No Tomatoes

Scattered mushrooms whorled and yellow tumble over benches in the market: it is my first photograph in Munich. Mike and I are yet to decide on a whereabouts for supper, but something that includes something so seasonal, so wild, seems like a good starting point. Distracting us momentarily is a passing couple: they capture us in lederhosen (he) and red trousers (I). Photograph number two.

Like a hand stoking a gauntlet we pass the remaining stalls. After British farmer’s/fisherman’s/physicist’s markets touting steak and shampoo, an authentic market seems fictitious: one part expects to see tins of pineapple stolen from Spar shelves with ten pence added for the pleasure, though I may be confusing village fetes.

Grey cobblestones recline to the sway and shush of rusting leaves, the market is behind us, and now, too, is the afternoon. Striding from Mike’s gnomic apartment, at last grass is squeezed beneath my feet. I have not touched it for months. Zentrum, a thick glass door leads to a barn-like space, with ogrous tables flanked by stubborn benches under beams and balustrades the colour of Reisling. We note our neighbours drinking similar; Julia notes this is cause for a beating. The solid if sympathetic interior harks to a beer hall, beer should be drunk.

She and I order venison ragout and those ghoulish twists of wild mushroom, salads on the side, pork added by the others. Several plates arrive each, the venison rich and tufty. The sauce contains wine –the only acceptable place for it –and it is salty and bloody. For a tongue used to tossing ballerinic squeals of fish, I have to pace myself and knit in the orbiting sides. Inch thick wet pork guarded by growling crackling dominates Mike’s plate, and towering bulbs of beer stand assured like chess-pieces about the table. Hoppy, white and foggy with a diffused yellow glow, German beer tastes smooth and herbaceous. It is also drunk by all, making me question why we Brits should prop up in England a culture based about lager when such fine ales are available. I shall remedy my bias at Christmas, when, too I hope to return to Germany.

For now, however, a vanishing Munich is sired to the whoosh of ICE and limp salute of towering hops. The countryside expands, and suburbs succumb to farmhouses. The drawbridge to this most ideal of cities is raised; now begins the mission to lower it permanently. 

It’s the afternoon here and the new guys are sketching. Occasional bursts of ideas waver among the contractors until apathy and lack of direction puts them off. Though this place is called work, idle it sometimes seems.

Mina and I have had a pumpkin, but its okay: no need to redecorate a room yet. Carrying it gently home last night, we spent hours, or at least twenty minutes, just staring at it from the sofa. We spotted it (ha!) in the gallery under the foot of Mori tower where we had spent the day surveying fish tanks and the work of the chap who designed Beijing’s Bird Nest. But it was the work of Yayoi Kusama that drew us in. I spotted (!) her work and Mina spotted (! –still funny) the printer’s proof of Pumpkin MT.  As typical net-savvy consumers, we scoured the internet for similar, but could not find; and besides, both looking at the painting, and both looking at each other, we knew it was time to commit. Not quite a ring, but to buy a piece like that is still meaningful. I was quite nervous yesterday when we bought it!

If you haven’t gathered, it, like so much of her, is dotty (the artist, not Mina) and the frame is divine. How richly it reclines upon my television. This may not be a restaurant review, but its the best food I've yet bought.

There is another meal that has been pressing for my attention, yet once again I battle against burger imbued wits on this Friday afternoon. I have a feeling that Authentic burger may be the subject of this literary quest; if it changes forgive me.

Authentic burger is a joint found by new old guy Danny, a slightly robotic Anglo-American who expresses little but designs well. He also dresses and eats well, meaning our typical trek to Wolfgang Puck (told you I’d return), is omitted from his diary. But he has proved an adept researcher and found this gem at the foot of his building. Authentic burgers are light, deeply spongy and layered with mayo and relish; almost the vegetarian of burgers, except for the beef. Fries are few, but the marginal grease-free environment and clean surfaces keeps the whole thing feeling pleasantly organic, in the most fair-trade be-sandled way.

