Everyone needs a BBQ neighbor
Yesterday we finally had a bit of cloud cover, so while it was still a wet, muggy 32C, the sun at least wasn’t burning skin. I took the opportunity to work most of the day in the garden.
As with most of the globe, our tiny corner too is crisping. I went to the northwest of the property to deep soak a bougainvillea as well as our wilting dogwood. I caught Mr. Hattori, the happy-go-lucky retired neighbor who speeds around the valley in his Suzuki to whatever activity is next on his list, getting off his hands and knees. He held what seemed to be a child’s butterfly net.
The net was dripping. He had been lowering it into the rice field run-off gulley that fronts both of our houses.
“Hi Jack! I’m just playing around,” he said with a laugh.
My god. It was hot outside (despite the clouds), my t-shirt was soaked through, sweat was pouring down my face, and here was 70-something Mr. Hattori smiling broadly with his net.
“I’m just snaring me some baby dojou,” he said while showing me the dripping contents of the net. Yep, there was a handful of tiny translucent eel-like things awaiting their fate.
I know the Japanese word dojou from the izakaya we frequent in our neighborhood in Tokyo. (Goddamn great deep fried and dipped in ponzu sauce!) I didn’t however know what dojou is in English so later consulted the dictionary to learn these are loaches. It seems Mr. Hattori “plays” by catching dojou and then re-homing them in a pond he built in his garden.
Mr. Hattori is really nice, but I don’t know. He seems a bit …dreamy? He’s gregarious and pleased as punch to talk to anyone yet always seems to be in a different world—witness happily catching loaches with a toy net in a blistering heat wave.
But among our physically closest neighbors, I’m quite interested in getting to know Mr. Kumagai better. I just met him a few weeks ago because he only visits his house in this valley part-time.
I was sitting on my back porch having some iced wheat tea and a smoke and I noticed a new face checking out our garden and house. Maybe in his early sixties, the man paced back and forth a few times and then finally spoke out to me over our fence.
“How do you do? I’m Kumagai! I live two houses over there.”
“Ohhh! That house—I love that place but I wasn’t sure if anyone lives there as it seems shuttered. Nice to meet you, I’m Jack.”
Mr. Kumagai’s place is big, classic, and old. He has a lot of large stones and a few palm trees and camelia bushes in his front yard, but as for gardening it’s obvious that maybe only seasonal weed whackings take place. He tells me that he built the house for him and his wife about 30 years ago as a getaway from Tokyo.
As is often the case in this valley, misinformation about other residents is the rule rather than the exception. I once was said to be a “French president of a large multinational oil company,” which is wildly wrong, and before I met him, I was told that Mr. Kumagai is “a man who actually lives in Okinawa doing remote tech work from there.”
The “man” part turned out to be true. Everything else it seems blew in on the bullshit breeze.
Kumagai-san and his wife live in Tokyo near Oi Horse Racing Track. He recently retired from his career in food manufacturing, and is a life-long supporter of the Boy Scouts of Japan.
He’s also wild about barbeques. “I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but the wife and I are really into barbequing. You must come to our next one! We actually also own a chunk of the mountain behind our place and years ago we had a few cabins up there for kids’ camping trips.”
I got itchy just thinking about his cabins in the insect thatch, but had to admit that screaming throngs of kids on summer adventure must’ve been a memorable sight.
The barbeque detail made sense. I had noticed that the large front yard at Mr. Kumagai’s place has several concrete “floors” in the weeds that I had assumed were just old foundations for buildings that had once stood there. Now I realize these are his barbeque platforms for gatherings.
He tells me that he and his wife have never owned a car. Even though this valley is remote and everyone considers a car a necessity, they ride a Tokyo bus several hours to our nearest town, and from there, catch another local bus out to this valley.
Just yesterday I was once again on my back deck and I saw Mr. Kumagai walking up from the highway. He was pulling a luggage rack with several boxes and a small suitcase loaded.
"Hi! Remember me? I’m Kumagai and I’ll be here for the next week,” he yelled out with a big smile. As he turned onto his lane he called out over his shoulder. “Jack, I bought a food smoker,” he said gesturing to one of the boxes on his cart.
I’ll be honest. I’m hoping for an invite.
Some questions for readers: When someone says barbeque, what do you see on the grill? Does the smell of charred squid make you ill? Would you camp on an Asian shrub-and-bamboo mountain in the summer?
Standing around. Balancing paper and plastic plates. And I’d add using “utensils” that are ill-suited to the food. Hahahahah. So very accurate.
Barbeque makes me think about standing around with a paper or plastic plate in my hand, balancing a bunch of stuff I don't really want to eat - at least in those conditions.
But I fondly remember the barbeque parties my Japanese History prof used to have at his place when I was in college in Pisa. When I say "at his place" I mean in the kitchen of his apartment. In winter, with all the windows shut. After a couple of minutes, it was like being in London in the 50s when the fog was brutal and thick and one could barely see his nose.
And the smell!
But we could at least sit around the table and laugh and listen to his tall tales.