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A special bonus old Japan trip e-mail, this one from my second trip. Note: these are old emails. I am not, now, in Japan. Alas.
Because I'm sure you were all waiting with bated breath to find out how the Koya-san food was, I'll report. It was Shujin-ryori (Buddhist temple cuisine) which is strictly vegetarian and also made without onions and garlic, as such spicy foods inflame the base passions.
I believe this is a concept from India, where some Brahmins use asafoetida, an onion-tasting herb, instead. The Indian theory divides foods into sattvic (pure, like fruits, grains, and vegetables, associated with the priestly Brahmin caste), rajasic (passion-inflaming, like meats and garlic, associated with the warrior Kshatriya caste) and tamasic (base and bad, like smoked and pickled things and funguses, associated with lower castes.) (This is the very simplified version, obviously.)
I was interested to note that only the no-garlic, no-onions other than scallions part got through, for the meal was mushroom city. The guests were formally served by a monk and a teenage apprentice monk in a tatami room. There were three fifty to sixty-something Japanese couples and me, and they were all very friendly. The lady sitting next to me kindly included me in all the things she was doing for her husband, like pouring his tea and ladling out his rice, and also told me what everything was. They were from Kumamoto in Kyushu, a city which I only knew of because it's near a famouly tacky hot spring resort called Beppu, and was the original target for the bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki instead, because the sky was too cloudy over Kumamoto.
Our trays each had a chafing dish with a lit flame. "Yikes!" I thought. "It's the Blob all over again." (I had a scary encounter with a chafing dish last trip.) But no, it was a delicious vegetable stew, with leeks cooked to a soft sweetness and three slices each of the rare, prized, and expensive matsutake mushrooms. The monk brought them over for us to reverently inhale their woody, earthy scent before adding them to the pot. The stew also included two other kinds of very organic-looking mushrooms (one looked like a small clumpy forest), carrots, herbs, and a mushy gray blob. The gentleman from Kumamoto poked at the blob, then scooped it out of his bowl and hid it under a dish. I followed suit.
We also had very firm tofu in soy sauce and wasabi (doesn't that count as spicy?), miso soup with green onions (ditto) and mushrooms, pink and yellow pickles, sweet sticky beans, rice, green tea, and sliced persimmon.
It was great. But it did inflame my passion-- for mushrooms.
Because I'm sure you were all waiting with bated breath to find out how the Koya-san food was, I'll report. It was Shujin-ryori (Buddhist temple cuisine) which is strictly vegetarian and also made without onions and garlic, as such spicy foods inflame the base passions.
I believe this is a concept from India, where some Brahmins use asafoetida, an onion-tasting herb, instead. The Indian theory divides foods into sattvic (pure, like fruits, grains, and vegetables, associated with the priestly Brahmin caste), rajasic (passion-inflaming, like meats and garlic, associated with the warrior Kshatriya caste) and tamasic (base and bad, like smoked and pickled things and funguses, associated with lower castes.) (This is the very simplified version, obviously.)
I was interested to note that only the no-garlic, no-onions other than scallions part got through, for the meal was mushroom city. The guests were formally served by a monk and a teenage apprentice monk in a tatami room. There were three fifty to sixty-something Japanese couples and me, and they were all very friendly. The lady sitting next to me kindly included me in all the things she was doing for her husband, like pouring his tea and ladling out his rice, and also told me what everything was. They were from Kumamoto in Kyushu, a city which I only knew of because it's near a famouly tacky hot spring resort called Beppu, and was the original target for the bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki instead, because the sky was too cloudy over Kumamoto.
Our trays each had a chafing dish with a lit flame. "Yikes!" I thought. "It's the Blob all over again." (I had a scary encounter with a chafing dish last trip.) But no, it was a delicious vegetable stew, with leeks cooked to a soft sweetness and three slices each of the rare, prized, and expensive matsutake mushrooms. The monk brought them over for us to reverently inhale their woody, earthy scent before adding them to the pot. The stew also included two other kinds of very organic-looking mushrooms (one looked like a small clumpy forest), carrots, herbs, and a mushy gray blob. The gentleman from Kumamoto poked at the blob, then scooped it out of his bowl and hid it under a dish. I followed suit.
We also had very firm tofu in soy sauce and wasabi (doesn't that count as spicy?), miso soup with green onions (ditto) and mushrooms, pink and yellow pickles, sweet sticky beans, rice, green tea, and sliced persimmon.
It was great. But it did inflame my passion-- for mushrooms.