A swift calculation deduces the avocado burger with cheese is less expensive than a cheese burger with avocado; I order one and put it in the bag, put it in the bag. There is an A5 sheet that neatly and grammatically-waywardly points to several necessary steps required for the enjoyment of your meal. A paper bag is, accordingly, vital. This is supported by a line drawing of a crab with hands for pincers, a foot-note adding that it has nothing to do with the meal. If all this sounds like a set-up of the confusions usually made by Japanese in English, well, it probably is. But while it amuses us, and while I keep earning loyalty stamps to acquire a tea-towel, so we shall continue to return. A welcome change to the norm.

Authentic, Akasaka 2-18-19, 03 3505 8584

I recall I wanted to write about a meal, but I cannot remember what, so let us stroll through my synaptic haze and potter about the neurons –ah yes, there it is, an English cream tea. Perhaps part of the reason I had nearly forgotten was that it was so unfitting for its context; it certainly wasn’t the food. On second thoughts, that would bring the mundane and homogenous to the front of the mind; clearly contrast to context makes something literally extraordinary, and therefore memorable. The fault, I conclude, must lie with me.

Though it was a while since we had a lecture on brain formation and properties, I will use it to excuse the protracted beginnings to this quiet fizzle of opinion. Actually opening the door to the cubicle in my mind, I can read my scrawled notes and cast my eyes now to the fleet of fat koi swarming about my discarded Pringle. We had just been to a 700 year old bamboo forest in Kamakura and broached the rope to descend to waters nearby. Mina tried putting in her feet, but the watery riot put her off. We ate chicken and sun-dried tomato sandwiches smeared with pesto, but they are not the subject of this column, not least because I prepped them.

Dust the seat of our trousers, and let’s tumble up the hill. Passing the temple’s threshold, so I imagined that one day I would have a garden to brush by before entering my house. A cat lounges as I glance through occasional sprigs; soon a sign to an English garden beckons. It is hot, and long, low steps slouch upwards to a driveway where a middle-aged woman lies tits up on a bench, asleep in the afternoon sun. It is quiet and the smothered harrumph of another couple descending a steeper path vanishes in the tranquility of this green valley, and in the heat our paces slow with the ascent to the hill-top cafe.

I was, to be honest, thrilled to find a cream tea parlour, and even better that it was so bloody good, that the scones were floury and slightly scented by the raisins nestling within. The blackcurrant jam, something I pathetically tend to avoid, homemade also, and the tea a rich Assam, coloured white with green in reflection of my grandmother’s similar brews. A sturdy bare table forced legs to crumple, but I was happy to stretch the elastic by which Tokyo binds me.

We noticed the ring as we left, but I mention it now as my abiding memory, that an engagement ring wrapped in diamonds had been left on the side for its owner to reclaim. Had that not been there, I would have sooner been aware of the rods of coins also left unchecked next to the till. Apart from this telling relay of the country we are in, everything else was most welcomely English.

I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I have just batted my century in Shimbashi. To anyone dormant in Tokyo the name will instantly conjure images of salarymen, yakitori and scant girls, save for those entertaining more thoroughly later. It’s not a place I come to often, location being one thing, and despite my mounting workaholism, I strive to evade the Venn of salaryman, a term so common it has entered the Japanese vocabulary.

These were my thoughts, partly gathered by Mina as we channelled through the wiry lanes linking chicken to pork to BBQ to eel. Our first stop was an awning, a carrier-bag draping over thin frame to avert the deluge. I was still steeped in sweat however, owing to my sighting a black gut of cloud linger above the spires of Shinjuku as I left the office. Splats like roaches on a windscreen pressed shirt to skin as I fidgeted at the crossing, desperate for the green man, and I ran the rest to the station. By the time I met Mina some stops later, the worst had passed leaving nothing but fingers of water gripping each step as we ascended Shimbashi plaza. Take note of the stationary train wantonly parked as you’ll need it for directions later. Presently, however, you’ll recall I have a bag over my head.

