The highs and lows of veganism in Japan
I haven't posted anything for slightly over a week because nothing much has been happening. There were some interesting stories from work, but I have been working 11- or 12- hour days recently, so I have been too tired to even turn on my computer lately. Yesterday I had such a stark contrast of culinary experiences that I felt compelled to write it up.
My day started out when the newspaper guy crammed yesterday's paper into the mail slot in my door. There is a spring-loaded metal strip embedded in the door that makes a racket every time this happens, so my eyes shot open shortly after 5:35 am. I managed to fall back asleep for another hour or so, but eventually I was just lying in bed wishing I were sleeping. Two hours of this, and I felt the urge to talk to somebody, so I called Anna even though I knew she would be sleeping. I let the phone ring 14 times or so before I heard the sound of clattering plastic on the other end as she struggled to wake up and answer the phone. We talked for a little while about what we did on Friday night but eventually she said that she wanted to get more sleep, so I let her go. I waited until 9:00 or so, then called my friend Shannen to see if she felt like playing some soccer or hackysacking. I managed to wake her up too, but she agreed to play after she woke up in a few hours. Bored stiff in my apartment, I decided to hop on my bike and ride around the town. First I went to a convenience store downtown to get some money and some breakfast. I had a nine-grain breakfast roll, a konbu onigiri, a green-tea flavored dairyless pudding-like concoction, and a steamed bun filled with sweet-bean paste (anman). Unexpectedly, at that time in the morning more foreigners seem to be roaming the streets than Japanese; in the ten minutes it took me to withdraw some money, buy the food, and eat it, I ran into and talked briefly with my Australian friend Tracey and my Texan friend Daniel. My British friend Jason also drove by on the other side of the road on his bike in the same time period.
As I was eating, something sort of funny happened. Generally in Japan people don't eat on the street unless there is a festival or event going on, in which case there are many yatai (push-carts) selling various foods and everybody eats in public. I understood this, but there were no parks around, and I was really fucking hungry, so I just found the closest bench and dug in. That bench happened to be in front of a bank, so early-morning customers kept passing me as I ate. For the most part we ignored each other, but there was one interesting exception. A man had pulled his car up near the bench, and got out of the car. He had almost made it to the sidewalk to the left of my bench when he saw me, upon which recoiled, returning quickly to his car. I had just showered the night before, was wearing clean if not particularly stylish clothing, and was eating in what could be regarded as a tasteful manner. It seemed like he was looking for something in his car for a good while, before exiting the car again and walking quickly past me. Probably he hadn't seen me at first and just got a start; maybe he had forgotten his card. But I couldn't helping wonder whether he thought I was going to mug him or something.
After eating, I biked around the city, looking for open stores in vain, eventually deciding to practice lifting ("juggling" a soccer ball with your knees, feet, head, etc.) in the park by myself. I got tired and hot after 45 minutes or so, and decided to go home. On my way home I passed the studio (where Taka's mother teaches drawing and painting) and ended up talking with Fumiko (i.e. Taka's mom) for a long time. Shannen called me after an hour or so and invited me to get to lunch at a tōfu restaurant. I wasn't expecting that much, but it was amazing! A full-course lunch, 80% vegan, for 1500 yen ($14). They were really nice and offered to substitute vegetable tempura for the soba, which had fish extract (katsuobushi) in the sauce. I ate myself silly but it was all healthy. It had been a long time since I have been able to eat everything served to me in a restaurant.
Later on that evening I went out with Taka, Aki, and Hide. I hate to interrupt the story but just realized that maybe I should explain the pronunciation of their names. Taka is like "tah-tah" with Calipso added on, stress on the first syllable: TAH-ca (these rhyme). Aki has the same vowel sound, with "key" added on: A-ki. Hide is not the same as the English word to conceal; it's two syllables: he/she+deference. I think the stress is on the first syllable but I haven't paid enough attention to know for sure. Back to the story - so we went out to an izakaya downtown, and each ordered something. They routinely get sashimi (刺身), so I am used to it, but what came out on the plate was a little bit fresher than the standard fare. Behind the pile of fish slices, the fish's head and tail were visible. There was a bit of lettuce in the middle so I couldn't see the whole fish, but I thought the effect was supposed to be as though the fish were whole. I've seen that before so it didn't bother me particularly. They seemed a little bit nervous and I wondered why, because they always eat fish in front of me and never worry about it. Aki and Taka muttered something about how they thank the fish for its life before eating it, which was also strange in context. Although we have talked about veganism many times, they don't usually thank the fish, so I thought something strange was going on. I saw Taka pointing to the fish's head, and Hide was looking quizzically at it. I was curious too so I watched where he was pointing. About ten seconds went by and nothing happened.
