![]() ![]() ![]() I am still shaking my head in bewilderment at the sheer improbability of it all. ![]() I apologise if this sounds boastful: I don't mean it to. I'll also be discussing the second instalment of Sushi and Beyond, this time featuring the chapters that weren't translated for the first edition, as well as not one but two manga versions of the book. This time, I am set to receive a writing prize, make appearances in book stores in Kyoto and Osaka, and talk to three Japanese TV companies – one about a two-hour special, another about a drama series based on my book (the mind truly boggles), and another about a series following me and my family through Japan again. Coals to Newcastle, and all that.įast forward to the loach restaurant, and, en route, lots of – from what I understand – complimentary reviews and coverage, and I am about to head to Japan for the third time in two years. The book had some nice reviews when it came out in English, sold well enough for my publisher to pay me to write some more books, was translated into a couple of other languages and won a Guild of Food Writers award, but I never thought for a moment that the Japanese would be interested in it. And I even met Japan's most popular boy band, SMAP. Snake soup, deadly fugu, cod sperm, still-twitching sea urchin and endless bowls of ramen and conveyor belts of sushi – we sampled it all. We dined with sumos, centenarians and the free-diving women who harvest abalone from the sea bed, the "Ama" we climbed sacred peaks and massaged Japanese cows we hunted wild wasabi and ate in the restaurant that made Ferran Adrià cry with joy. The book was published in English in 2009 and weaves together a journey I took through Japan over several months with my wife and two young sons with about 40 different stories on the weird and fascinating world of Japanese cuisine. I hesitate to say that I am big in Japan, but since my book, Sushi and Beyond, was published in Japanese a year ago this month, I have been interviewed by the world's most-read newspaper (the Yomiuri Shimbun), and other Japanese publications I am about to make the first of several planned Japanese TV appearances and, most improbably of all, I am about to be turned into a manga character. Thinking about it, wasn't there some kind of racism scandal about Sofia Coppola's film in Japan? Plus, we are in one of Tokyo's oldest restaurants, Komagata Dozeu in Asakusa district, Tokyo, which specialises in serving pond loach (or "dojo" – small freshwater fish with a haunting aftertaste of soil), and the chef and several staff are all hovering by the paper doors of our private tatami room. make it Suntory time", in a bid to flog whiskey.īut, the thing is, I am in Japan, being photographed by a Japanese photographer, with a Japanese art director who's not dissimilar to the one who bosses Murray about in the film, and the staff of a very high-brow Japanese cultural magazine watching. In any other circumstances, I think we can all agree, it is virtually obligatory that while being photographed holding up a glass as if to say, "cheers", someone is required to wheel out Bill Murray's line from Lost In Translation, where the actor's character purrs, "For relaxing times. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |