“Maybe just some tea,” I said.
“The same for me,” Mariko echoed.
“What, don’t you drink?”
“I don’t drink at all,” Mariko said.
“And I rarely drink.”
“Young people who don’t drink. What’s this world coming to?”
I looked at Mariko, a bit concerned that she was going to launch in to a discussion of AA and the reason she doesn’t drink, but instead she just gave a small smile and sat down on a zabuton. I followed suit.
The man said something in Japanese to the woman at the door, who put her hands before her and bowed, then slid the door closed. “I asked her to bring you some tea,” he said. “Then I asked her to start the first course. I hope you’re hungry. I know I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“What are we having?” I asked.
“A pretty traditional Japanese dinner, with some unusual specialties that this restaurant is known for. Actually, the first course will be cold noodles that we dip into a flavored broth. That’s normally a dish we only eat in the summer and typically this restaurant wouldn’t be serving it this late in the season, but because you are visitors to Kyoto I thought you might be interested in seeing how they serve it here.”
How many ways can you serve noodles? I don’t know, but I couldn’t imagine how serving noodles could be a tourist attraction. The door slid open again; it was the young lady again kneeling before the door. This time she had a tray with a simple but beautiful brown teapot and two cups on it. She put the tray down by the table and put the cups before Mariko and me.
They were brown earthen cups, obviously hand-turned. Each was different and each was intended to be a work of art. The teapot was placed on the table, and with another bow to us, the young lady poured the tea. Then she repeated the entire ritual of leaving the room, getting down, bowing, and closing the door.
“Will she do that all night?” Mariko asked.
“Oh yes, it’s an old traditional way of service, but I like old traditional things,” Mr. Sonoda said.
“I once worked at a Japanese restaurant in the States,” Mariko said, “but I don’t know if I could stand an entire evening of that routine. She must do a lot of kneeling, bending, and bowing throughout the course of an evening.”
“Yes, she does. She’ll be helped by others as our meal is served, but I thought it would be fun for you to see this kind of dinner.”
“I’m sure it will be a great experience,” I responded. “Your English is pretty good.”
“I spent twelve years in the United States.”
“On business or in school?”
He laughed. “I went to school long before it was popular for Japanese to go to the United States to get an education. No, I was there on business in the sixties and seventies. I was sent there by the company I used to work for, which was Nissan.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, yes. That’s one reason I was anxious to meet and help you. Nissan is a sponsor for News Pop, and even though I don’t work for Nissan anymore, it’s sort of Japanese loyalty to help you out just because of that connection. I’d be anxious to meet you anyway, because I understand you have one of the Kannemori blades, and that’s a subject that’s fascinated me since childhood.”
“If you were in the United States in the sixties, you must have been there just when Japanese car companies were starting out.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Absolutely when they were starting out. In fact, I was there when we didn’t know anything about the U.S. market. When we first got into the U.S. market, we opened up an office in Gardena, California, on Alondra Boulevard. For a long time that was the national headquarters for Nissan as well as the Southern California sales office.
“As you might know, in Japan we sell cars door-to-door. When someone comes to the door who is interested in buying a car, we arrange a test drive and take things from there. We were so naive about the U.S. market that we actually tried to sell cars door-to-door in Gardena. We realized that Gardena had more Japanese per square mile than any other city in the United States, so we thought it would be a perfect place to launch a Japanese car. Were we wrong.
“First, they don’t sell cars door-to-door in the United States, so when we went around a neighborhood knocking on doors, asking people if they wanted to buy a new car, they thought we were crazy. More important, the fact that there were a lot of Japanese in Gardena actually worked against us. Most of those Japanese had been in the American camps in World War II. Instead of blaming the American government for putting them in the camps, a lot of them were just as mad at Japan for starting the war. They didn’t want to have anything to do with a Japanese car. In almost a year of trying, we never did sell a single car door-to-door. Although a lot of Japanese-Americans eventually did buy our automobiles, the foundation of our success was making products that all Americans wanted to buy, not just Japanese-Americans.”
The door slid open and this time there were two young ladies, the one who brought us the tea and a second one. Instead of being dressed in a kimono, the second woman was dressed in what I’d call a Japanese farmer’s outfit, with a big-sleeved jacket cinched at the waist with a cloth belt and what looked like wraparound pants. In front of them were two straw baskets. One was empty, with a long pair of bamboo chopsticks folded across the top. The other had a large pile of long white noodles in it.
“You might want to see this,” Sonodasan said, getting up from the table. As he did so, the young woman in the Japanese farmer’s outfit picked up the basket of noodles and started off down the hall towards the center of the building at a rapid pace. This action puzzled me and I looked to Sonoda for guidance.
“She’s going to leave the restaurant and run up the mountain with that basket of noodles,” he said.
The woman in the kimono picked up her basket and chopsticks and started down the hall with Mariko, Sonoda-san, and me in tow. She got to the center of the restaurant and took a strip of white cloth from the large sleeve of her kimono. She put one end in her teeth, then she quickly wrapped the cloth around her shoulders. Releasing the end from her teeth, she tied it tight. The effect was to pull up the sleeves of her kimono and expose her arms. I’ve seen the same maneuver in Japanese samurai movies, where they get the long sleeves of the kimono out of the way before they engage in a sword fight.
She went over to the edge of the platform to the gap that divided the two halves of the restaurant and sunk to her knees. She arranged the empty basket next to her and picked up the long chopsticks. Then she stared down into the stream intently. Sonoda-san explained.
“The young woman who went up the mountainside will take the noodles and throw them into the stream in batches. The stream is spring fed and it’s always extremely cold. In fact, when snow runoff feeds the stream it’s absolutely icy. As the noodles come down the mountain in the stream, they’ll not only get washed, they’ll also be chilled. This young lady is going to pluck them out of the stream with chopsticks, and then we’ll go back to the room and eat them with a dipping sauce.”
“You’re kidding.”
Mr. Sonoda smiled. “Just watch.”
What followed was exactly as he described it. Batches of noodles came down the stream and, with an expert hand, the young woman dipped in her chopsticks and fished out the clumps of noodles from the swiftly flowing water. She put the noodles into her basket. The light from the verandah illuminated the stream and I watched very carefully, but only a few noodles escaped her expert ability to pluck them out of the icy water. It was a spectacularly decadent way to end up with a basket of cold noodles.
When the basket was full, the woman stood up and led us back to our room. She served us each a portion of the still cold noodles and gave us a tiny bowl with a sweet soy-flavored dipping sauce that had green onions in it. They were delicious and the show was an extra attraction.