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meat &
greet (yakitori alley)
--Jan 22, 2005
Last night we decided to brave the weather
and try Yuraku-cho Yakitori Alley (if you don’t know what
yakitori is, see the sidebar). The guidebook indicated that we’d
be sitting outside, even in cold weather, huddled next to other
yakitori eaters, crammed into a little roadside stall. It was
freezing cold out, but we decided we wanted to experience this
in spite of the arctic weather, so off we went.
After wandering around for 20 minutes in the
general vicinity of the alleged alley, we finally found it (see
japan: where did i put
that building?). To our relief, the yakitori shops all
had temporary heavy plastic sheets in front of them functioning
as make-shift walls, buffering the patrons from the cold. The
downside of this is that they all basically look the same from
the outside, since everything on the other side of the plastic
is just a blur. We slowly walked down the alley, and just as we
were about to play rock-paper-scissors to see which shop we should
try, an energetic man popped out of the Velcro door in one of
the plastic “walls” and said something enthusiastic
to us in Japanese. We decided that he was probably telling us
that there was a table free in his shop, so we smiled and went
in.
Mmmm…. it smelled great *and* it was
warm and toasty inside. We also noted that the other folks in
the restaurant, all of whom were Japanese, looked pretty happy
about things, so that was another good sign that we had stumbled
on a good place. We inquired about an English menu and they produced
the closest thing they had, which was a partially English menu
of a subset of their offerings, but it was good enough. With a
little bit of help from the very friendly owner, we ordered a
variety of skewers, some more adventuresome than others, and it
was DEEliscious (except for the chicken cartilage which Grace
didn’t really like much, especially being a recovering vegetarian).
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our new friends
at Yakitori Alley |
As we were waiting for our second round of
skewers (that’s how it’s done, you order some, eat
‘em, then order some more), a fellow at the next table bravely
turned to us and, in tentative English, asked “Where are
you from?” In most countries, this occurrence would be no
big deal, but it just doesn’t happen much in Japan (they’re
very reserved with strangers). Needless to say, we were very happy
to start chatting with him (his name is Fujiwara), and soon the
other folks at his table joined in. There were a number of awkward
silences (awkward for us, that is, but not for them; the Japanese
think carefully about what they're going to say next), but the
conversation continued at some length, with all parties doing
their best to keep it going. For example, they asked what other
things we were planning to do while in Tokyo, and we answered
that one of the things that we’d like to do was to go to
Hakone for a day or two and visit an onsen (hot-spring bath).
The conversation continued for a while, with one or two of them
speaking to us in broken, but fairly good English, and the others
translating and speaking amongst themselves in Japanese. All of
a sudden, one of them (his name is Dote) announced, “Yonekubo
has a plan.” We didn’t know which person at the table
was Yonekubo, but we were nonetheless interested in hearing what
he had in mind. We were surprised to hear that his idea was for
all of us to meet him tomorrow (Saturday) near his home, a suburb
outside Tokyo about halfway to Hakone, and drive to Hakone together.
Of course, especially since the discourse so far had been fairly
jovial, we thought they were kidding. But they kept talking about
it, and finally decided that 11am would be a good time to meet.
Over and over, we said that we thought it was too much trouble
for them, but in the end, we decided that they really did want
to go, or at least three of them did. So that was how we planned
our trip to Hakone, with three Japanese men that we had only known
for about half an hour (see japan:
black eggs & boiled octopus for the continuation
of the story).
And by the way, the rest of our yakitori was
yummy.
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