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I flew to Japan last week. As some of you, who follow my inconsistent ramblings on instagram know, it has been an adventure of eating and drinking and more recently ‘hiking.’ Japan feels so dense with what it has to offer attempting to write about it feels like going back country through a forest of wild bamboo, sometimes the path is clear and sometimes there is no path at all, just a smash of broken trees and fallen leaves but it is beautiful and smells great and every time you look up you can’t help but photograph everything even though the way the light hits the leaves in the canopy, the awe inspiring colours of spring - you know - will never quite translate.
So the next few newsletters will be about Japan. Some lists, some recipes, some advice, some musings, some ramblings. I hope to simply attempt to share with you the adventure I have been waiting to have for far too long.
The first thing I wanted to do when I landed in Tokyo was eat egg sandwiches. One from 7eleven, one from Lawsons and one from Family mart. All three cost less than $10, far less than $10. It is such a shock that amidst all of the mediocrity of convenience store hot dogs around the world that in Japan you can get one of the best egg sandwiches1 you might ever have the pleasure of eating, on every corner. A staple of British cuisine, a source of pride so often butchered and overpriced is available 24/7, 3652.
I arrived late, too late to honour my first night with a recommended ramen or to drop in and eat some pizza or really even to head across town and drink some vino. I have been wanting to be in Tokyo for longer than I can remember, yet, I have never come and that is not for lack of opportunity.
I feel like I have unfinished business with Japan. A few years ago, before covid3, I was invited to cook in Japan. I was invited as a guest on a trip that would span two weeks between Tokyo and Kyoto and Osaka and it would include visits to producers, restaurants, artisans, knife makers and farms. It was a cooking trip. It was a food trip. It was the sort that we went on while at University at UNiSG, the sort of trip I look back fondly on now as some kind paradise. It was an all expense paid holiday to Japan. Hotels, per-diems, transport, business class flights, and a set itinerary. The whole shatook4. However, it was conditional. The condition was that I had to cook. I was invited to cook on behalf of Australia in a cooking competition - one of the many Japanese international networking events that seeks to promote cross cultural exchange. I was invited, as a chef in London5 to cook. They had a number of applications that they weren’t all that impressed by and as such a friend of a friend had put my name forward to compete.
It was an incredibly complimentary invitation to receive. You would think, as I certainly would very quickly jumpy to assert, that the only answer to that kind of invitation is ‘yes.’ A firm yes6 in fact. However at the time it didn’t feel like things were that simple. Often - unless I am in a kitchen or mid service - things don’t feel simple at all.
The chaos of the kitchen is calming. So much to do, yes, but so little to think about. A contained environment where expectations are either met or not met. In that sense, it is binary, black or white - nothing else. Like for a lot of chefs, the difficulty of day to day life isn’t necessarily being in the kitchen7, it is managing the complexity of expectations out of life outside of the kitchen. The kitchen has rules and structures and hierarchies and process and technique and while there are many different ways to get something done the only outcome that is important is does this taste as so good that someone will want to eat it over and over and over and over again8.
Life and everything that happens outside of the kitchen is often not so simple, not so linear and definitely cannot work in binaries. Decisions that should be black and white like ‘do I go to cook in Japan and have a wonderful dreamlike time,’ become confusing and overwhelming and unacceptably difficult.
I didn’t go to Japan.
What I like to tell myself is that I didn’t go because I was in a relationship with a woman I had convinced myself I loved. I was in a relationship that was incredible unhealthy and at times coercive and abusive. I was in a relationship that I had convinced myself I wanted to save and at that time I was deeply aware that if I left for Japan that relationship wouldn’t last. There were no rules as to how to communicate, no expectations that were clear, no set obligations to fulfil. In my mind, with my experience, there was no way that I could see me going to Japan would ever result in leaving a flavour in her mouth about our relationship that would be anything but sour.
At least not that I was able to see.
—
Cooking isn’t easy. As much as there is comfort in the routine and ritual, none of it is easy. I have written before about the stress and pain and sacrifice that it takes to be a chef before. This is not controversial. It is a very hard industry and a very hard job and a very hard life. It is a life of sacrifice and suffering, a life of exhaustion and pain, a life of minimum wage and unacceptable hours. All of this is normalised in order to get through the days. Yet there is comfort in it. There is comfort in the community, in the push, in the struggle and there is comfort and reward in getting through every day. Chefs may not like every day in the kitchen but they love the end of every day and they celebrate the end of the week. There are few surprises and very few challenges outside of the structure of the menu and the team. In this way it offers comfort. In this way it can hold you and give what you need to get through the days. In this way it can act very much like an unhappy or abusive relationship; day to day reliving the comfort of the trauma as a means of finding meaning, definition and justification in the suffering - it hurts because it means something, this is hard because it is worth something… or some such idiotic thing…
—
It was, upon reflection a very unhappy relationship. A relationship that had been stained by the anxiety and frustration of living with and attempting to be in partnership with a chef. All of the uncertainty and lack of time and poor communication, the drugs, the alcohol, the chaos. It was terribly unhappy and we both knew it. But I was scared. I seem to be always scared of change, even when it will lead me to the edge of the rainbow.
The day before I had the invitation to Japan I had returned from Amsterdam, a three month work trip that had been sprung on me (and us, dog included) with two days notice. The night I got home, I found her at 7.30pm in bed crying. Sobbing next to the dog. Furious that I hadn’t rushed home from the airport to love her and give her the presents9 I had for her. She was angry that I couldn't love her, she was furious that i didn't know how to love her the way that she deserved to be loved.
I hadn’t rushed home from the airport, no. In fact I had really taken my time. I had a good excuse, don’t get me wrong. There was a work party, an opportunity to debrief on the time in Amsterdam and the work to come in the future.
