Japan in Birmingham: My past echoes back through food, film, music and more
Although I haven’t been to Japan for 24 years, you’ll still find me banging on about it at any given opportunity. This is partly due to a desperate need to seem interesting, and partly because I felt at home there in a way I don’t in Birmingham. The last two decades have been spent, therefore, trying to recreate that high through searching out great Japanese restaurants, books and films, and this week in Japan also felt like a homecoming of sorts. Having read almost every Murakami book, I branched out to Convenience store woman by Sakaya Murata. Konbini (convenience stores) were a large part of my Japanese existence, a fine place to pick up onigiri and shochu while being greeted with a smile and a shouted Irasshaimase (welcome). This meant I already had a head-start in imagining Murata’s character, seemingly a barely-veiled version of herself — a bestselling author who still works in a convenience store for fun. Like a konbini, the book is light-weight but enjoyable, and you can chug down in a day. None-the-less, I wished I’d challenged myself more, such as by reading something by problematic right-wing bully-boy Yukio Mishima. His Sailor who fell from Grace with the sea, helped me rethink the whole meaning of morality, while Murata’s pillorising of Japanese life is as one-dimensional as the advertising boards she mocks.
I was similarly disappointed by the first film I chose — Ryuchi Hiroki’s Ride or Die. Sold to me as a Japanese Thelma and Louise, this revenge-thriller-based-on-a-manga-series, tries to tackle complex issues, while remaining light-hearted, through the medium of blood-splattered eroticism. In the end it does none of them well, but none so badly that it completely fails. After all, the backdrop is still Japan and their road trip still enjoyable to join. It paled in comparison, however, to the life-affirming Perfect Days, Wim Wenders Zen meditation on how to live. It’s a film which needs to be watched with mindfulness — its aim is to challenge the modern world’s preoccupations — more of everything and distractions all the time. I felt they laid on the joy of analogue a bit thick, but maybe that is because I gave my tapes away years ago and am pretty much obsessed with Spotify…
…for example, this week’s playlist is nearly 9 hours long! It brings together songs from 24 years ago until today and covers all kinds of genres. Japan is not just the land of the shakuhachi, they also do dub, punk, chanson, glitch pop and everything in between. Go on… give it a listen and as always let me know if there is a must have song that is missing.
Over the years of this armchair adventure, I have mangled many cultures’ food, but, as with Italy, I feared the Japanese cooking enthusiasts so much that I headed to restaurants instead. Firstly I tried Sushi Passion, an upmarket restaurant with a fine line in Japanese cocktails and sake. Putting myself in their hands, we ordered pretty much every vegan option on the menu including fried sushi covered in panko… which some Japanese friends recoiled at claiming “that’s not sushi”. Suchi or not, it was delicious, as was the Junmai Sake, the Roku Highball and the Yuzu Heishi — made with Japanese vodka and gin. Sadly the Japanese whisky was out of my price range, but luckily this was solved by my brother-in-law who shared a bottle of Fuji single grain whiskey with me. My God the Japanese know how to drink. The second restaurant was, I think, this weeks highlight — Shrewsbury’s all vegan Itadakizen — everything reminded us of Japan, the set lunch bento was like heading back in time and the ramen a bowl of comfort — though as a Takamatsu-native, I don’t think there is a noodle that could beat the udon! If you want to experience proper Takamatsu-style udon head to Marugame Udon in London — a place I sadly had no time to visit on this occasion.
And so, with sadness, I realise it is time to pack away the chopsticks and head to Jordan!
