When Shôkichi[1] first opened for business about eighteen years ago, Taishô[2] had a policy of taking ten days off a month. If it looked like it was going to rain or if there was a K-1[3] kickboxing match on TV, you could be fairly certain that Shôkichi would not be open for the night. Over the years, however, Shôkichi’s business hours have grown erratic. Taishô claims Shôkichi is now open twice a week, but I’ll be damned if I ever see his yatai[4] on the corner anymore. In those astrologically rare occasions that I do find that he is open, I am usually overcome by a sense of urgency, even imperative to go: there’s no saying when I’ll find him open again. It could even end up being six months later, as was the case last night when on my way home from my wife’s parents’ place, I saw Taishô assembling his yatai.[5] I hadn’t been feeling well that day—I had almost passed out while shopping earlier in the day—but there his yatai was beckoning me. My wife, who would have otherwise poo-pooed my going out for a drink in my condition, agreed. Why, she was even envious. Since the birth of our son almost two years ago, she has only been to Shôkichi a few times.
“I’ll bring some oden[6] home for you,” I offered.
When I peaked under the noren curtain, Taishô smiled at me and said, “Long time no see!”
“And whose fault might that be?” I shot back. The customers sitting at the counter laughed.
I took my customary seat in front of the oden tub and warmed my hands on it. Then, recognizing the woman to my left, I said, “O-hisashi-buri desu ne.”[7]
The nice thing about Shôkichi is that most of the customers are regulars, motivated by that very same imperative to go to the yatai whenever they find it open. I’ve recommended using Twitter or Facebook to inform people when he’s open—I would be more than happy to help him set up an account—but Taishô is so hopelessly analog in his ways that he can’t be bothered.
“You realize how long it takes me to answer your text-messages?” he says. “Takes me more than ten minutes just to reply to you that, no, I am not open for the night.”
“How about sending up a flare or some fireworks just before you open?”
Taishô groaned.
You might get the impression that Taishô is an old fart, but he is in fact only a year older than me. When he first opened his yatai for business he was about 29 years old and had a full head of hair. (He now hides his balding head with a towel; his beard has more salt than pepper in it.)
I was living and working in the neighborhood then and would pop into Shôkichi for dinner and drinks once or twice a week. And though I was studying Japanese at the Y[8] in those days, my real classroom was the yatai. It’s where I learned the local dialect, Hakata-ben. It’s also where I learned how to talk to Japanese men (though, I still have trouble catching everything Taishô says.)
Over the years, Taishô and I have become friends. I think he’s been living vicariously through my romantic escapades. He often jokes to the other customers that it’s not fair that he is still a bachelor while I’ve already been married twice.
The best time to be at Shôkichi is when there aren’t any other customers to interrupt our conversation. It’s when I can be truly honest with him. He has been critical of the things I have done, such as my womanizing past, but he has never allowed it to come between our friendship. In that sense, he’s been a tolerant observer of the vicissitudes of my life. Perhaps that’s because he, like myself, was raised Catholic, and he has managed to retain the positive aspects of that faith—tolerance, love, charity, honesty, mutual respect, and so on—while ridding himself of the baggage—guilt, sexual repression, rigid conservatism, mindless religious formalism, etc.
Speaking of Catholicism, Taishô once relayed to me a funny story about the time he had to serve as an altar boy. He was assisting at Christmas Mass and dressed in the flowing altar boy vestments of a long black cassock under a crisp white surplice, the same kind of kit I had to wear when I was a naughty little Catholic schoolboy. During what I suspect was a special extended service for the holiday, he was standing next to the altar, holding a large candle in his hands.
Anyways, as he was standing there with that big candle in his hands he dozed off for a few seconds and the burning end of the candle touched his surplice. It must have had some flammable chemicals in it keeping it so stiff because it suddenly went up in flames.
“I was a ball of fire when I woke up,” Taishô recalled. “The priest took the decanter of water off the altar and threw it at me, then tackled me to the ground and rolled me over and over until the flames were out. It’s a miracle that I wasn’t burnt.”
