J-Culture Night

In an ongoing attempt to convince the local Japanese population that all Georgians are a bunch of dumb cat food eating rednecks whose idea of fine dining at a foreign restaurant is Taco Bell, last night I ate at Umezono again. With me was my stalwart companion Movie Buddy (henceforth to be called MB), a fellow redneck with a giant white pickup and an appreciation for Japanese culture. Since there were two of us I decided to take advantage of one of the meals you order for the whole table (which requires at least two patrons) and selected the Sukiyaki. Their menu description of the meal follows:

Sukiyaki - Japanese Traditional Hot Pot, "Sukiyaki" is cooked at your table. Sukiyaki: Thinly sliced beef and assorted vegetables with our special Sukiyaki sauce.

Note that it just says it is cooked at your table. It says nothing about who cooks it. I assumed one of the J-usagi would cook it for us, and we might even get a little show in the process, kind of like hibachi dining. Imagine my horror when they deposited a plate of beef, a plate of tofu and veggies, a teapot of sauce, a burner unit, and a sizzling hot metal skillet. Bon appetite!

Side note – the little J-usagi waitress struggled with the heavy skillet. I wanted to play the role of the big strong man and leap in there to help, but I could see the metal was hot and I would have just burned myself and wound up on the ground screaming and crying like a little girl with a skinned knee, which I understand is not very macho and something of a turnoff to most women. If this assumption is wrong, please let me know because I am prepared to scream and cry A LOT if it pleases you. Especially if you’re Asian.

Other side note for the Umezono J-usagi staff – I’m sure customers cooking their own meals are quite common in Japan, but now you’re dealing with the American consumer who is quite possibly the stupidest form of life on this planet, including single-celled organisms and politicians. You just don’t hand us a device with an open flame unless it’s festooned with a thousand warning labels giving us helpful hints like “WARNING – Do not set on fire and shove down your pants” because, if you do, we will do exactly that and then we will get hurt and we will sue you and we will win because this is America. Thank you.

One thing I can say for Western restaurants – even if I’ve never heard of the dish, I can intuit what to do. I know what is food and what is garnish and how to eat most everything with any type of utensil. Every meal I’ve had at Umezono involved venturing into the unknown. Exploring other cultures is usually fun, but sometimes I’d just like to relax and have a nice meal without embarrassing myself in front of a roomful of beautiful women.

They noticed our confusion and gave us a crash course in Sukiyaki-ing. We cooked up thinly sliced beef, green leafy stuff, white leafy stuff, white wormy stuff, purple wormy stuff (my personal favorite), onions (finally – something I could identify), mushrooms, and tofu. They also provided us with an extra set of chopsticks, a slotted spoon, and three bowls. We managed to use all of these items, although I’m not sure if we used them as intended. During the course of the meal, I managed to only embarrass myself a little by dropping the tea pot lid into the skillet with a clatter, mangling some tofu as I attempted to transfer it from plate to skillet, pouring some of the Sukiyaki sauce into my tea which I drank rather than let anyone know, and nearly setting my hair on fire as I bent over my plate in a failed attempt to prevent a bit of tofu from leaping into my lap. MB took some of the attention off me (the waitresses made frequent fly-bys to ensure we weren’t burning their restaurant to the ground) by cooking the second batch and dropping mangled tofu all over the place. We generally make a mess when we eat there, being the dumb rednecks we are.

I shut the burner off when we had eaten our fill (hara hachi bunme – although I think I overshot and went to 90%), and the waitress-usagi all dropped by to express concern over how little we had eaten. We had managed to eat at least half of the vegetables, but more than two-thirds of the beef remained. That’s the one inauthentic thing about Umezono – American portions. “You no finish the beef?” one waitress asked in surprise. She probably wasn’t used to the site of non-Asian patrons stopping before their forks hit the bottom of the plate, but thin sliced or not, that was enough beef to choke a wolverine. Between my “think of the starving children in Africa” upbringing and the entire Umezono wait staff dropping by to make sure we didn’t stop eating because anything was wrong (they make me feel so guilty), I was tempted to fire up the burner and try to finish, but then I thought choking on beef and vomiting on the table might ruin our burgeoning relations. Again, ladies, let me know if you find that sort of thing attractive.

So far I haven’t tried speaking any Japanese in the restaurant. I figure I’m making a big enough fool of myself without mangling their language the way I do the tofu. I just know I’ll try to say “Ita dakimasu” and, with my Southern accent, it will come out something like “Show me your boobies, little bunny babe.” Which would be fine, if it worked.

I left a decent tip (about 22% - I’m trying to aim for generous without looking like I’m trying to pay for sex) (even though I would), and MB and I retired to my apartment, drank a bottle of plum wine, and watched three J-movies from the Pinky Violence series: Sex and Fury (reportedly a major influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, which I can believe), Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture, and Criminal Woman: Killing Melody. Basically, it was four and a half hours of Reiko Ike getting undressed and slicing people into sushi, but it’s foreign film and so it counts as high culture.

Yep. I gots me some culture last night. Watashi wa Nihon-jin desu. Or at least I’m getting there.