Betraying Japanese river fish

In slippers, we padded eagerly down the stairs and into the dining room of our minshuku.  Each table was set with what looked from far away like dozens of hot plates, platters, stone pots, and side dishes.  I found it difficult to maintain Japanese composure, and would rather have leapt into the dining room yelling with excitement than what I did do, which was glide in as Japanese and refined a way as I could manage.

We seated ourselves, poker-faced.  A man came by to light the flames beneath our hot plate and our bowl of soup.  The candles burned steadily, setting the soup to bubbling and the hot plate to spattering.

And as I dodged hot oil from my exploding fatty beef slices and Shimeji mushrooms, I noticed something.

Those fish... the ones near the right, the whole ones with sea salt so artfully crusted on their fins and tails...

Younger versions of them had just been hanging out with me in the river that morning.

Kawayu Onsen, in Wakayama province, is a town built along a bend in a mountain river where boiling water comes bubbling up in tiny spurts through cracks in the riverbed.  The water is generally cold, but when the pebbly bottom is disturbed, either by a too-aggressive wiggling toe or by a hired hotel bulldozer come to forcibly create baths, boiling water comes shooting forth, either mixing with the cold to form a comfortable bath, or scalding whatever unfortunate skin unveiled it.

I had found a comfortably shallow, smooth-stoned lounging place with hot bubbles surrounding me and heating the water to body temperature.  I was leaning back against a rock, enjoying the tingling feeling of what I thought were bubbles bursting against my skin, only to find out that hundreds of little silvery fish were darting around my limbs, trying to eat up my freckles.

It was a guilty realization for sure that night when I realized my tiny massaging friends' parents were on my plate.  It was even worse when I realized the fish heads were bitter and inedible.  I sucked the salt off their fins and crunched their tails, hoping that savoring at least that much of them would make my betrayal worth it.

As for the rest?

Being a devotee of the wonderful, country-style Domo Restaurant in Denver, as well as an unabashed fan of most Japanese dishes, I was shocked to find that the country-style food in the actual Japanese countryside was not, generally, my cup of tea.  Not dinner that night, not breakfast the next morning, and not even the beautifully presented bento-style lunch pack they tucked into our hands as we left to take another dip in the river before our bus back to town.

While everything we ate looked like a whimsically wrapped present, it boiled down to two basic flavors: vinegar (pickles) and soy.  When food was not pickled or marinated in soy, it was left to fend for itself.  This, of course, works when ingredients are very fresh, but there was no evidence that these were.  (Though I will allow that the eggs were, as I didn't die after eating a big bowl of rice with a raw egg cracked in.) 

That's what you do when your bowl has a raw egg in it!

After my third meal in a row of vinegared something, usually rice, topped with soy-covered something else, usually some kind of fish, egg, or mountain vegetable, I was more than ready for southeast Asia to swoop out of the sky and rescue me with some lemongrass, or chili peppers, or fish sauce, or basil leaves, or something.

Lunch bento, layer 1.

Luckily (as you shall soon see), it did!