I squealed out of joy and turned to Robert who walked behind a little less excitedly.
"Look, look! It's sushi!" I screamed excitedly back at him. I took his hand and dragged him to the small sushi shop in the middle of the busy marketplace. We were on our backpacking trip, somewhere in south east asia, and we had just found a big japanese style market with all japanese food, clothes and groceries. For some reason this japanese marketplace seemed to be the highlight of our journey, even though we had seen all sorts of remarkable things. It wasn't that south east asia was bad, in fact it had been great, it was just that seeing a part of my beloved japan and hearing the people there eat, speak and breath japanese just made me feel like i was back there - in my favourite country.
Robert wasn't as happy about it - just like when we arrived at the airport when we were going to japan he explained that he couldn't be as excited as me as I was so overwhelmingly happy that he couldn't match it. Yet, he let me roam about the market and let me drag him around by the hand while I was squealing and jumping like a little child.
We went into the sushi stall and where greeted by a silent sushi chef and a big boned lady who looked european, yet she greeted us with flawless japanese and showed us to the counter in front of the dead silent sushi chef. We ordered sushi and I talked with the lady and soon realized that she was from sweden but had moved here a long time ago when she married the ever so silent sushi chef. Robert interupted our chatting in japanese to inflict that if she was indeed swedish it would be easier for us all if we spoke in swedish instead so I didn't have to translate inbetween to him.
After eating our sushi we kept looking around the market place and found beautiful clothing, charming people and finally at the end of it a big party with nagashi soumen.
Nagashi soumen is a way of eating soumen noodles in the summer in japan that involves soumen noodles that float by you on a bamboo food slide that you are supposed to catch with your chopsticks and then dip in a dipping sauce before eating. I've always wanted to try it, but when we were in japan we unfortunately never tried it so when I saw the big nagashi soumen party at the end of the market I gasped and once again dragged robert there while explaining the procedure.
"You know I don't like cold noodles" robert said when I explained the noodles are cold and are sliding down the bamboo slide with the help of cold water. I knew, after all when we were in japan he accidentally ordered a bowl of cold noodles before learning the katakana for cold so we could avoid it in the future. I didn't find it as appalling as robert, but none of us liked it and we ended up sharing my warm bowl of noodles that time. But it was nagashi soumen, even if I wasn't so fond of the cold noodles we had in japan, this was another thing. It might be better tasting than the cold noodle bowl we tried before, there was no way to know but to try. It looked like fun to try and catch the noodles and I couldn't stop jumping around and smiling. I wanted to try it so bad and even if robert wasn't inclined to try I was, so I let go of his hand and ran to get a pair of chopsticks. They were big, almost a little heavy compared to the chopsticks I knew - somehow more solid.
The water pearled as it slid down the bamboo slide and I could feel my heart pumping in my chest as I pulled up my sleeve and reached for the noodles. I missed once, the noodles sliding away from my chopsticks like snakes, before I caught some, dipped in the sauce and held it in front of my mouth. Finally, I was going to taste nagashi soumen for the first time. I opened my mouth and dropped the noodles onto my tongue...
As I opened my eyes I was back home in my bed, in sweden. Apart from my beating heart there was nothing left of my little journey in the land of dreams and I ventured out of bed to roll up the black out curtains to let the morning light in. I was well rested and had a good dream that made me miss japan and long for the warm summer that will let me visit south east asia for almost three months. I smiled.
But I still have to wait a while before I can taste nagashi soumen.
