is ootoya that place we ate at a bunch well i was there.. and it was fukin' amazing.. and cheap!! the upstairs place.. yums

Yes, and they thing we used to eat was the Tori Sauce Katsudon (R.I.P. 2004).

that is a serious bummer.. you should make a scene and complain to the manager!!

I may be sticking my neck out a bit here, but I detect a larger picture behind the disappearance of these menu items: the decline of Japan itself as a vital global presence. What's more, the replacement of things like 'sauce-cover fried chicken over rice' by ramen is a clear sign that chefs all over the nation are reading sinister works by 1970s nihonjinron writers in their spare time, and as a result fanatically eliminating 'racially impure' dishes from their menus. 'Dish cleansing', if you will.

What a typical gaijin to like Westen food like Salad Cheese Tonkatsu Teishoku and Tori Soosu Katsudon. I suppose your favourite sushi is the California Roll?

typical gaijin

Ha ha. Now there's authenticism at stake here!

I suppose your favourite sushi is the California Roll?

I don't really eat fish, nor sushi, nor sashimi. I guess that means that you win - wait for it... - the Greatest Gaijin Award. Congratulations, David@aiesec.ws!

Momus:

I sometimes think it's my fault that everyone reads anti-Japanese sentiment into my essays and analysis, but then I realize it's just the pro-Japan (or the "I'm-a-better-gaijin-than-you") school trying to debase my arguments by applying them to everything I write.

I don't see anything sinister in all these store closing as much as I think it's a bummer, and I apologize that liking Tonkatsu is not as "cool" as David up there would like it to be. (You would all be more embarrassed to see what I eat in America.)

However, I do want to say that I have been privileged in the past with the opportunity to do work internships in Japan, and even though Japanese companies still have the same desire to give foreigners an inside view of their country, they no longer lack the funds to run the programs. In 2004, my current scholarship's stipend went down by 5000 yen, and I have learned in the past that there was a housing allowance and an additional research expense fund on top of the tuition and monthly stipend. With these internship closings, I just think it's a shame that ultimately less students will have a chance to visit Japan within a more authentic context than just study abroad.

Tonkatsu really is the food of the gods. We have a good take out place near me and an allright sit down place as well. One of my friends says that the best of the best tonkatsu is to be found in Tsukiji, but he hasnt taken me there yet.

personally I prefere the regular tonkatsu over the "filet" variety.

push (@snarky, dave, momus);

In defense of tonkatsu, if you're going to fry up slices of meat, this has got one of the least fattening ways of doing it.

And yes, I prefer ro-su over hire.

Also, readers, if you're going to lay into me, I prefer rhetorical arguments over elitist smugness.

I'm here only to join in on the tonkatsu worship.

My fav tonkatsu joint is in Harajuku, near the Bathing Ape Busy Workshop and across from Neighborhood. A little bit pricy, but they make their own sauce (and I think their own karashi) and it's absolutely incredible.

Second the ro-su over hire.

Yeah, tinkatsu rocks in every way. Even Koreans are all over that. We need them in NY, too!

I thought Momus' entry was tongue-in-cheek, but assuming otherwise now... Cleansing "impure" tonkatsu for the Chinese-originated ramen? Hmmm... I personally love udon and ramen, too, but tonkatsu definitely has its place.

Anyway, I feel your pain.

Brad wrote:

My fav tonkatsu joint is in Harajuku, near the Bathing Ape Busy Workshop and across from Neighborhood.

When I was at Kodansha in 1998 for a summer, they would use me as an excuse to use the expense accounts. I told them I liked tonkatsu, so they said, let's go to Tokyo's best tonkatsu place, and it ended up being that one in Harajuku.

Les wrote:

Cleansing "impure" tonkatsu for the Chinese-originated ramen?

Well, tonkatsu is German, and ramen is still viewed in Japan as an "ethnic" food. Tonkatsu may be more Japanese than ramen at this point. (Like beer.) My point, however, is not that tonkatsu places are closing down - there are still a billion. I don't really have a point other than the coincedental closure of every single restaurant and removal of every single food item I like.

Well, tonkatsu is German, and ramen is still viewed in Japan as an "ethnic" food.

My favourite example of an "ethnic" food paradox is the "Mr. Donuts' San Francisco Chinatown style Dim Sum". I discovered it a few days after arriving in Japan and knew I was really somewhere different.

Oh and I got the chopsticks comment from the new secretary at lunch today. After we had been speaking Japanese for a few minutes she asked me, "don't you have trouble using chopsticks?".

I find this more pathetic than annoying now, and just straightforwardly answered, "No, I don't have any trouble with chopsticks", not feeling a need to explain that I first used chopsticks at the age of five and have been using them regularly since my teens.

Unfortunately it seems she's the "English-leech" type. The outgoing secretary is much nicer. Prettier too. Argh...

