We decided that after the reckoning and check-out, Noda, his girlfriend, Carl, Yoshiko, and I would go to lunch, and then we’d go check out the castle, Nijo-jo, which is a UNESCO site. Noda announced that our goal was a Taiwanese place he knew, so off we went, down some back streets. For all its size, Kyoto seems to have some mellow corners in it. At one point, we found a temple, and peered inside. There was a large stature of a woman dressed almost like a Catholic nun, holding a trident, and I have no idea who that might be. We eventually found the place, and the sign on the rolling steel curtain announced that it was closed for lunch on Saturdays, predictably enough. But across the street, Noda’s eye caught a sign offering regional soba dishes, so we went in there. I got one that featured shiitakes and grilled cakes of mochi, the name of which apparently could pun on the word for “jealousy,” a pun the proprietoress gleefully made. Carl was unhappy that they wouldn’t start serving oysters until next month, but Yoshiko really got the prize, which came in a large round container, which, when the top was taken off, revealed a tray of condiments including a quail’s egg, and when that was removed, a tray of some other stuff I couldn’t identify to mix with the soba, which resided in a bowl beneath. I don’t think this was on the English side of the menu, to be honest.
Soba!
I was full, but Noda insisted that we take tea, and a few doors down was a Kyoto institution, Ippodo, tea merchants since 1717. It’s not a tea-ceremony kind of place, but there is, on the side of the commercial part, a tea-room with three tables, and we took two of them. You order a given sort of tea, and eventually the waitress brings out little teapots with your selection of leaves in them, a big container of boiling water, a sweet for each person, and then instructs you in how each one is done. Carl’s involved pouring a cup of water then turning it into a second cup, from there to a third, and thence to a fourth before pouring the contents into the teacup. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this was. Yoshiko got the full gourmet macha treatment, which involved a thick paste of green tea in a large bowl, which she drank, after which she got a cold cup of a rougher tea, houjicha. I got genmaicha, which I’d seen outside, with rice and barley in it, funky and country-tasting. Carl then bought a bunch of tea to take with him on tour and some to give to Yoshiko’s family. And now it was pouring.
Fortunately, the next stop, the castle, was far enough away that a taxi was in order. It was also time to say good-bye to Noda, whose wisdom and guidance I’ll miss, but whose insistence that we eat every hour or so I can probably do without, tempting though it is, and gratifying though the results tend to be. How do these skinny guys do it? And how do the Japanese consume such massive amounts of caffeine and sodium? I’m going to have to go on a desalinization project when I get home.
Nijo Castle is, frankly, worth the hype. The Ninomaru Palace’s massive rooms have gold-painted walls, all done by the highest masters of the 17th century, with giant tigers prowling around to drive home the power of the shogun. The famous “nightingale floors,” which actually chirp as you walk on them (supposedly to warn the Shogun if any enemies are coming, although Nick’s book says that the clan was so poweful in Kyoto that nobody would dare attack anyway) surprised me because I was expecting some sort of creaking noise, and now I wonder how in the hell they did it -- it’s not explained in the place, but, I found later, it is on the sheet they give you to guide yourself. Unfortunately, Carl marched rather quicker than I would have liked through the thing, probably worried about getting back to the hotel and grabbing his stuff in time to catch the train back home. And it was still pouring after we got out.
Nijo-jo
A quick trip to the hotel, and I joined them at the station, hoping I could get a Herald Tribune there instead of one of the useless local products. After they left, I noticed it was still raining, and after a search failed to turn up a paper, I decided to walk a bit. I found a way out of the terminal and crossed the tracks by a bridge, and found myself approaching this tremendous office building/shopping mall/hotel that’s the main part, as it turned out, of the station. This was promising, and I went in, finding myself in the company of several thousand people, and eventually found a kiosk with the paper. After that, I wended my way to the subway, and, after a few minutes studying the instructions, figured out how to buy the right ticket, get on the right line, and get back to the hotel. I felt like a master. But I wish my mastery extended to getting it to stop raining!
