11 July 2025
Eef you try to explore your subconscious you will dig up some dark things, dark stuff, terrible. I am not interested in that. You must embrace the mask you wear in society. You must become the mask. That is the only way to liberation!
I said to Brenna in my best Zizek voice.
She laughed. Have to admit ol’ Slavoj has a point.
“What are you drinking?”
A white Negroni with that gin. Would you like one?
“I’d better not. I have to rehearse.”
Smart.
We were sitting outside in the rain. Under an umbrella but still soaking. Water as ice melting can ruin a drink, but water as summer rain in your glass is something special.
She was about to leave for Japan. Another round of that theater festival in Toyama. This time she’ll be performing her own material. I could commiserate. The open kitchen is fucking Carnegie Hall.
We talked at length about music and its role in her performance. Surprisingly, there was common ground between avant garde theater and a Japanese restaurant.
I told her about my Thursday night ritual, laying in bed working on the playlist for Friday’s dinner service.
We’re all essentially doomed geishas, I said, lowering my Versace hat. Laughter which verged on tears.
We timed the last Ozu holiday to coincide with her previous trip to Toyama the summer before. While not actually attending her performance (per her recommendation), it made sense in those days to all take vacation at the same time.
Arriving in Kanazawa that day in early September I was confronted with a heat and a humidity I hadn’t felt since spring break ’02. Holy shit. There is an almost endless summer in Japan these days which has nothing to do with surfing or having a good time. We quickly booked a side trip to Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island.
We rented a car at the airport and drove up the coastal highway, stopping for dinner along the roadside town of Yoichi.
We walked down the alleyways striking out at different little restaurants. “And gropes his way past the indigo noren, finding the stairs unlit.” Twenty minutes is not enough time to break into the scene.
Finally, a dank izakaya on the second floor, one of those unfathomable places run by a single dude. Baseball on the TV, ciggy in the ashtray. He had built himself a grill on the counter with loose fireproof bricks. We sat on little zabuton on the nicotine stained tatami. I was soaking the place in like a brand new sponge. Hand written menus laminated in 1998. Scratched up tables and walls. Some legend had drawn a penis on the wooden windowsill, with hair on the balls and everything. This is the real shit, I thought to myself.
We ordered chicken skin gyoza and grilled squid, mackerel with extra daikon oroshi. The crowd of young locals ordered french fries and hamburgers. We looked at each other in disbelief. Gochisousama. Back in the Toyota Roomy to make it to the inn before they all go to sleep.
The main racket on the Shakotan Peninsula is the kaisendon, a mixed seafood chirashi of the local delicacies — scallops, ikura, crab, and uni. Kaisendon joints lined the main drag, the only real restaurants in the area, soulless little joints for Japanese tourists. The Ainu had smoked salmon and hunted bear. Now there’s a ticket machine for the local catch.
A bite of the scallop. I never though I’d miss New Jersey.
The owner of our inn was a charter fishing guy. Photos of his citations papered the wall. Dinner was catch of the day. Hokke, an oily little mackerel that is god-like with salt on the grill.
We hit the empty beaches littered with fishing line. No lifeguards, I swam way out. My silver necklace was bait for the sharks. Maybe I’ll swim home. Flip on my back, endless sky.
There is a color called Shakotan blue. A particular feature of the light and the ocean in Western Hokkaido. Our rental car was painted it.
I’d been thinking about the calamari salad they served at the Lobster House in Cape May. Any anthropologist serious about understanding the influence of Italians on South Jersey need only duck into any old fish market on the coast and try the calamar. Medegons who say wooder, chopping off that last vowel. The old paesan at the Shop Rite in Rio Grande, NJ. They all lived to 200. Serving calamar salad from memory, but you know we put our stamp on it with a bit of yuzu juice from far Yamaguchi-ken. Did you think I was going to let you down?
seasonal crudités with sesame miso bagna cauda
hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing
temaki
choice of blue crab, maguro, hamachi, or ikura
scallop chawanmushi
savory egg custard with sea scallop and uni, served cold
calamar salad
squid poached in olive oil, marinated in yuzu & garlic, with Bread Shop baguette
kanpachi namerou
tartare of raw kanpachi*, white miso, ginger, shiso
scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori
Jeju Island hirame sashimi
raw fluke* kombujime, yuzu kosho
pork bbq kakuni bento
oak-grilled pork shoulder with a ginger shoyu glaze, over Japanese rice, hiyashi salad & cabbage slaw
maguro bento
raw bluefin tuna over sushi rice with hiyashi salad, pickles
Hokkaido kaisendon
blue crab, ikura, smoked salmon, & scallop over sushi rice*
basque cheesecake
sesame miso cookie