My childhood diet was very healthy. That may be the reason why I was such a skinny kid, contrary to how I am today.
I
was born in a farmer’s family in Kyoto, an old city in Japan. My family
used to be almost self-sufficient. We mainly ate the leftover
vegetables of eggplant and spinach that weren’t fit to be sold at the
market because of flaws. We also planted rice and other vegetables such
as onions, potatoes, carrots, radishes, burdocks and green peppers, not
for sale but exclusively for our daily meals. We kept barnyard fowls
that provided fresh eggs every morning. Our breakfasts and lunches were
almost always row egg mixed with rice and soy sauce, pickled vegetables
and too-weak miso soup.
A natural
life may sound beautiful and relaxing, but it’s not in reality. Our
fowls would holler screaming crows at dawn every day which would induce
the clamorous barking of dogs in the neighborhood. Sometimes, one of our
fowls that I named and fed every day like my pets was missing, and we
had chicken on the table at dinner that evening. It took time for me to
realize I was eating my pet fowl while I was worried about its
whereabouts. Sometimes, I did witness my grandfather choked and plucked
our fowl.
Since we didn’t have to
buy vegetables, we had large servings at meals. Unfortunately, all
vegetable meals of ours tasted horrible because we had to pay for
seasonings or cooking oil and we were stingy enough to refrain them.
Everything on our table was flavorless and bland. It never stimulated my
appetite and I stayed skinny. As time passed, shops had been appearing
in the rural area around our house. Also, my grandfather began to loosen
his tight reign of the household and my mother had been able to have
some discretion to go shopping and spend money. Our self-sufficiency was
rapidly falling. Foods from outside tasted awesome. My appetite finally
came out of its long hibernation. I was hooked by ham and mayonnaise in
particular, and became chubby in no time.
Of
all the terribly-tasted foods that my grandfather had long eaten, he
picked yogurt as the worst. When he saw my sister eat it everyday, he
asked for one out of curiosity. He said he had never had such an awful
food in his life. After I left home for my music career and started
living by myself in Tokyo, he often asked my father to take him to my
apartment that was far from Kyoto. He wanted to see what was like to
live alone there. My father didn’t feel like taking on such a bother for
him and used a clever repelling. He told my grandfather that I was
eating pizza everyday in Tokyo.
Of
course he knew both that I wasn’t and that my grandfather didn’t know
what pizza was. He explained to my grandfather that a food called pizza
was oily round bread covered with sour sticky substance called cheese
that was stringy and trailed threads to a mouth at every bite. And he
added a threat, “You would eat that thing in her small apartment. Can
you do that?” My grandfather replied in horror, “Why should I eat such a
thing rotten enough to pull threads? I can’t ever go to Tokyo.” That
pizza description cleanly stopped my grandfather’s repetitive request.
When
I returned home for a visit once, my grandfather asked me a question at
dinner time. Pointing the four corners of the dining room and drawing
invisible lines in the air with his chopsticks, he said, “Your entire
apartment is merely about this size, isn’t it?” As I replied it was
about right, he asked, “How come you chose to do all what is necessary
to live in such a small space and eat stringy rotten foods with threads
although you have a spacious house and nice foods here? Is music worth
that much? I don’t understand at all.” He looked unconvinced. As for me,
while I had a certain amount of hardship, I had a far better life with
tasty foods and freedom compared to the one that I had had in this
house. Nevertheless, I didn’t utter those words. I said nothing and pour
sake for him into his small empty cup, instead.
Friday, July 17, 2020
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