In fact, after I got back, the weather stayed lousy. I spent some time on the computers downstairs, found I’d received some e-mails, and then went back upstairs to settle on a plan, which was pretty easy: I’d been wanting tonkatsu, deep-fried breaded pork filet, and Nick’s book said a place not far away, Yamamoto, was one of the best; gave it two stars, in fact. So I carefully plotted a map from the map in the book and then noticed that it was raining Texas-style, with a fury I hadn’t seen even during the typhoon. But it finally relented at about 8:30, at which time I knew I had to get out before the restaurant closed at 10. Anyway, it seemed to have vented all its fury at long last.
Finding the place was easier than I’d thought, which meant that, because there was no transliteration of the restaurant’s sign, and I’d gotten to the front door and turned around because there was a fish-tank of some sort by the entrance, I spent an additional 30 minutes criss-crossing the neighborhood in search of it. Finally, I got to another restaurant where some young people were leaving and I asked them if they knew where it was. Turned out they were looking for a cab, so they weren’t even from around there, but the restaurant’s proprietor was hailing the cab, and when it came, they asked him, and the words “Yamamoto” and “tonkatsu” got tossed around. After they’d departed and he’d bowed at them until the cab disappeared into traffic, he told me to walk to the light and it was “near.” This took me back to the place I’d first found, so, emboldened, I asked a teenage girl who was consulting her cell-phone, and she confirmed that I was there. I walked in to find a beautiful interior, a young couple eating at the counter that stretched around the place, and a very surprised couple running the place. The woman was doubtful that I wanted to eat there, and pointed out that they’d be closing in a half-hour. I made her understand that I understood, but I wanted a tonkatsu, so she resigned herself to serving me and sat me at the bar. The menu wasn’t translated, of course, so I whipped out Satterwhite’s book, and she was astonished at what was in it. The idea that there was their specialty in there made her realize I was serious, and so she decided to give me the “set.”
She (Mrs. Yamamoto, as it turned out) did, in fact, have rudimentary English, and as I watched the other two customers, I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into. They were eating something quite elaborate, and after the chef pounded and breaded my cutlet, he set about grabbing an abalone from a tank full of them, dispatching it cleanly and turning it into sashimi in a matter of a minute or two. This was not cheap fare, and the place was so well-appointed I was scared that I’d fallen into something deep. I had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket, enough to cover that sashimi place we’d gone into in Tokyo, so it wasn’t that I was scared I wouldn’t be able to pay the bill. In any event, the cutlet was sizzling in the big brass vessel filled with oil, so it was too late. Mrs. Y was rubbing some kasu off of some pickled vegetables, which she brought, and the chef was taking some abalone parts and getting ready to deep-fry them in another bowl. Other parts he was grilling on some aluminum foil. Finally, it all arrived, and I have to say, it was exquisite. The outside was crunchy, the inside delicate, there was a bowl of superb soup (not miso: this is made from a different kind of broth, and has chunks of pork in it), and the pickles were very subtly flavored.
After I finished, the male customer asked in perfect English who I was and where I was from, and how I’d heard of the place. He relayed some of this info to Mrs. Y, and the chef brightened considerably when I told him (exaggerating just a bit) that Nick had said this was possibly the best tonkatsu in Japan. He introduced himself as Narita, and, as the chef was sauteeing some beef filets for them and finishing them with cognac (!), I decided to let things get back to normal, and paid the bill: ¥3700. High for tonkatsu, maybe, but easily worth it.
Naturally, I decided to go back a slightly different way than I’d come, and got lost, although I seemed to be on the periphery of the park which contains the Imperial Palace, so I knew I wasn’t too lost. I eventually got to a subway station with a map, and saw the way back. It was starting to rain again by the time I finally found the hotel, but at least it wasn’t a Kanazawa-style nightmare, so I read a little bit and fell asleep quickly in the narrow bed.
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