Not Japan as a whole, but rather one restaurant that is playing Russian roulette featuring tin bullets.
Sabanoyu is a restaurant in Kyodo in the Setagaya district of Tokyo. It is offering up cans of food salvaged from the earthquake and tsunami.
So... life is like a box of chocolates... ya never know what you're gonna get inside - to quote Forest Gump, except this isn't a movie.
Sabanoyu is selling canned foods with the labels washed away - or dented - picked from the debris of the Kinoya Ishinomaki Suisan cannery inIshinomaki, Miyagi-ken (Miyagi Prefecture), which was once a landmark with its10.8-meter water tank painted to look like a giant can of stewed whale.
The cannery was crushed like it was being recycled when the tsunami hit following the 9.0 Magnitude earthquake - now known as the Great East JapanEarthquake - on March 11, 2011.
"The cannery helped us bring life back to this neighborhood, andnow it's our turn to help them," says Suda Yasunari (family name first), a comedy writer,community organizer and owner of Sabanoyu.
The neighborhood's link tothe cannery goes back nearly two years, when Suda enlisted its help inrevitalizing the old shopping street. Like many other traditionalneighborhood centers, Kyodo was turning into a ghost town, as customers were drawn away by the opening of megastores and chain restaurantsalong a trunk road nearby.
To grab the local's attention, Suda created a neighborhood-wide miniature painting contest - on cansprovided by Kinoya Ishinomaki Suisan. Several restaurants got hooked onthe taste, and started offering canned fish in their dishes turning the neighborhood into a stop for curious diners.
"I ate a lot of canned fish when I was young, especially mackerel,because my mother didn't have much money," explains Suda. "It's alwaysbeen my favorite fish, because it's the fish of the masses." The nameof his restaurant, which also serves as a public stage, means "mackerelbathhouse."
The neighborhood was holding its second can painting exhibitionwhen the tsunami hit Ishinomaki. Soon after, Suda collected reliefsupplies from his friends and neighbors and headed with two lighttrucks up to Miyagi-ken. On the return trip he stopped thetrucks at the flooded Kinoya cannery and loaded up with muddied cans.
The cans were scubbed clean by neighbors and feature insuch dishes as 'in-the-can souffle' and 'mackerel hamburger'. However, since the cans are without labels, they can not be legally sold... so instead a Y300 ($3.00) donation gets a can.
(Writer's Note: Personally, I like this donation-thing. When I wanted to by a Shunga (a pornographic ukiyo-e/ woodblock print), I was told that technically, it was illegal to sell them... but if I wanted to trade for it, it would be acceptable. I traded Y30,000 ($300) for one. It's an original from over 150 years ago.)
At the end of April, 2011, Suda opened Kinoya Cafe, in the trendierShimokitazawa neighborhood nearby.
In the kitchen of Kinoya Cafe, Matsutomo Michihito (surname first), a product developer for Kinoya Ishinomaki Suisan, works after moving in with relatives in Tokyo after the disaster. The cannery company is still inbusiness, says Matsutomo, and is keeping its workers on the payrolluntil the government-assisted leave pay is cut-off at the start of nextyear.
"I'm here trying to develop new products that we can put out from acontracted factory, so that we have something once we run out of our laststock of about 30,000 cans," Matsutomo says.
However, Matsumoto spends most of his time at the Kinoya Cafe trying to identify the contents of the unlabeled cans.
"I can tell what's inside if I can make out the product code, butfor some of these, there's nothing left," says Matsutomo, so they get aquestion mark.
"A lot of people pass by here and are very curious. WhenI explain what I'm doing they'll take home a can or two as a show ofsupport, and I am grateful. But when they come back later and say, 'Oh,it was delicious, do you have more?' It's the best feeling, but I couldalmost cry."
Files compiled by Andrew Joseph
PS: The image of the canned mackerel above... that has nothing to do with the story... I just happened to like the label - and the odd brand name... Geisha.
"I'm here trying to develop new products that we can put out from acontracted factory, so that we have something once we run out of our laststock of about 30,000 cans," Matsutomo says.
However, Matsumoto spends most of his time at the Kinoya Cafe trying to identify the contents of the unlabeled cans.
"I can tell what's inside if I can make out the product code, butfor some of these, there's nothing left," says Matsutomo, so they get aquestion mark.
"A lot of people pass by here and are very curious. WhenI explain what I'm doing they'll take home a can or two as a show ofsupport, and I am grateful. But when they come back later and say, 'Oh,it was delicious, do you have more?' It's the best feeling, but I couldalmost cry."
Files compiled by Andrew Joseph
PS: The image of the canned mackerel above... that has nothing to do with the story... I just happened to like the label - and the odd brand name... Geisha.