Taishô added that he was never asked to serve as an altar boy again after that.
Ostracism by fire.
“What’ll you have?”
“Shôchû, o-yu-wari de.”[9]
“Imo?”[10]
“Yeah.”
Shôkichi was serving Satsuma Shiranami Kuro that night. Why? Because it’s cheap and tastes okay. The food at Shôkichi, on the other hand, while dirt cheap—you enjoy a filling meal and a couple of drinks for less than ¥1,000 ($12)—is damn good, so much so I’ve given up eating yakitori anywhere else.
After warming myself up with the shôchû, I ordered some oden for starters, then skewers of yotsumi, butabara, aspara maki, ume shiso maki, jaga batah . . .[11]
“That’s a lot of food. Have you eaten?”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied. “I’m going to take half of it back for my wife.”
“I see.”
“She isn’t expecting again, is she?”
“No. We’ve been trying, but no luck.”
“Need me to pinch hit?”
The oden, as always, was served first. I’ve tried my fair share of oden over the years and nothing quite compares to Taishô’s. In the bottom of the tub, he’s usually got an egg that’s been simmering for several days and has got nice and brown. He’ll usually fish around for one of these and give it to me.
I am reminded of a comic strip my wife drew after we had been to Shôkichi’s a couple years back.
The skewers grilled meats and veggies came about twenty minutes and a second glass of Shiranami Kuro later.
Like the oden at Shôkichi, the yakitori can’t be beat. And nothing is better than the butabara. Order butabara at any other yakitori-ya or robatayaki-ya[12] and you’ll be served a half-cooked slab of pork, but not here. Taishô always grills to perfection—nice and crispy. A niece of mine once stayed with me a few years ago and every now and then she mails me to say that she’s hungry for that “pork thing” she used to eat at Shôkichi.
“The butabara?” I ask.
“Yes! Butabara! I could kill for it right now.”
I’ve mentioned already that most of the customers are regulars and that seems to be the way Taishô likes it. He can’t quite relax whenever a new customers sits down at the counter and you can see the relief in Taishô’s face when after a few dishes the stranger leaves. Nothing is worse than when a wet blanket comes around and lingers on for longer than he is welcome.
One time a dreadfully nerdy man in his early thirties sat down between me and my wife in our usual spot and another group of customers with whom we had all been yukking it up. The guy tried in vane to strike up a conversation with Taishô but the normally loquacious master became tight-lipped. An awkward silence descended upon the yatai.
The guy ordered a beer and asked for a second glass so he could share with Taishô’s.
“I don’t drink,” was the brusque answer.
It was a lie, of course. Taishô did drink from time to time, but with the punishment for drunk driving having become so severe of late, he can’t indulge the way he used to.
When the guy tried to share some of his food with the others, there were no takers. And later, when he went to pay, he offered Taishô a tip. This in a country where tipping is a rarity.
Taishô refused outright.
“Well, then, give it to your wife.”
“I’m not married!”
As I ate, I ordered a third glass of shôchû and hot water.
There are a number of ways to drink shôchû, o-yuwari being one of the most popular. Hot water has a way of bringing out the sweet fruitiness of the potatoes and as I write this I can’t help but wonder if the same is true of vodka. I tend to drink my shôchû o-yuwari in the wintertime to warm me up on cold night, and on the rocks the rest of the year rather than mizu wari,[13] like so many others prefer it. Shôchû can also be mixed with beer, called bîru wari,[14] coffee[15], or even with tomato juice, a drink I have christened the “Bloody Hanako”[16]. (Try it, you might like it.) One thing I have never seen is a person drinking shôchû straight the way vodka of is drunk in Russia. I don’t even think I, Boozer of the Hill, have ever had shôchû straight, which makes me kind of curious right now.
When the alcohol is flowing and the atmosphere in the yatai has become convivial the conversation can be frank and downright hilarious.
I remember once bullshitting with two men in their fifties. One of them was going on and on about how his friend here beside him was a womanizer and refused to settle down.
“Fifty-five years old and he’s still chasing girls in their twenties!” the man chided. “Can you believe that?”