Oh and I got the chopsticks comment from the new secretary at lunch today.

I find this to be extremely annoying and strange. For a full-century, the Japanese public has been obsessed with the minutiae of Western life and culture. They can give you the name of the lighting guy from Godard movies, but when it comes anything remotely related to Japan, they act as if 1) Japanese culture is the weirdest possible thing ever and 2) Americans have never had any exposure to it.

Self-selecting importation of knowledge about the West?

Almost everyone in the West knows how to use chopsticks through eating Chinese or Japanes food. Why do the majority of Japanese people not know this or block it out?

its all just passive agression. "oh, you can use chopsticks? [stop trying to assimlate, or simulate my world]." though it's seems like the same reason americans call tricked out, fast japanese import car's "rice rockets". american's make the biggest and badest car's. so no "outsiders" should try to be apart of the club. maybe it's some oh so slight pay back? [though the japanese might have bigger and better reason to get whatever payback they can, right or wrong.] anyways.. it would be annoying. i don't like it when i'm given an english menu, and everyone else gets one in japanese.. even though i can't read or speak japanese. it's the assumption of the situation.

I suppose it's part of the exotic strangeness of Japan. This sort of behaviour does not seem to be limited to the intelligence-challenged. A dean at top national university once asked me whether or not I could read katakana. This after an hour's conversation in Japanese, and part of which was spent discussing unusual kanji on the handwritten menu. Can't recall whether or not he mentioned the chopsticks issue.

Most Japanese have some kind of mental block when it comes to the idea of foreigners and Japanese culture. Talking to someone in fluent Japanese does not make anyone assume that you can read Japanese or use chopsticks. I have the gut feeling that the causes are self-imposed - the Japanese through their media want to create a self-exoticism around themselves and refuse to deal with the casual diffusion of Japanese culture around the world as it would eat away at the self-important uniquness.

It's like the average Japanese mind just shuts off when data related to foreigners' use Japanese culture goes inside. There's a mental block that won't allow them to put 2 + 2 together.

To be fair, there's probably a lot of Americans who don't know that Japanese people can use a knife and fork. But if they meet one that can, I have a feeling that they won't be surprised the next time they meet a Japanese person who can use a knife and fork. (sheesh.)

i think you may be a bit too excited about this 'chopsticks question' ... Isn't it just a small talk thing? Like when in anglo-saxon culture you ask 'How are you?' but are not really interested in actual feelings of a person? And a mental block about using host's language towards a guest is not so exotic too ... It will happen in every non-English speaking country in this world.

I have to say I'm not suprised at all that Japanese people would ask if you can read Japanese, even if you've spent time talking to them. When I first started studying Japanese in school, I used Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language and there's no written Japanese whatsoever in that book. My teacher had common sense and started using a different book to teach us kana and a few kanji, but still, I can imagine that some people may have learned to speak Japanese but never learned to read or write, or certainly not read or write it well.

As for the chopsticks thing, I've been asked so many times, I can't even begin to get riled up by it. The people who ask don't mean anything untowards by it, so why should I take it that way?

The chopsticks thing: I'm not offended by it and I don't think those who ask are intending to insult. I just can't believe that after fifty years of Japanese-American relations that most people don't know that most Westerns can use chopsticks.

My apologies for stirring... after seeing Momus' comment it was just too hard to pass up!

As for chopsticks, when asked the inevitable question my older brother's trick is to say yes, then start using chopsticks with his other hand (when he was living in Japan he broke his arm so had to use the other one for a while.) This (I hope) hilights the difference between something that is actually unusual vs. what some Japanese people might think is unusual.

However - a word of warning. It's not unusual for Japanese people to see that it's raining, say 'Ame futteiru', and then someone else looks, and says 'Honto da', as if they are often lied to about this sort of thing.

ahhh the chopstick question, wish I had even one yen for each time I've been asked. I usually reply with something along the lines of "where did you learn to use a knife and fork?" but always in a joking tone, surprisingly enough it usually gets a laugh.

When I get the chopsticks compliment, I ususally reply with a compliment of my own: "Thanks. Your Japanese is also very skillful."

On a related note, the chopsticks compliment is very common throughout Asia. I get it in China all the time as well.

Hey, I think the chopsticks "compliment" is AOK, because all it says it that you them well. I just don't understand the fact that years of Westerners being able to use chopsticks (at least in some capacity) has totally escaped the Japanese collective memory.

Dave said: It's not unusual for Japanese people to see that it's raining, say 'Ame futteiru', and then someone else looks, and says 'Honto da', as if they are often lied to about this sort of thing.

I like the rain analogy. In contrast, when I was in middle school in Colorado, a good friend came late into our English class in an extra "portable" building that was a glorified shed, he said, "It's snowing!"

To this our teacher replied sternly, "Nick, you have a firm grasp on the obvious."