After the tatami incident we were shown to a dining hall that had the feel of a spacious open
courtyard: along its perimeter, in smaller rooms facing the central
area, groups of revelers sat cross-legged at low dining tables loaded with
dishes; in the center of the hall there was a big pond where fish of all kinds
swam freely; a busy sushi bar at which customers sat and dined, enclosed the
pond; sous-chefs with nets in their hands were trying to catch the fish in the
pond, while the sushi chefs were slicing and rolling. The customers, all men,
wore white shirts and black or gray pants, the uniform of the salary men, and the only color
in the room (and the only women) were the waitresses.
“The sushi is really
fresh here!” the senior among my companions finally broke the ice. “They catch
the fish you choose from the pond.” The tatami incident was now a thing of the
past, clean slate. Earlier, on our way to the restaurant they had asked me “Do
you like Japanese-style fish?” Imagining myself devouring my way through mounds
of sushi and sashimi, I had answered “Yes” without hesitations. One of them then
had remarked that the sashimi in the restaurant where we were heading is
excellent and now, seeing the fish writhe in the nets, I was wondering what the
flavor of fish just pulled out of the water would be.
My hosts had reserved
a private dining room on the third floor. There another mama-san
was waiting for us in front of the elevator and walking in front of us with tiny quick steps,
constrained in her pink flowery kimono, she took us to the shoji of
our private dining room. A young and pretty attendant, waiting for us on her knees
slid the shoji open as we approached, moved quickly but gracefully and
then, again on her knees in a vestibule, opened for us the fusuma of our
dining room. In the vestibule there was a wooden step that doubled as shelf
where the attendants would place the trays during the elaborated choreography
these poor girls had to perform every time they had to come in and out of the
room, a procedure I thought one could see only in movies depicting the
luxurious life of the days of yore.
They had me enter the
room first, then my three hosts followed in hierarchical order. Our six-tatami room had
an extremely simple décor: a piece of calligraphy hung from one of the walls, a
low sideboard that contained a small fridge, and four zaisu around a low
dining table that hid a hollow space underneath it where we could let our legs
hang rather than sit cross-legged. As we sat down the junior of my hosts, who was
with us in his capacity of interpreter, asked me in English if I can do seiza. With the clear intention of showing off
I answered in Japanese that I can hold seiza for up to 40 minutes,
which is the truth. Now that it felt like I was back in their good books I was
not going to volunteer the information that at the end of those 40 minutes my
legs are of no use…
One of my hosts
pulled out the sheet with the Japanese-English list of forbidden and permitted fish posted on
the JCJ website and asked me if I liked hirame, halibut. When I answered
“yes”, he said he was happy we were 4 because 4 is the perfect number for
eating a whole halibut of the size they have here. He added that every time he
is here he is very careful to order halibut only when there are 4 people,
because 4 is the perfect number for ordering halibut of the size they have here
without wasting any of it. 3 people cannot finish it, but 4 is just
right. They ordered several vegetarian appetizers and several treyf delicacies,
two boat-shaped trays loaded with sashimi: one with some untouchable foods and
one with kosher fish (mainly salmon because our office manager makes sure
people who take me out for meals know I’m addicted to salmon), and finally this
mysterious dish for which we were the perfect number: ikizukuri. We had
to have it since we were 4 because 4 is the perfect number for eating a whole
halibut of the size they have here.
Again that question:
“Do you like Japanese style fish?” Looking at him at loss for words I thought
“Haven’t you just ordered a boat of sashimi all for me?” and then the sudden
realization that maybe - or certainly - “Japanese-style fish” must have meant
something different than sushi or sashimi.
Hesitatingly I gave a
Jewish-style answer: “Do you mean sushi or sashimi?”
“Have you ever eaten ikizukuri?”
“How do you write
it?”
Our junior wrote the Chinese
characters of the mysterious word ikizukuri on the table with his finger
for me to read.
“Preparing… alive…?!”
“Yes! The fish is
still alive when they slice it. And sometimes it still moves on the plate.”
“I’m sorry... but… I
cannot eat it,” I said gagging at the image evoked by that description.
“You do not like hirame?”
“I cannot eat it for
religious reasons. I’m sorry. But you please go ahead and enjoy it.”
“But hirame is
in the list of your website…”
“But I’m not allowed
to eat it while it is alive.”
“But it is in the
list of your website…”
“But it’s alive!”
My other two hosts
understood the English exchange and out of politeness and respect for their guest
called immediately the waitress and asked her to have the chef make the hirame
as regular sashimi, because “the foreigner” wouldn’t eat it otherwise. I begged
them to have the ikizukuri anyway, I didn’t want to spoil their long
awaited treat. Instead they ordered for themselves octopus ikizukuri,
and for all of us the hirame was made into old fashioned, boring sashimi.
The 4 of us finished
indeed the halibut, the strangest dish I’ve ever had: chewy, tasteless, a
little sour, and with this unshakable awareness that it was alive a few minutes
before. I steered my eyes away from the moving tentacles of the
octopuses ikizukuri in the other dish at the center of the table, and tried to ignore the
almost imperceptible squishing sound made by the octopuses’ tentacles and the
thought that my fish a few minutes before were happily swimming in the pond
downstairs.
It took many cups of
sake to force down those slices of halibut, but oddly enough the amount of sake
I drank had no effect on my lucidity. Waiting for that instant when the alcohol
would take away the shoes on the tatami mat and the squirming fish I was
wondering if there are studies that show that the mind and its processes have
the power to hinder the effect of intoxicating substances: what could otherwise
explain the fact that I, usually a cheap date, was still lucid and alert,
despite the almost three sake bottles I had gulped.
My hosts spent part of
the evening discussing how ikizukuri is not something for foreigners, how
it is something that only the Japanese can appreciate. They wondered at the
fact that ikizukuri is outlawed in some countries of the world, and at
the special nature of the Japanese who alone can appreciate the exquisite,
decadent pleasure of this dish. The inebriated conversation touched also upon
other modern myths the Japanese sometimes tell themselves about themselves: a
brain that functions differently, a body that functions differently, a unique
language (well, this is true…), a unique culture. Serious scholarship has
proved that these stories, that have a tinge of racism, are nonsense. I, however, had no
desire to disturb the harmony any further so, I kept chewing my quarter of halibut politely listening and emitting sounds of approval and surprise.
At some point the young
attendant brought in the bones of the same halibut that had been covered in
flour and deep-fried.
“Japanese style
chips!” chirped one of my hosts, gaily dividing the carcass into smaller
manageable pieces. “Rabbi, have the head. It’s the juiciest part!”
Luckily I had a fresh
bottle of warm sake next to me.
