to the aproned waiter that I was a writer working on a piece for a Boston newspaper and would appreciate an interview with the owner. Moments later, an older man burst from the kitchen, blue apron smattered with food, round cheeks scrunched above his grin. I sensed from Toru’s polite but hesitant tone and his gestures that he was making another introduction, and then the owner-chef emitted a volley of Japanese, Toru throwing back his head occasionally to laugh in a way I could tell was, at times, more manners than mirth.
Toru tried to translate for me as the man forged ahead with more zealous commentary. Although I couldn’t follow his words, I laughed along with them, captivated by the chef-owner’s effusiveness, his expansive hand gestures. Later, Toru defined him as a quintessential Osakan, outgoing, boisterous, and much less reserved than other Japanese people tended to be.
“He’s saying okonomiyaki means ‘as you like,’” Toru said, turning to explain, while I grabbed my pencil. The gist, I learned, was something about applying this “as you like” ethos to free experimentation with ingredients, which the chef then funneled into a “global culinary vision” using creative flavors from around the world. “So,” Toru relayed, “this is why all world’s citizens enjoy and . . . and feel at home with his food.”
Another mini-monologue followed, and Toru nodded.
“He say he has many dreams.” Toru paused, struggling for English. “He say something like ‘But my final dream is to journey into black hole, into new universe, and make okonomiyaki in another world.’”
I looked up at the chef standing over our table. He laughed once more, mouth drawn wide, eyes wrinkling shut. Then he bowed a single salutation and returned abruptly to the kitchen, his culinary intentions explained, his ontological vision revealed.
Another night, we went to eat at the Hankyu department store in the central Umeda neighborhood. We passed an information desk manned by a line of young women in identical pillbox hats, then rode the escalator through levels of clothing boutiques, each one attended by more uniformed salesladies, their skirts pressed taut. At the top, we reached the Dining Stage, or “dainingu-suteiji,” as Toru explained it would be pronounced in the store’s Japanese approximation of English.
The place was lined with tidy stalls from some of Osaka’s most well-known restaurants. Customers could order at various counters, then wait at tables for aproned servers to bring their food. We ate crisp tempura, colorful slices of vegetables, and whole jumbo shrimp battered and dipped in the coarsely ground salt the waiter delivered in a little blue dish. Next we ordered sushi, an endeavor Toru approached with consternation after we’d first eaten it together the summer before. I had been bitterly disappointed then to discover that only in the West do rolls come with avocado and spicy sauce, or with tempura pieces tucked inside. Toru had frowned darkly when I’d asked where the California rolls and spicy salmon maki were. “Not real!” he’d said, shaking his head emphatically. “Not even sushi. Just fake food.”
But here in the Hankyu Dining Stage, I was attempting to nurture my new persona as sophisticated international food critic, so I let Toru do the choosing. I bit into a shiny slice of fish draped naked atop an oblong of white rice. I didn’t bother to ask what it was. My plan was to eat first without really thinking, just to get past the initial raw bite, and then take notes from the safe side of an empty plate.
All I could feel was slime. Before I’d even mustered my jaw to movement, my instinct to swallow—to get the slick flesh off my tongue—kicked in. I gulped, a small convulsion emitting an undignified little gasp from my throat. Then I snatched the beer in front of me.
Toru shook his head while I pushed the rest of my sushi toward him. Neither one of us mentioned the absurdity of my writing a food article on Japan.
• • •
SOME NIGHTS WE ATE dinner at Toru and his father’s apartment. The summer we first met, I’d told Toru that I never expected to cook, not even if I got married, and that I never—“and I mean never”—cooked at home in Boston. “There’s always takeout if you want to stay in, right?”
Toru had disagreed with a vigor I’d found slightly worrying. “Eating at home is most relaxing,” he’d corrected me. “I don’t want to go out every night. Too tiring.” He’d told me that he didn’t think it was realistic to have a family and never eat at home, even if you never had kids, that part of having a home was eating together in it. He hadn’t bought my argument that not cooking, never cooking, was a viable political statement about women’s independence, either. “Just not normal, never to eat at home, never once,” he’d grumbled.
