The local stuff...

There are a millions interesting things I could write about over the past couple months, including a trip to Okinawa for Christmas to see the fam, a nice Japanese New Years in Tokamachi, some good skiing and some good times.

But I'll just write about what I did this Thursday night, tonight. Nothing interesting, just a night across the street.

My car was parked in again so instead of going out for dinner I skipped over to the very local izakaya. It had been a long time. I'm usually not sure what to expect when I go in there. It is usually a crapshoot of local izakaya food - like whale blubber or pig guts - or a strange conversation or experience. But that's what makes it worthwhile. It's always something to remember.

I went in and only one guy was sitting at the counter, the owner and president of my favorite sake company, Tenjinbayashi. He is an older man with a sullen face, and always looks lonely. I've never seen him accompanied by another person. He is outwardly gruff and cold looking. The wrinkles in his face are deep and his eyes are heavy and sunken. He is not someone you would approach from appearance alone.

Yet I've always liked him. He seems like a very natural man to me. There is no outward illusion or effort. He just is who he is. My main memory of him is when he gave my dad and I a tour of his factory. He wasn't outwardly friendly but just showed us around. He tried to explain things to me that he knew I probably wouldn't understand. At the end of the tour he gave us a sampling of his finest sake, then gifted me with 4 bottle of his finest reserves, worth hundreds of dollars. He was a kind man who didn't care if he was seen as so. His actions were what spoke.

Tenjinbayashi is the local Nakajo firewater and it's made down the street. It's the only stuff I ever bring home. It's turned into a fierce and heartfelt brand loyalty.

Recently I realized that I've been living in the Bordeaux of Japanese sake and I don't know anything about the stuff, other than the tours of the local brewery. So I found a book about nihonshu in English and started to study up on it. I learned some terminology and the different kinds of sake there are out there. I didn't know it, but the world of sake can be as over detailed and snobby as the world of wine.

When I saw him in the bar I wanted to ask some questions like a student meeting a master. We exchanged New Year's greetings because it's been a while sinced we drank together. After that I started asking about this type and this type of sake. What rice is it made from? What's your specialty? What are you drinking now?

I had ordered a beer but of course he had a flask and cup of sake in front of him, and I was thinking it was probably the good stuff. He was a brewmaster and owner of a well known sake company, he must know what he's doing.

"Nah, I'm drinking the cheap stuff! No one around here can afford the stuff I make," he said.

I was surprised. The stuff he was drinking probably came out of a box. It was like a master microbrewer drinking Bud Light.

"Fair enough," I thought. Even the cheap stuff is pretty good when it's warm. He ended up treating me to four flasks of it (that's why I like going there...one way or another there is always free sake in my glass). I ate some local fare with it and started talking with him. With local older guys in an izakaya, it's not so much talking as listening. Depending on how thick their dialect is, it's not so easy to understand. Older guys seem to have their own garbled language, and when they've been drinking it sounds like they are speaking with a mouth full of burning hot peanut butter.

What I like about the sake guy is that he talks to me like a local. Part of the problem with talking to locals is they assume you only understand 5% of what they are saying, which is sometimes true, but they let the differences in our race backgrounds precede the possibility for natural conversation. I always appreciate it when people talk to me like they don't care where I'm from; Mr. Sake-man always talks to me like he talks to his old drunk friends, and I enjoy it. I don't always understand, and it often turns into background noise as though his words are coming from a distant radio, but I still nod and agree and somehow we communicate. This is real local Japanese inaka life. We ate and we drank and we carried on. We laughed even if I didn't quite know what we were laughing at.

After hours of this I walked home through the thick Nakajo fog. The cheap sake clouded my head like the thick local accent he spoke. He was just happy to have someone to talk to and share his company on a foggy weeknight, and I guess I was too.