I took a sip of what must have been my sixth or seventh glass of shôchû and declared, “As long as a man still has hair on his head, it is his moral Duty to fool around with women!”
The man elbowed his friend in the ribs and said, “This guy’s got no hair!”
Looking up from my glass, I noticed for the first time that his friend was wearing an awful toupee. How I failed to notice it earlier is a testament to how much I had been drinking.
Last night, I stopped at three drinks. Ordered some more oden to take home to my wife and paid the ¥2,000[17] bill.
As I was leaving, I turned around and said, “See you again, soon.”
Kampai!
さつま白波黒 (Satsuma Shiranami Kuro)
25% Alc/Vol
Rate: ★★★
[1] Shôkichi (小吉, literally “little lucky”) is one of the fortunes you’ll find on o-mikuji (お神籤, sacred lot, written oracle) at shrines. Daikichi (大吉, lit. “big lucky” is the best fortune you can get. Many people prefer shôkichi or chûkichi (中吉, lit. “middle lucky”) as there is room for improvement. With daikichi, there’s nowhere to go but down. (It’s always better to be at the beginning of a lucky streak than near the end of one.)
[2] Taishô, which literally means “general” or “admiral”, is what customers often call the owner of a Japanese style restaurant. Even though I know his real name, I always call him Taishô.
[3] K-1 is a kickboxing promotion based in Japan. It combines techniques from Muay Thai, Karate, Taekwondo, and so on.
[4] Yatai (屋台), food wagons or mobile food stalls which were once common throughout Japan, are something of a rarity nowadays. Fukuoka City, however, still has about 200 or so licensed yatai. While most yatai in the city serve yakitori and ramen, some specialize in Chinese, Italian and Okinawan dishes. The City of Fukuoka has an incomprehensibly schizophrenic policy towards the food stalls: promoting them as a tourist attraction on the one hand and, on the other hand, ensuring their eventual demise by putting strict limits on who is eligible for the licenses. It would be a crying shame if they allowed the yatai to die out.
[5] The yatai are usually hauled out by hand or towed to their regular spot and assembled a few hours before opening. Because Shôkichi opens for business at eight in the evening, Taishô can usually be found setting up his stall as early as five-thirty.
[6] Oden is a Japanese winter dish made with boiled eggs, Japanese radish, bamboo shoots, thick slices of deep-fried tôfu, kon’nyaku, and so on, stewed in a broth flavored with dashi and soy sauce. It is usually served with a mustard spicy enough to singe the hair in your nose.
[7] Japanese for, “Been a long time, hasn’t it?” Remember this phrase, you will use it.
[8] Yes, the YMCA. I also studied Japanese for several years at the YWCA.
[9] O-yuwari (お湯割り) means mixed with hot water.
[10] Imo means potato and refers to the sweet potato variety of shôchû that I like as opposed to the other types (rice, barely, sugarcane).
[11] That is, small cuts of chicken, fatty boneless pork ribs, asparagus wrapped in pork, thin slices of chicken with pickled plums and beefsteak leaf, and potatoes with butter.
[12] A robatayaki-ya (炉端焼き屋) is a restaurant which serves fish or meat and vegetables grilled over a sunken hearth as opposed to a yakitori-ya (焼き鳥屋) where skewers of (predominately) chicken are grilled over a charcoal fire. Incidentally, Fukuoka (and possibly Kyûshû) is unique in that you can find pork dishes, such as butabara and bekon maki, served at yakitori-ya.
[13] Mizu wari (水割り), mixed with water.
[14] A relative’s 90-something-year old grandfather drinks his shôchû this way.
[15] Yes, coffee.
[16] Bloody Hanako © 2011 Aonghas Crowe. All rights reserved. No unauthorized use of any kind.
[17] About twenty-four bucks.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at 12:46PM 
No sooner do I grumble about not getting summer gifts anymore than a student comes through and presents me not only with a gourmet selection of mentaiko-flavored[1] cheeses, but with a fine bottle of imo shôchû.
