Etiquette at a nomikai (drinking party) demands that one doesn’t pour one’s own drink. Instead, one is supposed to offer to fill the glasses of others for them. Traditionally, younger colleagues pour for those higher up, writes SANDEEP GOYAL. The nomikai is one of the traditions that inspired Japan Made Easy, a book that talks about the culture, customs and traditions of a country that is so opaque and insular to the world. An edited excerpt:
Hara ga hettewa ikusa wa dekinu simply means ‘you cannot fight a battle on an empty stomach’. There is a lot of focus on food in Japan. The Japanese love their traditional fare. But some of it is changing.
Eating habits of the average Japanese have been changing quite rapidly since the Second World War. A typical Japanese breakfast fifty years ago was gohan (boiled rice), misoshiru (bean paste soup), nattou (fermented beans), oshinko (pickles), yakinori (toasted seaweed), yakizakana (broiled fish), namatamago (raw egg), tofu (bean curd), clams and some radish. Today, there is very little time to put together such an elaborate menu every morning. In fact, now, the number of people who partake in a Western-style breakfast with bread, rolls, cereal and eggs far exceeds those who have a traditional breakfast with rice every day.
During the catching-up phase of the Japanese economy in the 1950s and 1960s, most companies set up inexpensive and convenient shain shokudou, or canteens, for employees within their office buildings. With increasing options to choose from all around, and with a higher propensity to spend, shain shokudou in recent years were looked upon as the last resort for lunch — to be used only if you do not have enough time to go out, or if you do not have enough money to spend. But now, shain shokudou are back. They are upgrading their quality and starting to compete with restaurants outside. The good ones are well publicised and have started to attract outsiders. Nowadays, you can even find shain shokudou rankings on the internet!
In the case of Tanita Corporation, a manufacturer of digital scales, the recipe book of their health conscious shain shokudou has become a national bestseller, and sold close to 5 million copies.
But it is the bento, or more often adding a prefix of politeness, obento, that is the time-honoured treasure of the Japanese food culture. The most basic, simple, primitive, traditional and symbolic prototype of an obento is the hinomaru. It’s just boiled white rice squeezed into an obento box with a red pickled plum on top. It’s called hinomaru obento, or rising-sun box lunch, because the red plum in the middle of white rice resembles the Japanese national flag. But, actually, nobody takes the hinomaru obento seriously any more. There is an enormous choice of ingenious obento you could buy at convenience stores, supermarkets, department stores, privately run obento shops, obento shop chains, and carts on the streets.
The favourite genre of obento among the Japanese is probably the ekiben, or railroad station box lunch. From time immemorial, these were the original obento sold at each station of long-distance express lines, reflecting local cuisine, in order to serve the passengers on board. Now, the ekiben are becoming so popular that their distribution is expanding to highway rest areas, department stores and even the internet. In fact, it is fashionable now for famous department stores to hold ekiben fairs bringing different kinds of ekiben from all over Japan under their roof. Such fairs always attract enormous crowds.
OCHA
Ocha simply means ‘tea’.
But it specifically refers to Japanese tea, which is by default Japanese green tea. Since sencha is the most common type of green tea in Japan, ocha generally refers to sencha.
Nowadays in Japan, there are infinite kinds of beverages to choose from. Besides the innumerable brands of beverages in pet bottles sold at convenience stores and supermarkets, many cafés and vending machines serve beverages on street corners too. But if you ask what is Japan’s favourite beverage of all time, the answer is green tea. Among all kinds of pet bottled beverages sold today, green tea is by far the best-est seller!
It is believed that, like many other things, tea came to Japan from China. The history of tea in Japan can be tracked down to even before the Nara period (710-794 AD), when it was imported at the time of the Tang dynasty in China. But the history of tea as we know it today, started around the thirteenth century, imported along with Zen Buddhism, this time from the Sung dynasty of China.
The Japanese tea ceremony is well-known worldwide today. The tea imported from China spread among the ruling class: namely, aristocrats and warriors. And in the fifteenth century, under the reign of Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikaga (1436-1490 AD), the prototype of the tea ceremony was established by a Zen monk, Jukou Murata. In the sixteenth century, the genius Sen No Rikyuu (1522-1591 AD) appeared and brushed the style to today’s perfection.
