”作る” “tsukuru” means to make.
I gave myself a challenge this week- TO MAKE SOMETHING. Anything.
In a desperate attempt to break free from the heavy weight the news pounds on my shoulders every day and the ache I feel in my heart when I think about the cultural divides that are breaking the nation of America…I decided to make something.
The creative side of my brain said, “amie, make something. anything.”
My mind drifted back to Japan, a foreign country I now call home. A place that etched its backstreets and alley ways into my memory over three years. A place where the food changed my taste buds, the language changed my ways of communication and the culture changed my understanding of myself. I started sorting through the thousand of photos I took while living in Japan and noticed a few of them spoke to me in a deeper way than the rest. They were the photos that stopped me in my tracks and made me smile, the photos that instantly brought back a person, a party, a feeling, a season…and I knew I found what I would make.
“let me draw them” I said to myself, “let me draw these moments to better freeze them in time, to see what colors and scents and flavors and memories I can squeeze out of a single image.”
It only felt right to start with my favorite restaurant in all of Japan…
“White Gyoza” - apple pen. procreate. ipad.
“ホワイト餃子”ーWHITE GYOZA. Kashiwa, Japan.
White Gyoza may sound like an odd pairing of two words, and an offensive name in America, but to the locals of Kashiwa, it is home. White Gyoza is a cozy restaurant that sits on the backstreets a few blocks from Kashiwa Station. It’s hidden down a dark alley that runs along a shrine and stands across the street from a hair salon. On a hot humid day in August of 2015, I landed in Japan to begin a new chapter in my life and the first dinner I had was this crispy plate of fried dumplings. It symbolized simplicity, tradition, a quality product made the exact same way over and over, and the beginning of the greatest adventure of my life. .
There is a sliding door that leads you into the humble restaurant. The same older lady dressed in a white apron is always there to point you to a table. The menu is sparse: fried gyoza, steamed gyoza and wakame soup. Then there are the sides : kimchi and “ザーサイ/za-ai” which is my most favorite bite of pickled Chinese root vegetable.
If you sit down and don’t immediately know your order, the old lady often grimaces at you - she doesn’t have time for that. A line of 10 people seems to always be present outside the restaurant, everyone wants in. There is a secret second level, which I only discovered after a year of living in Kashiwa. A few cozy tatami rooms for bigger parties, each with their own telephone inside that you use to call down your order to the kitchen. Did I time travel back a few decades? I always thought.
I began my life in Japan with a plate of gyoza so it was only fitting that I ended it with a plate of gyoza as well. My farewell party from school was here, with two of the upstairs tatami rooms full of my coworkers - people I grew to love and call friends. We stuffed our faces with those tiny fried pockets of goodness- my male coworkers bragging about their eating record, “My record is 40!” “I’ve seen a guy eat 60!” My personal best was 12.
White Gyoza is the definition of cozy. It’s a place you wont find on a tourist map. It doesn’t pop up on google easily. There is no English menu and no one in there can translate it for you. The same workers have been there for decades and will continue to make their dumplings and fry them with ease. The walls will soak in the smells of the kimchi and the chili oil mixed with vinegar for dipping, and the narrow alley way that holds this restaurant will stay hidden, right behind the shrine…right behind the train station…tucked back in a tiny town in Japan called Kashiwa.
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