I had been in Amsterdam for three months - not counting the weekends I flew back to London to pay homage to the relationship - and I felt like I had come back to myself. I had been reminded of what it was to be honest to myself and what it felt like to be me. I had uncovered for what felt like the first time in years what it meant to be me. What it felt like to decide for myself what I wanted without fear of reprimand.
But I knew I didn’t rush home. We were no longer in love and there was no longer a need or a want to be near each other.
Even still, when the offer tor Japan arrived, I said no.
—
Later, after a somewhat amicable break up, blamed almost wholly on my lack of financial security, drive and success, not to mention at the time my total lack of interest in having children, I made a decision to lie to myself and Japan. I told myself that the reason I didn't accept the invitation to Japan was to save that relationship even though I knew it was already over.
Worse than that though, I never spoke to her about it, I never mentioned the opportunity instead wearing my decision as a badge of honour, held to myself as some kind of bond of integrity. A sacrifice for the greater good kind of thing. It is an attitude that you so often find in kitchens. Either everyone goes down or no one goes down. You don't jump out early and run away from the pain. You stay late, you prep more, you clean deeper, you punish yourself for the mistakes. Most importantly, you steer the course and if there is to be a collapse as a result of the sacrifices you make, you lean into it and you feel the pain of it.
And this made sense to me. After all, I was used to sacrificing my time, my money, my effort, my emotion, my love for the benefit of others. That’s what chefs should do right? They cook to heal the people who pass through their restaurants. So what was one more sacrifice to add to the pile, one more possible dream manifested but ignored? Especially if it was justifiable to myself as being of benefit to this idea of ‘integrity10’.
—
The truth is, that is really all a lie. The truth is I did not go because I did not think I was good enough to be invited to cook. I thought I would embarrass myself. That by going to represent Australia, a country I had barely set foot in in ten years I was be discovered as a hack, a fraud, a hipster cook who couldn’t cook, that I would somehow end up without any sense of integrity at all.
I said no because I didn’t have the confidence to be invited to a cooking competition alongside chefs from around the world who, I feared, would have been trained through academies or through apprenticeships, who had done time at all the top crops11 and were ‘real’ chefs. People who had perfected their craft. I was just a cook. All I had done was to read some books and open some restaurants and done some cooking.
I lied to myself and told myself that I had been coerced out of going. I choose not to recognise the truth and that is that I was too scared. I was too scared to be a professional. I was too scared to the put to stand up and show up as the person I had convinced myself and the world I was.
Because what would that mean if I actually was validated? What if I took steps towards the things that I wanted? What would that mean if things actually worked out, if I had the courage to say yes to all the things I wanted to do, to achieve, to be? Because what if I did all of that and I was still unhappy? At least by saying no I could justify to myself the unhappiness I felt day to day. I did not have to place it in me. Instead, I would be the victim of circumstance, a victim of what it mean to be a good man.
At least, I knew that by saying no I had an excuse. An excuse and a story about how great a chef I was that I was invited to cook in Japan and also how ‘great’ a chef I was to silently sacrifice the things that I wanted in life in honour of ‘love.’
I said no because I was searching for an excuse to perpetuate the suffering I felt I deserved. I said no because it was a poetic reason to be both equally brilliant and not good enough at the same time. I said no because I was too scared to ask myself what I was afraid of. I was too afraid to take myself out of the comfort of the pain of the kitchen. Because a suffering you know always seems so much less complicated and scary than a suffering you don’t know.
The truth is, I was afraid of happiness. I was afraid to be proud of what I did as a chef, as a restaurateur. I was afraid to make a choice that would benefit me. I was afraid to do the thing that would, in its simplest form, make me smile - I was afraid to adventure not for what I might lose, but for what I might gain.
But now, having just spent my evening sitting in Tokyo on the side of the road like an entirely culturally insensitive degenerate tourist12 with three egg sandwiches - one from 7Eleven one from Lawsons and one from Family Mart - it feels like time to shed the story I have been telling myself and step into a new one. One filled with a quiet confidence that even through the most challenging of choices I can trust myself and my skills, my capacity to make good decisions, and my ability to be honest - even if I’m secretly shitting my pants with fear, I can trust myself to simply say yes. Or to say no, either way, the outcome of the decision isn't important, the honesty of it is.
And would you believe it, after finally coming to understand this, I am in Tokyo and I am happy. And I am smiling, as I would hope everyone should be with three Japanese egg sandwiches meeting for the first time in their stomach.
Not even to mention the fried chicken, skewers and rice balls on offer alongside the mind bending drinks, crazy snacks and wild lollies.
Egg sandwiches on my mind.
Of course all travel has to be prefaced with ‘before covid’ these days - doesn’t it? In this instance It was 2019, in 2019, before covid, Dan was going to do some international travel.
Yeah I would go as far as to say this is an entirely made up word that just feels like it has to right kind of mouth feel for the moment.
I know, makes no sense right. An Australian chef in London invited to represent Australian in Japan at a world cooking championship.
By a ‘firm’ yes I mean fuck yes. I try to hold this philosophy especially when cooking and trailing dishes that if the response isn't a hard fuck yes then the response is a definite fuck no or more politely a ‘firm no.’
Although the hours and the drugs and the pain and the lack of pay are definitely problematic. No question.
Yeah the simple life.
There were typically no presents, which in an of itself should have been a huge red flag. I love giving presents to people. Gift giving, acts of service, and feeding are top three love languages for me.
I mean whatever that means. Not much. Really. Not much at all. more of a catch all cry of men who want to somehow justify the fact that they aren’t able to make decisions for themselves.
Noma, of course…
Otherwise referred to as an intrepid explorer
Daniel has a Masters in Food Culture from The University of Gastronomic Science in Pollenzo, Italy. He is a writer, a chef, and a recovering restaurateur.