February 26, 2006

• Ramen and 50′s Robots.

  
  

   I make fun of my Japanese friends for always saying that anything and everything is ‘yuume’, or famous, but to be fair, Japanese people seem to have a bigger space in their minds for famous things, whereas the American mind only has room for say, Hard Rock Cafe, or Paris Hilton’s dog.

  
  

  The main cause of this seems to be the comparatively greater number of Japanese TV shows dedicated to uncovering all the best holes-in-the-wall of any given area. These shows are really, intinsically, dull, which is why in America they’re relegated entirely to the discovery channel, or maybe PBS. Mostly they consist of some guy who is shown hunting around for a ‘famous’ ramen shop, sweet shop, steakhouse, whatever. He finally finds it, talks to the waiter, gets his food. The camera zooms in on it, while an excited announcer describes the ingredients/ special cooking methods. All wait breathlessly as the dude puts the food in his mouth. He pauses. Then, inevitably, he blurts out ‘Umai!’ The address and phone number are then flashed on the screen along with a wide shot of the storefront. And then it’s off to the next restaurant.

  
  

  Now you may be asking “Why the hell would you want to watch a show about somebody you don’t know eating something you can’t have?” I guess the short answer is, in Japan, with a little effort, you can have it. For one thing, a lot of TV is only broadcast to certain regions, so the stuff you see on TV isn’t too far away. For another thing, the GPS systems that most people here have in their cars can take you anywere you have the phone number for. (in theory)

  
  

  Hiro and his wife have made Ramen houses sort of their weekend hobby, and today, armed with a name and phone number they got off the TV a year ago, we headed out to the inaka (even more inaka than where we were already, anyway). It’s raining today, and the droplets streamig down the window obscured the dead rice fields and power lines (so many power lines I’ve never seen before Chiba-ken)  I stared out the window until my eyes unfocused, and about a half hour later Hiro informed me “Ato 100 metoru. Ato ippun”. I looked up expectantly, but when we stopped the car, all I saw was a pizza place. Confused, we asked somebody for directions. We found ourselves in a housing maze. We asked a man with fuzzy speech and a clear umbrella for directions and found ourselved in front of the train station. We asked a young woman at a conbini for a directions and found ourselves in front of a supermarket. We piled out of the car and walked through the drizzle through a nice looking neighborhood that was entirely houses. We asked a buaisou girl with a pout and a polka dot shirt for directions and, voila, were directed to our destination. It was a house, two story and a bit wider than usual, but an ordinary residential house with only a banner announcing its status as an eatery.

  
  

  As I took off my shoes in the genkan, I tried to think of what type of American businesses you might find in a private residence. The only thing I could think of is that I used to get my hair cut in a woman named Jonie’s garage. Do zoning laws prevent things like that?

  
  

  Anyway, I wasn’t done being suprised. After donning the house slippers and shuffling through the sliding door I saw pretty much the exact opposite decor I was expecting at a Ramen place. It was decked out like a fifties diner, with neon signs (true, they said ‘miller time’, but we’ll let that go), fake jukeboxes at each table, and, most impressively, a glass cabinet completely full of old timey metal toys and 50′s robots next to an old coca cola icebox vending machine. There were even a few of those ‘mammy’ salt shakers and figurines that were vogue in the ’30s.

  
  

  A woman in an apron told us which type of ramen was reccomended, and we all ordered it. It came quickly, and was pronounced ‘futsuu’ by Asami and ‘ma-ma’ by hiro. I liked it pretty well, though, especially the noodles. Frankly, after a while its really hard for me to distinguish one bowl of ramen from another. Some standouts include Ippudou (which is a chain), a tiny place we waited an hour for in Sapporo, and the kimchee ramen at an all-nighter in Osaka that I always seem to end up at, no matter who I’m with.

  
  

  As we ate, a train rumbled by not 50 feet from the window, as the beatles played out of a CD player fashioned to look like a tin metal toy radio. Sometimes I wonder if artists ever think about how far their songs might travel. For example, when the Beatle’s wrote and recorded ‘Day Tripper’, could they ever have imagined that it would be played 40 years later at a ramen shop in Middle of Nowhere, Japan in a room full of 50′s robots?

  • 1:52 am
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