The Secret of Soba

Bruce Esplin

Cooking Soba requires a heightened sense of timing and culinary craftsmanship, crucial skills needed when creating wholesome noodles that the Japanese are willing to call umai. Made of pressed buckwheat and soft to the touch, Soba noodles cook in about 5-8 minutes; however, most chefs can “feel” when the noodles are done just right. Sounds easy enough, or so I thought.

My wife Yayoi Mita taught me the grand art of Soba-making during a hot and muggy Tokyo summer in 2003. Preparing to undergo an open-heart surgery to replace her leaking conduit later that summer, we were determined to fill out the remaining days of May with as many outlandish activities as possible.

Born with a major congenital heart defect, Yayoi was not expected to live past infancy. Thanks to capable doctors and Japan’s cutting-edge medical system, her heart problem was stabilized by the age of five, with the condition that she would require another surgery later in life to replace a temporary cow-tissue conduit. Her defect, which I later discovered after weeks of hearing it referred to in medical Japanese, is known as the Transposition of the Great Arteries. A mouthful in any language.

Before her imminent hospital check-in, we strolled the tight Tokyo streets like two young kids in love: taking in Romanov treasure at the Ueno museums, picking through piles of old American sports magazines on Kanda book-street, and debating Tokyo’s homeless problems while squeezing through Shinjuku’s kabukichyo.2 Yayoi and I never talked about her surgery. Yet no matter how much fun we had together, reality always hung heavily around our heads, sometimes creeping up to fill in quiet moments like the inescapable clatter of Shinjuku’s commuter trains.

One day in mid-June after Yayoi had already checked into the hospital, I was boiling Soba noodles alone in Uncle Ryohei’s high-rise apartment. Earlier that year, probably on New Year’s Eve by the authorities’ estimation, Uncle Ryohei had hung himself from his kitchen door. After failing one attempt with a towel or shirt, Ryohei had finally succeeded by linking two belts together, creating enough length to hang himself in a sitting position with his legs touching the ground.

From the stove, I could see the notch where the belt had dug into the door and left a jagged groove in the upper right-hand face of the door’s heavy wood. Kenta, my father-in-law, had discovered his little brother’s body hanging there one morning several days after New Year’s. While Ryohei had been deciding to end his life, our family was feasting on fresh crab, taking turns drunkenly stabbing at its stubborn shell with scissors and chopsticks, sucking out hidden meat.

Ryohei had been an acclaimed program director at NHK, Japan’s premier public television station. He lived alone in a nice apartment and was considered by his colleagues to be a happy and well-adjusted fellow. His death was a shock to everyone, but it hit Kenta the hardest. Losing his younger brother so unexpectedly was a tragedy he never attempted to put into words.

As I sat there minding my Soba, keeping my wife’s instructions in mind, I heard the front door open and watched Kenta come in with a duffel bag full of laundry.

“Konichiwa,” I said. It was about the only thing that came automatically for me, language wise.

“Good evening,” he replied courteously as he entered.

“Oh, you’re making Soba!” he said, stunned.

I tried to explain it away by saying that I was just experimenting in the kitchen. But the family already knew about my craze for the buckwheat noodle; he was immediately interested in what his American son-in-law was trying to make.

“Would you like some?” I clumsily parsed in Japanese and then mimed the universal hand-to-mouth eating motion for effect.

He did.

Feeling a sudden, overpowering swell of anxiousness stirring up inside, I felt as if I had awoken in a Chuang Tzu dream—a naked Chuang Tzu dream to boot—where I was the lone competitor in a high-stakes game of Iron Chef. What if he didn’t like it? What if he choked on a dry noodle? I don’t know why I obsessed over those inanities, but I remember feeling pressure to measure up as a “real Japanese,” by displaying my working knowledge of their vast food culture.

I dumped in a handful of noodles and watched them swirl like grey snakes in the boiling pot, distracted by thoughts of my wife and what bland food I imagined she would have been eating in her hospital bed. From her ward’s wide windows, she could she see across a bustling Shinjuku thoroughfare into a wall of downtown offices which appeared as a grand bank of lights beaming deep across the metropolis. Industrious salarymen peopled these buildings, pausing now and again to lean out of their lighted warrens in coordinated cigarette breaks.

I hoped this continuous activity would somehow comfort her in the hours I couldn’t be there. Every night on my own was a sleepless countdown in Ryohei’s Meguro apartment. Waiting for the morning train into Shinjuku, I’d pass the time counting the hours from when the Tokyo TV tower’s lights went out until my 6:30 train. By seven, I would be at her bedside, before the nurses and their cheery choruses of Ohayogosaimasu’s.

“Mmm…looks good!” Kenta said over his shoulder from the washing machine, abruptly bringing me back to the present. How long had I been standing there stirring the noodles? I wondered. It seemed like at least ten minutes had passed. What if I had boiled them into an inedible paste? Too much was going on; my mind was numb for lack of sleep.

With resignation, I slid the noodles onto a serving plate and half-heartedly garnished them with shredded seaweed. How was I supposed to get this Soba right, with Yayoi’s surgery barely a week away?

But my noodles were a success.

“Umai!” Kenta exclaimed behind a mouthful of Soba.

I could hardly believe my ears. Had he just bestowed the greatest compliment in all of Japanese culinary tradition on my humble attempt at Soba?

He had.

Looking across the table at my Japanese father noisily slurping up my Soba, I was suddenly overcome by a confused tangle of raw emotion. I sat there looking at him, wondering just how much he must hurt inside, having to deal with the suicide of his brother and now, this major surgery. Where did the man get his strength? I wanted to tell him how worried I was about Yayoi and ask him how he coped with it all those years ago. In this lingering moment of anxiousness, I also wanted to tell him that I felt guilty about not ever finding time to meet his little brother and how it wasn’t his fault for not having him over for the New Years party. Ryohei had been out partying with friends from work that night; there was no way Kenta could have known what he was planning. If there was any chance to say any of it, this was it.

But the moment passed.

“That’s some superb Soba,” he said jovially, wiping watery sauce from the corners of his mouth. “Isn’t that really something else? An American making Soba just as good as us Japanese!”

In his raucous laughter and wide, approving smile, I briefly glimpsed his fatherly warmness. Like a boy reassured by the presence of his old man, I suddenly felt a penetrating calm percolating through my anxious heart. Yayoi will be OK, I will be OK.Our family will be OK.

I cleared his plate and started another batch of noodles for myself, struggling to hold onto this potent inner peace. From the kitchen, I watched as Kenta burned incense and poured sake at Ryohei’s shrine. With the utmost reverence, he bowed deeply before his younger brother. I hoped Ryohei could also feel this comforting peace and share just whatever this moment was. Out the window, Tokyo’s red sky-scraper beacons pulsated comfortingly into the night. Other souls were out there, awake, and with their lights on.

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