Then the fish squirmed and opened its mouth as if gasping for air.
For the next ten minutes, it continued to die slowly in agony as the majority of its flesh, piled neatly in two stacks several inches from its head (and in view of the dying fish), were consumed. Were the fish able to understand English, and had it an extraordinarily black sense of humor, it might have taken some small amount of comfort in the fact that its meat was being enjoyed. Judging from appearances and some basic knowledge of biology, that did not seem to be the case. Even after ten minutes, when the tastiest parts had been devoured, it was still gasping and squirming. I imagined myself as the fish as chopsticks or a knife dug relentlessly inside my mutilated body, satiated customers laughing in the background. I felt sick to my stomach and left suddenly.
It's one thing to understand the basic process by which animals are transformed into food. For somebody like me, it's quite another to see it happening. In the past, I have gone through various stages of involvement in the animal rights cause. When I first got started at 16, I bought, watched, and showed videos of fur farms and slaughterhouses, I devoured books documenting the horrors of experimentation on animals, made a website about animal rights for my senior project, found a way of writing papers about animal rights even in economics and English literature classes, wrote essays about the economic, social, political, and environmental benefits that could be gained by a world more compassionate toward animals, tried to start an animal rights group at my school, etc. Since then my activism has tapered off and I have felt pretty guilty about that. An episode like last night just might be the shock I needed to hone my convictions about what is right and what is wrong.
In the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.
To calm my nerves, I walked about 45 minutes to the next town to a video rental shop and got a movie called Appleseed. The animation is all 3D and incredible. I only understood about 50% of the Japanese; it's a futuristic science fiction action movie so there were all sorts of scientific lingo I didn't understand. Even so it was greatly enjoyable and I recommend it, but the people I've told about this blog don't tend to be into that sort of movie so I guess it's a moot point. Laura, if you run into Nick, make sure you tell him that he had better see this movie or else!
My day started out when the newspaper guy crammed yesterday's paper into the mail slot in my door. There is a spring-loaded metal strip embedded in the door that makes a racket every time this happens, so my eyes shot open shortly after 5:35 am. I managed to fall back asleep for another hour or so, but eventually I was just lying in bed wishing I were sleeping. Two hours of this, and I felt the urge to talk to somebody, so I called Anna even though I knew she would be sleeping. I let the phone ring 14 times or so before I heard the sound of clattering plastic on the other end as she struggled to wake up and answer the phone. We talked for a little while about what we did on Friday night but eventually she said that she wanted to get more sleep, so I let her go. I waited until 9:00 or so, then called my friend Shannen to see if she felt like playing some soccer or hackysacking. I managed to wake her up too, but she agreed to play after she woke up in a few hours. Bored stiff in my apartment, I decided to hop on my bike and ride around the town. First I went to a convenience store downtown to get some money and some breakfast. I had a nine-grain breakfast roll, a konbu onigiri, a green-tea flavored dairyless pudding-like concoction, and a steamed bun filled with sweet-bean paste (anman). Unexpectedly, at that time in the morning more foreigners seem to be roaming the streets than Japanese; in the ten minutes it took me to withdraw some money, buy the food, and eat it, I ran into and talked briefly with my Australian friend Tracey and my Texan friend Daniel. My British friend Jason also drove by on the other side of the road on his bike in the same time period.
As I was eating, something sort of funny happened. Generally in Japan people don't eat on the street unless there is a festival or event going on, in which case there are many yatai (push-carts) selling various foods and everybody eats in public. I understood this, but there were no parks around, and I was really fucking hungry, so I just found the closest bench and dug in. That bench happened to be in front of a bank, so early-morning customers kept passing me as I ate. For the most part we ignored each other, but there was one interesting exception. A man had pulled his car up near the bench, and got out of the car. He had almost made it to the sidewalk to the left of my bench when he saw me, upon which recoiled, returning quickly to his car. I had just showered the night before, was wearing clean if not particularly stylish clothing, and was eating in what could be regarded as a tasteful manner. It seemed like he was looking for something in his car for a good while, before exiting the car again and walking quickly past me. Probably he hadn't seen me at first and just got a start; maybe he had forgotten his card. But I couldn't helping wonder whether he thought I was going to mug him or something.
