Wurstcutters
I never thought of myself as particularly attached to home, yet staying away too long causes a small ache that points, stubbornly, toward Germany. Sometimes it’s nothing more than the sound of the language, its clipped edges and sudden softnesses, absent from the air around me. At other moments a single habit or custom goes missing, and the day stumbles. An unspoken social rule fails to hold where I am, and the floor feels a little slanted. There are days when none of that speaks loud enough, and the craving reduces itself to something simpler and more insistent: Food. The kind that anchors a life even when one pretends not to notice.
After almost a year in Japan, the local fare has become familiar and, I admit it, beloved. Sushi and sashimi. Ramen and soba. Karaage and tempura. Bowls of rice, miso soup drifting its warm salt, plates of pickled vegetables that square the meal. When a different appetite insists, the shelves and coolers answer with Japanese versions of spaghetti, pizza, and richly filled sandwiches from convenience stores and neighborhood supermarkets, each with its own taste and charm that refuses easy comparison. Still, there are hours when German hausmannskost presses forward. The Sunday dishes my grandmother conjured onto the table at noon, the steam rising as if from her sleeves. Beef roulades, käsespätzle, fried potatoes. Or, if nothing else, a good, moist loaf of black bread.
To quiet that longing, Erika and I went to the German beer restaurant Oden in downtown and set out to fill our bellies with Central European comforts. The menu staged its pretzels, bratwurst, and potato salads between Japanese side dishes in a way that didn’t look especially German, and the food came with chopsticks that we used with wide smiles on our faces. The room didn’t shift into Bavaria, nor did time turn obliging. The city outside kept its pace, and we ate the meal it offered. Yet the distance shortened by a finger’s width, and the missing eased for the span of an afternoon, enough to carry me back into the week with a quieter hunger for home.