May 12 - Gourmet macrobiotic cuisine, loyal dogs and young adopters

Today, we went to the Meguro area to meet Yuki’s friend Yumiko for a gourmet macrobiotic lunch at the stunning Sheraton Miyako Hotel. She is the owner and chef of a well known vegetarian kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo, has written over six cook books and is currently working on a few others, gives classes during the week that are very popular, writes columns regularly for a number of magazines and has traveled all over the world and lived in different places such as India for a few years learning Indian home cooking from friends. With everything she has on her “plate”, she said she has a great life that includes work and time for fun. Creating food for people is her passion and she does not see this as “work”, although Yuki says she works very hard in the kitchen preparing food. She’s a very warm and genuine person, a free spirit and rebel, who said she hated school and studying and has been cooking from childhood and is self-taught. Yuki said she is very creative, talented and well known, and when she went to NYC she was even interviewed by the NY Times and did a cooking demonstration in the city.

For those who don’t know kaiseki, it evolved from formal styles of Japanese cuisine in the 17th century as a meal before a tea ceremony, and takes the form of many small dishes that are beautifully presented, highlighting the season and using the best quality local and seasonal products.

When asked if she visited Canada, she said she traveled and camped throughout BC and Alberta for three months with her two boys and loved seeing the countryside and enjoying the fresh produce. She looks very young, healthy and vibrant, and says she’s been a vegetarian for over 8 years and eats a bit of fish but mostly she’s vegetarian. Because she is so busy, she only opens her restaurants on the weekends these days and it is always booked up way in advance, so much that Yuki and I can’t even get a reservation while I’m here. But, the good news is that I will be able to accompany Yuki to her cooking class at her restaurant on Wednesday, which will be a real treat. I can’t wait!

Taking the subway home, I saw a very young school girl waiting for the subway by herself and was surprised. Yuki said this is very normal and no one thinks anything of this in a city of 30 million. I said this is the way we were way back but now times have changed unfortunately and cities are not as safe as they were. It's interesting that in one of the largest cities in the world, it still is very safe and everyone is quite respectful and polite to one another even in large crowds or waiting, one of the reasons for their success I think. This girl seemed very relaxed, checking her emails on her cell phone on the platform like most of the other people there.

It’s turned unseasonably cool here and I’ve had to shop for some warm clothing, which is not as easy as it sounds in a city that is full of stores, clothing and consumer products. The first challenge is to find the right area or store area. The Takushimaya and Tokyu and similar large department stores just seem to have designer clothing and no casual clothing, or our kind of real “casual”, with segregated clothing areas for different designers and steep prices. I went into the Shibuya 109 Mall, which is full of shops catering to the late teen/early 20 crowd, with more casual items, though I was overwhelmed with the loud sounds, bright colours, and constant pitches from sales girls to get the attention of the young consumer. Next stop was streets behind the main strips of Shibuya filled with smaller stores, but again for mostly a younger crowd. Actually, the name brand stores like Zara and the Gap proved the best bet to find my sizes. It seems like going beyond a size 6 seems large in Tokyo, but the good news is that you have lots of options if you’re more towards normal sizes and there can even be areas with “sale” signs that you have to check out. To make a long story short, I had to get a new pair of pants because a dog bit me while I was in the countryside on the weekend and left a big gash in my pants and it’s been quite cool in the city. I’m fine, the dog is fine but my pants are not. So, now the emperor has new pants.

I stopped to look at the famous statue of the dog Hachiko by Shibuya station. If you are dog lover, do you have a kleenex? This dog used to wait for his owner every night after work and one day the owner died, and he still waited for his owner every night for more than a decade. After his death, this statue was placed here to commemorate his loyalty and life, and is a popular meeting area.

In the evening, I went to a cooking demonstration by Yuki at her school to introduce people to living and raw foods, provide a cooking demo, and give out samples. It was another opportunity to see Yuki in action, learn a few things, and try out some more raw samples as well. My learnings and eating really inspire me to learn more about and cook raw food when I get back.