After eating, I biked around the city, looking for open stores in vain, eventually deciding to practice lifting ("juggling" a soccer ball with your knees, feet, head, etc.) in the park by myself. I got tired and hot after 45 minutes or so, and decided to go home. On my way home I passed the studio (where Taka's mother teaches drawing and painting) and ended up talking with Fumiko (i.e. Taka's mom) for a long time. Shannen called me after an hour or so and invited me to get to lunch at a tōfu restaurant. I wasn't expecting that much, but it was amazing! A full-course lunch, 80% vegan, for 1500 yen ($14). They were really nice and offered to substitute vegetable tempura for the soba, which had fish extract (katsuobushi) in the sauce. I ate myself silly but it was all healthy. It had been a long time since I have been able to eat everything served to me in a restaurant.
Later on that evening I went out with Taka, Aki, and Hide. I hate to interrupt the story but just realized that maybe I should explain the pronunciation of their names. Taka is like "tah-tah" with Calipso added on, stress on the first syllable: TAH-ca (these rhyme). Aki has the same vowel sound, with "key" added on: A-ki. Hide is not the same as the English word to conceal; it's two syllables: he/she+deference. I think the stress is on the first syllable but I haven't paid enough attention to know for sure. Back to the story - so we went out to an izakaya downtown, and each ordered something. They routinely get sashimi (刺身), so I am used to it, but what came out on the plate was a little bit fresher than the standard fare. Behind the pile of fish slices, the fish's head and tail were visible. There was a bit of lettuce in the middle so I couldn't see the whole fish, but I thought the effect was supposed to be as though the fish were whole. I've seen that before so it didn't bother me particularly. They seemed a little bit nervous and I wondered why, because they always eat fish in front of me and never worry about it. Aki and Taka muttered something about how they thank the fish for its life before eating it, which was also strange in context. Although we have talked about veganism many times, they don't usually thank the fish, so I thought something strange was going on. I saw Taka pointing to the fish's head, and Hide was looking quizzically at it. I was curious too so I watched where he was pointing. About ten seconds went by and nothing happened.
Then the fish squirmed and opened its mouth as if gasping for air.
For the next ten minutes, it continued to die slowly in agony as the majority of its flesh, piled neatly in two stacks several inches from its head (and in view of the dying fish), were consumed. Were the fish able to understand English, and had it an extraordinarily black sense of humor, it might have taken some small amount of comfort in the fact that its meat was being enjoyed. Judging from appearances and some basic knowledge of biology, that did not seem to be the case. Even after ten minutes, when the tastiest parts had been devoured, it was still gasping and squirming. I imagined myself as the fish as chopsticks or a knife dug relentlessly inside my mutilated body, satiated customers laughing in the background. I felt sick to my stomach and left suddenly.
It's one thing to understand the basic process by which animals are transformed into food. For somebody like me, it's quite another to see it happening. In the past, I have gone through various stages of involvement in the animal rights cause. When I first got started at 16, I bought, watched, and showed videos of fur farms and slaughterhouses, I devoured books documenting the horrors of experimentation on animals, made a website about animal rights for my senior project, found a way of writing papers about animal rights even in economics and English literature classes, wrote essays about the economic, social, political, and environmental benefits that could be gained by a world more compassionate toward animals, tried to start an animal rights group at my school, etc. Since then my activism has tapered off and I have felt pretty guilty about that. An episode like last night just might be the shock I needed to hone my convictions about what is right and what is wrong.
In the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.
To calm my nerves, I walked about 45 minutes to the next town to a video rental shop and got a movie called Appleseed. The animation is all 3D and incredible. I only understood about 50% of the Japanese; it's a futuristic science fiction action movie so there were all sorts of scientific lingo I didn't understand. Even so it was greatly enjoyable and I recommend it, but the people I've told about this blog don't tend to be into that sort of movie so I guess it's a moot point. Laura, if you run into Nick, make sure you tell him that he had better see this movie or else!
posted by jeremy at 9:28 AM
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