In the Edo period, the habit of consuming tea trickled down to the rest of the people too. Today, in most Japanese homes and offices you visit, the first thing you are served is a cup of tea. Many Japanese restaurants serve green tea for free while you are checking the menu. You shouldn’t be surprised if a coffee shop offers you a free cup of green tea after you have finished a cup of coffee! Such is the ubiquity of ocha.
When a Japanese acquaintance asks you, ‘Ocha ikanai?’ or ‘Don’t you want to go have some tea?’, the meaning is not to be taken literally but that you are being invited for a conversation at a café. In this context, ocha means not only green tea but coffee, black tea or whatever you prefer to have at the café. Since Japanese homes and offices tend to be small due to the high prices of real estate, you find businessmen discussing business, couples gazing at each other lovingly, students studying, jobless ramblers resting, leisured housewives killing time at a café. It serves as an outsourced guestroom of the Japanese household.
There are many varieties of ocha available in Japan. Besides the ever-favourite sencha, gyokuro is the most precious and highly revered of the regularly served Japanese teas. Young buds, that too of only the finest and oldest tea plants, are cultivated with care and expertise. The result is a rare and expensive brew, sipped in tiny quantities, one sip at a time. You can also choose from a large selection of bancha, honcha, genmai cha, mugicha, matcha, kobucha and kocha. Cheers!
SAKE
Sake, as most of us would know, is ‘liquor’.
Sake in Japanese stands for ‘liquor’, also pronounced shu, and can refer to any alcoholic drink. In English, ‘sake’ is usually a reference to nihonshu, or ‘Japanese liquor’, and invariably just means rice wine. Under Japanese liquor laws, sake is labelled with the word seishu (‘clear liquor’), a synonym less commonly used in conversation. In Japan, sake is the national beverage. It is often served with great ceremony — gently warmed in a small earthenware or porcelain bottles or flasks called a tokkuri, and then sipped from a small porcelain cup called a sakazuki (also choko).
In order to ask for sake in Japan, you need to call it ‘nihonsyu’ or ‘Japanese sake’. You may be asked at a restaurant, Osake (remember the prefix ‘o’ of politeness?) wa nani ni nasaimasuka?’, or ‘What do you want for a sake?’ Then he (or she) is asking you to choose from beer, wine, whisky, sake, or whatever other alcoholic beverages there are on the menu.
There are, of course, many types of sake to choose from. There is amazake, a traditional sweet, low-alcoholic Japanese drink made from fermented rice. There is doburoku, the classic home-brew style of sake. Then there is jizake, a locally brewed sake, the equivalent of micro-brewed beer. Kuroshu is sake made from unpolished rice. And then there are specialities like Teiseihaku-shu, a sake with a characteristic flavour of the rice itself.
In Japan, sake is served chilled (reishu), at room temperature (joon or hiya), or heated (atsukan), depending on the preference of the drinker, the quality of the sake, and the season. Typically, hot sake is a winter drink, and high-grade sake is not drunk hot, because the flavours and aromas would then be lost. This masking of flavour is the reason that low-quality and old sake is often served hot.
Sake is traditionally drunk from small cups called choko or o-choko, and is poured into the choko from ceramic flasks called tokkuri. Another traditional cup type is the masu, where the box is usually made of hinoki or sugi, originally used in olden days to measure rice. The masu cup is crafted to hold exactly 180 ml (6.3 imp fl oz; 6.1 US fl oz). And, as tradition goes, the sake is served by topping the masu to the brim. There are sakazuki cups too shaped almost like saucers. These are favourites at weddings and other ceremonial occasions, especially at the start of the year or at the commencement of a kaiseki meal.
Sake is an intrinsic part of Shinto purification rituals. Sakes served to gods as offerings prior to drinking are called o-miki or miki. People drink omiki toasting the gods to solicit rich harvests in the coming year.
In a ceremony called kagami biraki, wooden casks of sake are broken open with mallets during every kind of Shinto celebration: traditional festivals, weddings, shop openings, sporting events, poll victories, and much more. This sake, called iwai-zake (celebration sake), is served freely amongst all to spread good fortune.
New Year’s day is the occasion for the Japanese to drink a special sake called toso. Toso is a special variety of iwai-zake. It is traditionally made by soaking tososan, an old Chinese powder-like potion, overnight in sake. Even children sip some of this. In some regions, the first sips of toso are taken in order of ascending age, from the youngest to the oldest.
Excerpted with permission from Sandeep Goyal’s Japan Made Easy, HarperCollins India, Rs 399
