Russell looked horrified. So I went on to explain that the golden poo is considered good luck and a sign of good health. "Are you making this shit up?" he exclaimed, mortified. Nice pun I thought.
I started to take it back to give to my nephew but Russell yanked it away. "No, it's mine. Thank you. Did you get one for yourself?"
"Uh no."
The size I wanted to buy him. - equivalent to a coffee mug.
Imagine that sitting on his desk.
I had purchased the golden poo on a day tour I took to Shibamata as part of the Tokyo American Club (TAC) Fall cultural classes. The golden poo was just the first of many charms we came across that day. Our instructor was another one.
To my utter surprise she was American. When I noted the class's sensei (teacher) was Kit Nagamura I just assumed she was Japanese. But this woman was a professor and spoke impeccable Japanese. She writes a monthly column for the Japan Times called "Backstreet Stories" about Tokyo neighborhoods. I was amazed. She explained how Shinto religion believes when a body expels golden poo it means that everything is working in the digestive system. It is the purest form of defecation and symbolizes a healthy body. As she was explaining this, besides TMI I was thinking, the last time I had golden poo was when I was a baby. Before I could get this thought out of my mouth, she brought it up as well.
I had to have one. "Just imagine," I said, "here honey - this is how much I love you." Everyone laughed. "I mean wish for you because basically by giving somebody a golden poo, you're telling them you want them to be healthy."
We ambled towards the square where a life size statue of Tora-san, aka actor Kiyoshi Atsumi stood in a suit and flip flops, for all intensive purposes the I Love Lucy of Japan. From 1969 to 1995 he stared in 48 movies about Tora-san, a kind hearted traveling salesman always unlucky in love. Each movie featured a different leading lady and a different region of Japan. The description Kit gave me sounded like a cross between Mr. Magoo and Jerry Lewis. Apparently every Japanese knows and loves Tora-san much like we all love Lucille Ball. Except that Lucille was married to a hot cuban and the Tora-san character never settled down.
Our entire group gathered around Tora-san and I gave him a big kiss to the chagrin of the crowd of Japanese onlookers. For a moment I thought I might be carted off for disturbing the peace.
The charming thing about Shibamata is that it's where they filmed a lot of the Tora-san episodes because the Tora-san character was from there. They say the neighborhood is half real/half make-believe. Kind of like Hollywood I mused. Actually not really, Hollywood is all make-believe. The cool thing about Shibamata from my perspective is how authentic it seems. Oh, the irony.
Like most neighborhoods there's an ancient shrine with a shopping street leading up to it. But this shrine had amazing wood carvings the average tourist would have missed. And this shopping street had an ancient candy store that sold items long ago discontinued. And this shopping street had vendors with wares you can't get anywhere else. But the best part of all was, I had an English woman who not only spoke Japanese, but could read it too. So all those things I had passed by in the past, like what the heck are those green balls on a stick smeared with what looks like chocolate, or what's in those deadly looking bowls that look suspiciously like bugs (turns out some were), she could easily explain. Even more important things, things I had lost sleep over, like how many calories are in my favorite pack of Japanese gum. Answer: 37 per pack. Or why the Japanese seem to be infatuated with gelatinous products. Answer: the Japanese love texture - jelly, powder, crunchy - they love it all. Mysteries solved.
300 year old temple
That's all one tree. It's called the Dragon.
Lotus flower with friends
Ornate wood carvings
Each done by a different artist
The dust just adds more depth
Adjacent walking garden not to be confused with viewing garden.
The candy store was worth the trip alone. It was great having Kit there because she could identify what the flavors were. There were a series of what looked like band aid canisters that each sported a different flavored hard candy and a picture of the flavor to match. One resembled vomit and Kit confirmed it tasted like vomit too. Pass. One had a picture of beer on it and sure enough it was beer flavored. Nice. I decided to pass on the band aids and went for the prettily packaged caramels: coffee , strawberry, green tea. Yeah, these will work.
Then Kit picked up a package that looked oddly familiar. When she explained they were chewy sweets wrapped in rice paper so you could eat the wrapping, a flood of nostalgia washed over me. Suddenly I was seven again dressed in toughskins with patches, sporting a white afro, (it's true) and grandma and grandpa had just gotten back from Japan. Grandpa lived in Japan for three months to build the Japanese government a super-collider. They had brought me back a lot of things from their trip, a grass skirt, a coconut carved into a monkey, Japanese doll under glass with a parasol, and these funny candies I didn't even have to take the wrapper off of. I felt like grandma and grandpa were there with me and I bought several packages. I walked out with a huge bag and an even bigger smile. Good thing I brought my big purse.
Haikara Dagashiya (penny candy shop)
Avoid the vomit candy.
After the candy and the shrine and a tasty lunch at a soba shop, we walked to Yamamoto-tei, which was once a private estate and viewing garden. The previous owner had made his fortune inventing the camera shutter spring. His house was unique because while it was built in the style of a tea house, basically allowing as much of the outside environment into the interior, it also demonstrated a lot of western influences, like curved window panes for example. The viewing garden is consistently ranked in the top five in Japan.
We had creamy, frothy, iced green tea on tatami mats and gazed languidly through the open sliding doors into the whimsical viewing garden, aka eden, sans the apples. All the doors were open in the house allowing the breeze to play unfettered through our hair and minds. For a minute I drifted into a silk kimono and a scene from Shogun, where I gossiped idly with my samurai friends.
Our view from the tatami mat into the garden.
Another glass of tea please, and my robe.
A closer look. The darkness in the back is a waterfall.
This looks like a painting.
A few of my new samurai friends.
Corner of the house.
Hallway in front of the rooms.
All too soon it was time to head back, thankfully back down the shopping street so I could actually try and buy those items no longer a mystery. I tried the green balls with the chocolate imposter, the imposter was actually sweet red bean paste, the perfect partner to the chewy mochi balls made of grass. Not that kind of grass. Geez. The balls are called dango and they can be savory or sweet.
I tried several of the ingredients in the mystery bowls, most of which were fish. I learned this style of food is called Tsukundani which is a way of cooking seafood or meat in soy sauce to preserve it. Villages away from the sea adopted this form of cooking in order to preserve food for the winter. The Japanese usually eat them on top of rice. What don't they eat on top of rice? I ate them on top of my palm. They were good but really salty. I could feel myself bloating.
Hmmm. I might have to buy another golden poo... for me.
Bowls filled with mystery ingredients.
Most were actually fish but these are really crickets.
And you know what, they taste like chicken.
Not really. They taste like soy sauce and they're crunchy.
I'm thinking salad topping.
Russell I've got a surprise for you....
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