I could tell he’d thought I was a little spoiled or at best lazy when it came to domestic matters. Now I considered the possibility that he could be right. Maybe alongside my political argument—or rather buried secretly beneath it—was a classist irresponsibility I’d inherited in the large suburban house where I’d grown up. As kids, we’d cleared the table and had been instructed to put away our toys, but mostly we’d been spared chores by the housekeepers. Then I lived in dorms in boarding school and college until, on my own, I’d built up both a tolerance for messiness and a love of restaurants.
In our conversations about cooking dinner, I found Toru’s sternness slightly rankling, felt somewhat disappointed by his failure to be charmed by my quirky undomesticity, but I also grudgingly admired how diligent he was about keeping our little weekly mansion neat. The apartment he shared with his father, where he’d grown up in a household of four, further highlighted both the differences in our backgrounds and his family’s apparent contentment with modest, mundane domestic life.
At about seven hundred square feet, Toru’s family home had two tiny bedrooms big enough only for single beds, one larger bedroom wide enough to hold a full, a kitchen that could seat no more than four people with legs near touching around a small table, and a living room. The latter had one two-cushion couch and an aging massage chair; trinkets from Toru’s mother’s visits to Catholic churches around the world; a large rack for hanging laundry; a TV atop aging wooden shelves; and two framed pictures of Toru’s mother with a plain cross hanging between them. The apartment also had one toilet room, just wide enough to hold the toilet and a tiny cold-water sink, and a shower room with a larger sink, a washing machine, and a small but deep yellow-sided bathtub. On the wall near the washing machine was the hot-water heater, which remained off until shower or dishwashing time, when Toru’s father would flick the switch and wait for the heating mechanism to kick in.
In the kitchen stood a seventies-style stove, microwave, rice cooker, and mini-dishwasher on the counter next to the sink, designed for only a handful of items. The sink, built for Toru’s mother, who hadn’t grazed five feet, was so low I had to hunch over to wash anything i
n it. Luckily, Toru’s father, at just about five-foot-two, agreed to wash dishes on the nights I cooked.
The first time I saw Toru’s apartment, I flashed back to my childhood house in the Boston suburbs: the marble-floored, window-lined plant room complete with burbling fountain; the sundial patio overlooking the tennis court; the winding front staircase we kids never used, since it bore an imported carpet we weren’t allowed to walk on; the dark-paneled library where my mother and father had delivered the news of their separation.
My parents had been known for giving big parties, especially as their marriage began to crumble, impressive affairs filled with polite conversation that morphed into tipsy laughter as uniformed valets darted through the dark, and tuxedoed bartenders served drinks in the library’s low glow. I wondered if we’d always clung to our imposing house, its expensive decor, its enviable landscaping, as proof of some deeper worth, even—or especially—as our family imploded. As a child, I had felt soothed by the shelves of delicate china and cut-crystal glasses, the European upholstery, as if they could hold at bay the diminishment of the humans they surrounded.
Now I wondered whether Toru had felt slightly depressed or uninspired living in such a modest apartment, no material magic to distract the mind from its own torments. But both he and his father seemed completely at ease there, unconcerned by the physicality of their home beyond their commitment to keep it immaculately clean, safe, warm, and well functioning. Almost as if the house itself, as a material object, was irrelevant. There was, I recognized, a kind of integrity in this: unexpected, utterly foreign to me, but very wise.
Still, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea that if Toru and I built a life together, frequent cooking would be involved. But as my hopes of becoming a celebrated global restaurant critic waned, I acquiesced to making dinner a few times a week. “So if we did get married, could we at least agree to eat out, just somewhere casual,” I bargained, “let’s say three or four nights a week?”