abundant mountains

we arrived into toyama train station at 10 on friday night - this had been my first time on a bullet train in japan. very impressive, i think we travelled about 600k across the country in the space of 4 hours - the bullet train only went half of the distance, but in about an hour. built in the 60's they are still impressive (travelling faster than the eurostar i think?); there is a feeling that they were a bit of propaganda at the time - playing on the ever proud nation and instilling the sense of japan leading the world in engineering and technology ...

the trains themselves (and this goes for all the trains) gave me the same sense of frugal comforts that you get all over japan - the chairs are straighbacked and not the most comfortable ... there is a sense the suffering and gain are very close in japanese society ...



toyama is the land of country bumpkins as taro had previously mentioned; tractors are used to clear metres of snow from the roads and people have to shovel their driveways everyday. it means abundant mountains and its two kanji represent this "abundant" 富 "mountain" 山... you can see that mountain is a good example of kanji deriving its shape from the object it represents; two smaller peaks flanking a tall mountain. another example that i spotted (believe it or not) this weekend is the kanji for fire ... 火 ... if you look at it, you can imagine wooden logs with three flames coming out on top ...

we went directly to taro's house for sukiyaki (suki (liking) yaki(grill)). blancs - you took the cooking course in this in tokyo so know more about it than i; this was the first time that i had it. it is basically a hot pot cooked at your table (along the lines of chankonabe that I have mentioned before). the base broth is made fromsardines / bonito (dasche) combined with soy sauce, sugar and sake.it is used to cook a variety of ingredients; noodles, tofu, mushrooms,leek, cabbage, sliced beef etc. as the pot boils you just spoon out whatever you want and eat. we both had little bowls of raw egg into which you dipped your food before eating.

pretty good instructions from the usual companion ..:http://japanesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa053100a.htm

the miyanishi house is very typical; everyone sleeps on futons and the walls are the typical sliding partitions that you see in the movies(photo 30). the house is incredibly cold (blancs you would sufferhere) - there is no plumbed heating, just gas stove burners in each room. i am sure that it was about zero in the room during the night.as long as my head was under the duvets and blankets it was fine ...

the next morning we made udonsuki ... a feature of the ever present japanese ethic not to waste anything. this consisted of taking theremains of the sukiyaki from the night before and reheating and extending with udon noodles for breakfeast. this was incredible -really rich flavours and just what you want at 6.30am when you aregoing out for a day of skiing. as far as i can recall, the first timei ever had udon noodles was in wagamamas in london - i hated them. iam now totally fascinated by them ...

http://www.worldramen.net/Varietion/udon/udons.html

the skiing itself was great - i used carving skis for my first timeand will never go back ... i also made my first real jump and landed on my ass, breaking the skis and thinking that i had broken my shoulder ... very cool ... all was fine.

taro's mum had made us a lunch of onigiri - this is basically the morning's rice pressed into balls the size of you fist ... we agreed that they suffered from a lack of salt, but this is more due to taro's mum's preference rather than any lack of skill. two onigiris each;one with salmon and the other with plumb. this was all we had to eat all day - other than that, we skied nearly 9 hours and never stopped... this is the way that skiing should be done!

i'm not ashamed to say that now, 2 days later my legs are stillaching. we went to a hot spring (onsen) after the skiing - this is the only reason that my legs will not be hurting tomorrow. after sometime outdoors in the hot water pool i was at least feeling more human. this onsen was a little different to the one we went to previously on the izu peninsula; becuase it's so close to the raicho valley ski resort, it was packed - loads of kids and fathers. there was even a place where everyone was washing themselves with soaps (most houses in these areas don't have bathrooms as we know them so bathing opportunities are taken where they are found) ... i'm not sure how successful naked bathing would be at home ...

the next day was the main gastronomic event of the weekend - the trip to toyama for ramen. after 4 weeks of study and tutelage ... how wasi going to stand up to the ultimate test against the philosophy of taro's father?