Tofu adventures in Oita, Japan

PAUL HADDEN

From the journal: May, 2019

It’s a beautiful spring morning here in Oita, Japan. I am standing in the empty car park of my school, leaning on the cool frame of my little Honda Life, a car so small that it would be banned from the roads back home in Trinidad, and am waiting on my friend to come and pick me up. I have just finished chatting with my family back home, and because of the time difference our nights and days are totally switched and as I am preparing to begin my day, they are getting ready to go to sleep. It’s funny how the sounds of the tiny tree frogs in the background always seem to make me homesick.

Here, as dawn continues to break and the last of the twinkling stars disappear into the purple sky, it is not the tree frogs, but the sounds of the chirping cicadas that will keep me company. If there was one sound that truly captures the essence of the Japanese summer, it is the cicada. As one of colleagues loudly exclaimed in the staffroom the other day, “
Natsu toieba, semi da!” which can be taken to mean something like, “Summer and cicadas sure do go hand in hand!”

That I am waiting in this empty car park on a Saturday morning is all due to a spontaneous invitation from one of my work colleagues to join her on a road trip to get, “some of the best tofu in all of Oita.” Shocked that I had never tried tofu before arriving in Japan, my colleague, Takeshita-san, told me that she knew of a hidden gem up in the mountains on the way to one of Oita’s most famous waterfalls (Haraji falls, which is also known as the Niagara falls of Japan) The tofu shop, which apparently is frequented by bikers in the area, is known for their delicious age-tofu (fried-tofu), tofu purin (tofu pudding) as well as hot, fresh tofu donuts. I immediately jumped at the opportunity.

“Ohayou gozaimaisu!” yells out Takeshita-san from her massive four wheel drive Suburu, as she pulls up next to my dinky little Honda Life. “
Ikimashou ka?” “Shall we go?” she says, and with a resounding “Yes!” I hop into her car and off we go to find this hidden gem of a tofu shop. Along the way and throughout all of the winding mountain paths, Takeshita-san chats to me all about life in Oita, and I try my best to concentrate on what she is saying even though I am completely wrapped up in the magnificent scenery which surrounds us. Here is a wild overwhelming beauty of ancient mountains punctuated with waterfalls, sprawling rice paddies, and roads lines with giant pine trees.

Takeshita-san is a biker herself, and has been holding her own as a female biker in a world which is mostly dominated by men, most of whom tend to be a bit rough around the edges. This has never held her back, she explains, and since she was in her early twenties, her trusty motorcycle has taken her all the way from the frozen tip of northern Japan, right to the bottom of Kyushu island. The thought of a tofu restaurant being a meeting point for bikers strikes me as a little odd, but then again I know that there are so many things about my own cultural quirks that strike them as bizarre too. If it’s one thing that living abroad teaches you, it’s that most things are all about perspective. One man’s weird is definitely another’s normal.

After a few hours (yes, a few hours – Oita is huge and most outings warrant a road trip) we arrive at the restaurant. A bustling wooden cabin nestled next to a modest Buddhist temple whose car park is chock full of motorcycles. As we walk towards the restaurant, I notice many people filling bottles with water that seems to be sprouting from a large jagged rock right by the entrance. “

Waki-mizu desu!” explains Takeshita-san, “It’s fresh mountain spring-water!” This already bodes well. We join the queue, fill up our thermoses with fresh spring water and then make our way to the entrance. As we reach the kitchen to place our orders I can see several strange looking machines in the background which obviously are the things responsible for transforming the humble soy bean into all the different kinds of tofu treats that this place is known for. We order a few things to share: fried tofu pieces with soy sauce, ginger, and fish flakes, tofu pudding sweetened with kinako, or roasted soybean powder, and of course a dozen warm tofu donuts. All of this we eat with fresh glasses of spring mountain water and hot coffee.

We pick up our chopsticks, shout out “
itadakimasu!”, a Japanese phrase said before eating to give thanks for the meal, and dig in to our tofu treats...

(to be continued)