Yakitori

On my first day in Japan, I arrived with only about five US dollars in my pocket. I made the silly mistake of getting it changed to yen as soon as I arrived at the airbase in Yokota...before I found out that you couldn't spend yen at the shops on the base. That turned out to be a mixed blessing: I couldn't buy anything until after I'd been left to my own devices in Yokosuka, so I still had most of my money left in the evening when I went to explore the area outside of the Navy base's gates.

At the time, the exchange rate was 360 yen to the US dollar, and the 1800 yen I got for my $5 had quite a lot more buying power than it has now. For example, a small bottle of beer cost 150 yen if memory serves, which is probably half of what it is now, maybe less. I say "probably" because it has been a very long time since I bought a small bottle of beer.

Naturally, I intended to investigate a local bar as one of my very first off-base actions, but before that I wanted something to eat. By the time we had arrived in Yokosuka after being driven down from Yokota, it was too late to do the administrative tasks such as checking into the command, getting billeting assignments, and the like, and it was too late to get a meal  in the mess hall. I'd gone most of the day without anything to eat, so after getting directions and a basic language lesson--more about that in another post, one of these days--from the guy standing watch at the barracks, I set out in search of food and a beer.

Within a minute or two of leaving the base, I was captured by an irresistible aroma, and led to a corner yattai food stall/cart selling charcoal-grilled skewered chicken: yakitori. You don't see many yakitori yattai these days, especially not the mobile, hand-drawn ones like that one was. They tend to be vans nowadays, and they set up shop outside of supermarkets more often than in entertainment districts. Considering it now, I suppose that the one I encountered on my first evening in Japan was probably getting most of its business from the bartenders and hostesses and shopkeepers in the area.

In any case, a few skewers of yakitori were my first "meal" in Japan, and they were delicious, fulfilling the savory, sweet, smokey promise that had caught me downwind. In commemoration of my first meal in Japan, a half-century ago, tonight's dinner centered on yakitori.