Memories of Meals in Haiku

Memories of my travel in Japan come back to me like dishes ordered in a restaurant, vignettes of a single moment piled into a bowl with a handful of words and aromas. Sitting alone in a restaurant with a bowl of steamy ramen, the dark night outside only penetrated by the occasional headlight, the proprietress and her neighbor are the only other people in the room. They chatter away, and I try to pick up the vocabulary words that I have learned. I have studied Japanese for almost three years, but they speak so fast. Exasperated, I understand almost nothing they say.

Gray-haired ladies chirp
over ramen so salty.
Not a word I get

I was in Japan studying Japanese and living with a Japanese family in a northern city, Hakodate, famous for its squid. Each morning a fisherman with a bare-toothed smile, still stinking of sweat and the ocean, came through our neighborhood chanting in a low, almost holy voice, “Squuuuu-id, Squid.” The fisherman selling squid became my alarm clock.

The morning sunlight,
Outside, the squid salesman shouts.
Breakfast time has come.

When I reminisce on Japan, my memories whaft back to me in something like haikus, small bowls of poetry with rice, vegetables and little bits of meat. The significance of those moments meant little to me at the time. Just as a meal is not appreciated until it is eaten and a haiku is not understood until the fourth or fifth reading, it is only as memories that these moments have grown important, like the time I sat in a bar working on my conjugation homework.

Edamame’s warm.
Their verbs are mystifying,
but their beer is cold.

It is trite to say meals say so much about a place by saying so little. In the dimensions of a bowl or a small plate, these things encapsulate Japan’s values, the joys that come with living in Japan. Looking back on them, these meals became the core of my memories of Japan, of what Japan meant to me.

The squid’s scent whafts up
Host mother asks “How is school?”
Japan, I miss you.