T A B L E_T A L K Discuss the places you love to loathe in Table Talk's Wanderlust area R E C E N T L Y The big steamy? By Courtney Weaver Searching for sex in New Orleans (02/04/98) Fear, drugs, and soccer in Asia By Karl Taro Greenfeld Hedonistic expats: Fear, drugs and soccer in Asia (02/02/98) I got it online, part 2 By Jenn Shreve Comparing the pros and cons of four Internet travel services (02/02/98) I got it online, part 1 By Jenn Shreve There really are advantages to making your travel plans on the Web (01/30/98) America, grow up! By David Downie The French and Italians decry the Clinton brouhaha (01/29/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Road warrior archives		SOBA, SO GOOD _|_ page 2 of 2 There are about 50 soba restaurants in Nagano, and it is impossible to judge which one is good from the exterior of the building. I would like to recommend here the highly reputed Imamura Kyuichi Soba. Hiromichi Imamura, manager of the restaurant, is utterly weak in foreign languages. When I asked him what he would do during the Olympics, he said, scratching his head, "Oh, I am very concerned, indeed. I can only hope to communicate in terms of feelings." And he continued, "When foreign customers come, I will take them in front to our showcase and ask, 'This? This?'" The stores in Chuou-dori (the main street of Nagano) are conducting the "one store-one country campaign." Each store is appointed to support a country and flies its national flag in the front, with the intention of cheering up the athletes from there. Imamura's restaurant is supporting Russia. Imamura is now practicing the Russian for "this." Nagano is one of the eminent tourist cities in Japan, and a great number of foreign tourists visit there. According to Imamura, tourists from abroad coming to soba restaurants generally seem to know something of the Japanese ways of eating, including how to use Japanese hashi, or chopsticks. Some foreign tourists, however, request a fork and eat soba like spaghetti, so Imamura gets forks ready, too. You can't prepare for everything, though: Zaru-soba is served on a sort of small bamboo screen, similar to a window blind made very tiny, and it is proper to pick the noodle up with the hashi, dip it in a sauce provided in a ceramic cup, then bring it to the mouth. One foreign customer once poured the sauce on the bamboo screen, thereby turning his trousers into zaru-soba! Zaru-soba becomes even more tasty if you add spice to the sauce. Finely cut leek and wasabi (Japanese horseradish) are offered on a small plate. You should add one more seasoning, which comes in a small canister on the table: shichimi-togarashi. Its main ingredient is the same as paprika, but there are six other kinds of pepper in it, which make for its characteristic flavor. Just put a very small amount of it in the sauce. In every soba restaurant in Nagano, the shichimi-togarashi is the product of Yahataya-Isogoro. This is a company dating back 280 years and now run by Akira Muroga, the eighth in the line of proprietors. The store is just in front of Zenkoji temple, the central spot of tourism in Nagano. But the store itself was built only after the Second World War; until then the business was done in a street stall inside the precincts of Zenkoji temple. Since the Edo Period (1603-1867), there has been a custom to go sightseeing under the pretext of a pilgrimage to a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple, and quite a few visitors have flocked to Zenkoji temple. Through the years many vendors have appeared to sell souvenirs around the temple, and Yahataya-Isogoro was among them. Its shichimi-togarashi sold so well that some vendors imitated it, but they disappeared in the end. Yahataya-Isogoro holds the secret about the way of roasting shishito (paprika), the main ingredient, and now it monopolizes the share of shichimi-togarashi in the whole of Nagano prefecture. Muroga is, like Imamura, indecisive about the Olympics. He is not very confident, confessing, "I wonder how the foreign people will value Japanese spice." Since the Shinkansen super express train connecting Tokyo and Nagano opened last autumn, customers -- and sales -- have increased by 30 percent. People in Nagano say, "Hosting the Olympic Games is something like receiving Kurofune (the Black Ships that came from America in 1854 to break Japan's strict isolation policy) in Nagano," implying a fear of great culture shock. They are delighted and anxious at the same time. I tentatively asked Muroga where he came by the peppers for shichimi-togarashi. He said, "I suppose peppers taken in the local district were used in the past, but nowadays only sansho comes from Nagano, whereas the other peppers are imported from abroad. For example, our shishito is cultivated in either China or India, where the Japanese seeds are sent. This is the idea of the cultivation traders, as the labor costs are low there, I imagine." Now, what is the fundamental spirit of the Olympics? Participation from all over the world. Then, it is already realized in a tiny canister of shichimi-togarashi ! Yahataya-Isogoro's shichimi-togarashi will no doubt be welcomed by overseas visitors. (Translated by Nobuya Takahashi) SALON | Feb. 5, 1998 Koji Yoshii is a staff writer for the weekly AERA magazine.