Japan, I didn't go ありがとございました!

Surgery, Pico Iyer, and a dinner party. One of many fun adventures in the kitchen inspired by a collection of seventy-two dolls from around the world.

Jan 21, 2024

YOLO: No regrets

I can gratefully say I don’t have a list of regrets. It’s not that I’ve done everything ‘right,’ but more that I tend to see my wandering path as an organic unfolding that has allowed me to be here, which is a nice place to be. I can and often do imagine other lives for myself - there are so many ways to be a human adult in the world! - but I don’t have much willingness to wonder about what might have been.

Last year at this time, I was dealing with the first serious health issue of my adult life. Gratefully the surgeon’s confidence proved to be sound and my insides are much improved thanks to the procedure, but going under general anesthesia was no joke. I felt at the time and still now understand that this first surgery was a baby step in the process of accepting the inevitable end of my one precious life. It was a chance to practice letting go.

So in those dark hours before dawn, as I prepared to leave for the hospital, I took time to say my prayers of thanks. Because I didn’t know what the biopsy of the mass being removed would reveal, I also paused to reflect on what really matters to me. It was a good exercise and I took it on calmly. I felt light-hearted and truly content, which is a nice thing to be able to say. But that’s why I know, there is this one regret I harbor.

It’s a silly regret of probably little consequence, but so it goes.

I didn’t go to Japan

All as a long way of saying that, if I had a bucket list, going to Japan would be on it.

I regret I didn’t jump at the generous invitation to visit my multi-talented friend Laura when she was living in Japan. Just as I started my first salaried-job with limited vacation days, she was having fun in the music scene of the early 2000s, first establishing ArcTokyo Music Productions and later the Taico Club Music Festival, which brought together fans of electronic music through 2017. It would have been fun.

But at age 49, I don’t regret things so much as daydream, fantasize, and scheme for wide open spaciousness. I wish for Time. I plot out ways to live the writer’s dream life, a life where there are hours I can spend essentially in stillness, conjuring up stories from past adventures and travels.

Pico Iyer is a lifelong traveler and travel writer who I admire. He has been everywhere and done all sorts of cool things (like wander the globe with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama). Where he chooses to live is Japan.

Iyer wrote a small book, intentionally short so it can be read easily in one or two sittings, based on his TED talk, called “The Art of Stillness.” My copy has loads of underlines and exclamation points in the margins from different times I’ve picked it up, including a quote that inspired me at one point to take my own enjoyment of travel writing more seriously.

Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into the lasting insights.” - Pico Iyer

If you allow me a little bit of a stretch, I’d say that the project of focusing on one doll, from one country, collected as part of my father’s lifetime of travel seemingly everywhere, doing all sorts of cool things, is converting his wanderings, and my relationship to them, into deeper insights.

Iyer writes that while movement used to be the greatest luxury, nowadays it is the chance to sit still that feels like the ultimate prize. I can relate a bit, thanks to the incredible luxury I’ve already enjoyed, thanks in large part to my father.

But back to Japan, where I didn’t yet go but would very much enjoy the chance to go someday. When I think of Japan, I imagine Pico Iyer in a simple little house with a view of the mountains and, as he says, “freedom from distraction and complication.”

But for this Doll Collection Dinner, I learned that simply cooking rice in Japan can be Very Complicated!

What is a Doll Collection Dinner?

If you are new to Wanderlife and my wild adventures in the kitchen inspired by a collection of 72 dolls from around the world, check out this post about the first doll and how it all started!

Are you are thinking of someone you know who might enjoy reading this? Please share! I think it would be fun to grow this little Wanderlife community a bit! Thanks!

As I’ve mentioned, those alluring islands in the northern Pacific Ocean are unfamiliar to me personally. But my dad has been there, and in 1993 he brought me a doll for my collection.

Working my way through the dolls with my family, one meal at a time, offered the excuse to get the inside scoop from some friends who just returned from a year living in Tokyo and exploring Japan. She in particular was really excited by Japanese cuisine, but also had learned how to work within the tastes of her young, less-excited son.

When I texted to invite the family to dinner, she responded immediately with a proposed menu:

“What is very Japanese is having five little plates instead of one big plate. The five things could be: salmon sashimi, shio koji marinated chicken, miso soup, pickled cucumbers, and a bowl of white rice. I can bring our complicated-looking Japanese rice cooker that sings a little song when the rice is ready!” - Emily

And she promised to bring her favorite saké to drink. Amazing, right!?

Dan, Emily, and Jake with a delicious bottle of sake, or Japanese rice wine.

So of course I texted Laura for some music recommendations for our dinner party! She shared “ballads for eating and beats for before and after,” ie Spotify playlists like Fresh Japanese Hip Hop and Clubjazz Japan, as well as the hot tip I pass along here: YouTube the TAICO CLUB FESTIVAL.

For immediate gratification, I offer this song by the Japanese girl band Chai, which kept our spirits up when we started reading recipes!

Japanese Doll Dinner Prep Begins

The "Oriental Shop" in our town stocks only Japanese imports. It's small but mighty and we got miso, shio koji, katsuobushi, kombu, wakame, etc.

We used recipes from a Japanese food blog called "Just One Cookbook." The instructions for how to make sushi rice were VERY detailed, specific, and still somehow not fully complete for those of us who don't know all the standard Japanese cultural knowledge about making rice.

We learned the goal was shiny rice. This takes some work, including cooling the rice quickly and slicing the rice vinegar into the rice instead of stirring it. There are, of course, special Japanese tools for all of this, but we made do. The rice we made was indeed shiny in the end and the maki sushi rolls were delicious.

Doll Dinner: Japan

We didn’t make anything exceptional or particularly exotic to the average semi-adventurous American eater, but we made everything really carefully, using the specifications of Just One Cookbook created by Namiko Hirasawa Chen. Her focus is on authentic and modern Japanese recipes, and with each dish, and every ingredient, she offers readers insights into Japan itself through cultural, historical, geographic and anthropological details. All the links and facts were a little distracting and each explanation seemed possibly more complicated than necessary, but we feel like we got a real taste of Japan.

Here are the recipes from our Five Small Plates meal:

Maki Sushi – Hosomaki 細巻き with sushi rice made like this
Shio Koji Chicken 塩麹チキン
Homemade Miso Soup 味噌汁
Japanese Cucumber Salad 酢の物
Salmon Sashimi
White Rice

It was as simple and good as it looks! Our friends brought some extremely and intensely salty and shriveled pickled plums for dessert, which we paired with some silly Japanese gummy candies that tasted of different kinds of grapes from the Oriental Shop.

ありがとございました = Thank You in Japanese

Thank you for reading and for being part of Wanderlife. There are more dolls and more countries to explore. What do you want to hear more about? Tell me in the comments!

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