Dinner At Jiho’s
A short story about my time at the Shōganji monastery in Japan, run by a wonderful monk named Jiho
At Jiho’s house we eat at 5:30. Well technically we’re supposed to eat at 6 but we get really hungry and don’t usually make it that long. And I guess Jiho’s house isn’t technically a house. It’s a 600 year old monastery. The kitchen, attached to the large prayer room, looks like your average kitchen though. There are pots and pans everywhere, a microwave with complicated looking buttons (maybe because they’re all in Japanese), a wooden dining table in the center, a tea station, and a calendar on the wall whose current page is a few months behind. There’s like 100 bottles of soy sauce on the table which I guess isn’t that normal.
My stomach is growling. I haven’t eaten since 11:30 am. We’re technically supposed to eat lunch at noon but we get really hungry and yadda yadda same thing as dinner. Jiho gets it though and lets us eat a bit early. He’s been skipping breakfast for 40 years but for his guests this isn’t the norm. Breakfast is poison, Jiho says. We only eat two meals a day around here, and it doesn’t help that we get up at 5:30 am to meditate each morning.
Everybody comes to Jiho’s for their own reasons. Some people are running from their problems. Some people are looking for answers. My companions for dinner tonight are an eclectic bunch and have quickly become my friends. At the head of the table is Patrick the software engineer from Montreal. He sports a wispy blonde mustache and is never seen without a bandana covering what I suspect is early balding. To my left sits Jen, a stout woman from New Jersey who recently left her job as a juvenile detention teacher. She is one of the kindest, most motherly women I’ve ever met, yet never married nor had kids. I love how she laughs at her own jokes and hangs on Jiho’s every word. And across the table sits the quiet Joseph, the frenchman who Jiho still thinks is a Canadian. Joseph, who lives in Shanghai importing Brazilian beef, finagled a week off work to come to the retreat though he’s never more than a meter from his phone. And finally there is Jiho, who manages to squeeze his way in between Patrick and Joseph. Jiho begins to chant an evening prayer, stopping every 10 seconds or so to clap together two wooden blocks for ceremonial effect. We all look impatiently down at the massive Udon noodle bowl in the center of the table while trying to remember our patience that we’ve been learning.
Earlier that day we made the Udon. We took flour and salt water (the ocean is only a 10 minute walk from the monastery) and mushed it together with bare hands. We put it in saran wrap and jumped up and down on it to flatten it out. We took turns grinding it through an old metal machine that spit out stringy thick Udon. Jiho is the one who cooks them though. We don’t trust ourselves, nor have any idea what the hell we’re doing when it comes to making traditional Japanese food.
We were surprised when he commanded Joseph to bring him a bowl of ice and dunked all the boiling Udon inside. Udon is served cold apparently. In front of me on the table is a large cup of dipping sauce, the ingredients of which I only managed to remember half of. Let’s see — it is basically a soy sauce and water concoction but we’ve added chives, hot red peppers, lime, zesty ginger, dried shitaake mushrooms and carrots, seaweed and dikon. Most of the ingredients are fresh, coming from Jiho’s vegetable garden behind the monastery that his guests weed in each morning. A day without work is a day without food, Jiho says.
So we sit there, two Americans, one Canadian, a Frenchman (another Canadian to Jiho), and a 70 year old Japanese monk. We wait for Jiho to make the first move. He takes his wooden chopsticks (the shitty kind you get at P.F. Chang’s but have probably been in circulation at Jiho’s for years) and sticks them into the vat of icy Udon. He removes a few thick noodles and plunks them into his dipping sauce. He then removes the noodles and slurps them down in one gulp. It was the loudest slurp I had ever heard in my life. We were all eager to try. Giggling we take turns spearing Udon and attempting to see who can slurp the loudest.
Between bites we ask the monk questions about his past and culture- why did you study at 5 different monasteries? I couldn’t find a good enough teacher, Jiho says. Was monk training difficult? They would beat me with a wooden stick if I was bad. And they would beat me with a wooden stick if I was good, Jiho says. Do most Japanese know how to make Udon from scratch? No culture now in Japan, they have lost it, Jiho says.
We drink Kirin beers, the half liter kind, not the small ones, because Jiho says beer is good. The motto, inscribed in English on the beer can, says “brewed for good times.” Jen asks him what he thinks of other religions like Christianity. The buddha taught his disciplines for 80 years, Jiho says, Jesus only taught for 4.
For dessert we eat the sweetest Japanese pears that are like a hybrid between regular pears and apples. They were chopped on the same cutting board as the hot peppers so our lips sting a bit. We also drink loose leaf green tea from an ancient teapot in tiny Japanese tea cups. Jiho tells us a funny story about once getting caught in Australian customs with two pockets full of raw carrots and no declaration form. He claimed as a monk he needed them (he didn’t) but that didn’t fly so he blocked the customs booth for 30 minutes slowly munching down all of his carrots.
After dessert Jiho retires to his private quarters to take a bath. We suspect he’s a bit tired since the previous night he stayed out late at a monk conference in nearby Oita. What do monks do for fun we ask. Bar hopping, Jiho says. We saran wrap the remaining Udon and carefully wash each dish and the chopsticks, using only hot water and a sponge. No soap. Soap is poison, Jiho says.
My mind wanders as my friends and I wash dishes in silence. A lot of time to think around here. I love it. Everything is peaceful at the old monastery in this small village in the south of Japan. My eyes wander, too. I look at the corkboard above the tea station and the dozens of handwritten thank you notes that Jiho has pinned up. I can’t read them from the sink but I know that they contain heartfelt descriptions of cured depressions, spiritual awakenings, and much needed respites from the real world. There is something about this place. Just then Jiho pokes his head into the kitchen, a nipple peeking out of the towel wrapped around his small frame. No weeding in the garden tomorrow, Jiho says, much rain coming. How do you know, we ask, do you feel it in your bones? Did you see it in a vision? No, Jiho says, I read it on the internet.