Not really knowing the area, it was a masterstroke of luck: our first bar had just received sanma, a slender mackerel, nice and oily and now in season. A great way to start, but spotting a pause in the drops we paid, took our chances and ran across the park to lucky number two, which served horse, something I had not eaten for a while. I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is, like a damp ballerina flopped upon your tongue. Coming from the fridge, each stamp-sized piece was raw and cool and permeated with myriad micro-stalactites of fat reaching through the red. It seems a little ghoulish to whip up garlic and ginger to accompany in soy sauce, but it’s a wonderful combination. While there we also saw that the chap alongside appeared to be eating mini-Jersey’s with dwarfs: turned out to be chicken bum and garlic shoots. Needless to say that got tacked onto the bill too.

At this point, my centenary was in decent swing, and happy to be spending it with Mina. We chatted about home, and, er, the joys of strip clubs (discovered she’s game) and buoyantly lumbered through the remaining grid of lanterns and landlines. After ten minutes, however, we stammered confronted by a sheer white wall marking the going-ons of a construction site and the insensitive glare of Pronto’s careless serifs. An Advent calendar of doors, openings and archways swung from all sides, yet there was a quiet glow coming from our feet, a small lantern set at the bottom of steps and an innocuous curtain.

A chorus of hurrahs and welcomes resonate before I even mount the last step to see the tiny room of bar and tatami. Everyone is smiling, and as we take two of the five bar-chairs, the man next to us, whom we find is called Kaji, leans over and mentions ‘you have found a good place’. Everyone is happy, and conversation flicks like wildfire between the patrons, a laugh, a crack, a recommendation and a ‘where’re you from’. It’s the kind of place where each person lends to the atmosphere of the room rather than stiffly subscribe to the linen of commerce. It’s the kind of place we adore –and I could hardly believe my luck as they announced horse their speciality too, straight from Kumamoto for which it is renown (Bonus: if you Google Mount Aso, you’ll see where these steeds are reared). Despite my earlier mouthfuls we jumped at the chance: it has been over a year since I last nibbled nape, white lilos of fat the size of a trimmed ten-pound stamp. And served as a platter no less! And yet such was the atmosphere I almost don’t want to dwell on the food: I felt new again, like when I first arrived in Japan and everything was fresh and everyone welcoming. I generally hesitate to so fully embrace such fleeting moments of serendipity, but it was genuine at Yoshi Yoshi, so obvious that they enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs. There was no insincere exchange of cards, merely one another sharing dishes and stories.

‘I have no money, but I’m on TV offering advice on money!’ confided one of finances wrinkled personalities to Mina, eliciting a wonderful scream as the sublime sake was reawakened. I tried to buy a bottle, but it cannot be bought, it was that rare. So we had to make the most of the opportunity to drink it all there. Yet I could not ignore the homemade plum-wine sleeping in a glass vat in front. Kaji, who had secured the wine, once more ordered a glass for us while the marbled eccentricities of his colleague stumbled from tatami to my shoulders, providing a box of éclairs. Bliss!

It seems trite to compare Yoshi Yoshi to Cheers, but such was the conviviality surging through each bite and laugh. As our names were flicked across the room when new people arrived, the neat black table on the tatami became a pivot as guests rotated to make room for more, changing places with those at the satin-smooth bar to converse, ridicule and delight. I want to keep typing and extend the memories, to not stop so that night can remain infinite and the smiles never diminishing. We could not have chosen a better place for the 100^th entry of No Tomatoes. I can’t wait to take Dad and Edward.

Directions: From Shimbashi Plaza go straight down the street between Pronto and Hirota, and you’ll come across triangle with Ajitoku on the first floor; turn left and you’ll see the sign for Yoshi Yoshi.