Food and Drink

Admittedly the selection may not be quite the same as a supermarket, but the freshness is far superior. And if it was possible to transfer even a fraction of the serenity of this west Tokyo ‘store’ to its more modern counterparts, then shopping would almost be pleasant.

It’s impossible to say whether he started drinking early or went at it ’til late, but either way, when most people were looking to get some lunch, all this fella could do was lie down and snore — loudly. A very public display that was done, perhaps appropriately, near the faint glow of a booze sign in the background.

Coming from a land where it’s often said that rules are meant to be broken, means living in Japan can sometimes be more than a little frustrating; a country where rules, regardless of their validity, are invariably adhered to.

And yet for all Japan’s inflexibility, when it comes to tobacco, it’s still pretty much anything goes in many places. Almost nostalgically so in fact.

Sure, many restaurants don’t allow smoking anymore, or at the very least have designated areas. Plus public buildings, train stations etc. are totally smoke free. But head just a little off the beaten track, away from the glitzy stores and chain restaurants, and it’s often a very different story indeed.

So much so that as even as a kid, when visibility on the top deck of a bus used to be down to a few feet because of all the smoke, I still don’t recall our butcher enjoying a ciggie as he served us.

Considering the Japanese love affair with sweets, whether it be cakes or more traditional confectionery, the nation’s continued svelteness is even more incredible. In fact, it’s arguably fair to say that the amount of goodies that many Japanese seem to regularly put away would have many in my native Britain indecorously bursting out of their elasticated waistbands at the mere thought of such delicacies. A plight that would perhaps also leave them with barely enough breath to get through that overly long and largely comma-free last sentence.

Plus, if simply eating them in large numbers wasn’t enough, merely producing sweets would appear to be almost as pleasurable.

Green tea plants aren’t an uncommon sight in some parts of Tokyo, and in nearby Saitama Prefecture, there is an absolute abundance of them. Disappointingly though, they don’t appear to have any scent. Or at least none that I’ve ever noticed.

However, passing a tea field during what was presumably the year’s first harvest (or ichiban cha), made for a completely different experience altogether. For starters, the machine in use was a fairly interesting looking contraption, but it was still nowhere near as surprising as the fragrance from the just-cut leaves. A smell that was really quite startling — one of incredible, mentally still reproducible, freshness.