Week 3 of Murakami Fest 2025. Check out the previous entries here.

The next chapter is a very short essay titled ポンテ・ミルヴィオの市場 (Ponte Milvio Market). It’s December 22, and the Murakamis are doing some pre-Christmas shopping because all the stores in Rome close on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, much like New Year’s in Japan, Murakami notes.

This is still the case in 2025 in Japan. Both of the major supermarkets near my old apartment closed from January 1-3 a few years ago. This site from Nagoya provides an interesting grid breakdown for the city’s supermarkets, and I think this is probably representative of Japan more widely.

This is all to say, I wonder if things in Rome are still like this or if more and more stores have started to remain open during the holidays as in the United States.

So the Murakamis head to Ponte Milvio and stock up on salmon (2,500 yen for just under a kilogram), sardines and squid (7 and 5 respectively for 1,400 yen altogether), and a ton of vegetables. Murakami highlights the restaurants in the area, of which there are a number with varying service but all pretty tasty. After shopping, they have a quick standing coffee before heading home on the bus.

At home, they start to put away/prep the food, and there’s a definite sense that they’re missing the flavors from home:

家に戻るとさっそく下ごしらえにかかる。

僕がいんげんの頭をむしって、茹でる。女房が出刃で（これは日本から持参した）鮭をしわける。すごくいいとろが出たので、わさび醤油につけて台所に立ったまま食べる。こういうのをもぐもぐと食べているとご飯が食べたくなる。ちょうど昨日の残りの冷飯があったので、このとろの刺身と梅干しをおかずにして食べる。じゃあ、イカもも切っちゃおうかということになって、イカも刺身で食べてしまう。このイカは実にとろりとして美味しかった。ゆであがったいんげんも漬物がわりにぽりぽりと食べる。インスタント味噌汁も作る……という具合に台所で立ったまま、簡単に昼食が終わってしまう。こういうのはけっこう美味しいものである。(332-333)

When we get home, we immediately began the prep work.

I tear off the ends of the green beans and boil them. My wife cleans the salmon with a knife (one that we brought from Japan). The resulting toro is extremely good, so we stand around the kitchen and eat it with wasabi and soy sauce. Stuffing ourselves like this makes us want some rice. We happen to have leftover rice from yesterday, so we eat the salmon toro and umeboshi as sides. Might as well cut into the squid, we think, so we have squid sashimi as well. The squid is truly melt-in-your-mouth delicious. We munch on the boiled green beans in place of tsukemono. And as we’re standing there in the kitchen…we decide to mix up some instant miso soup, too. We finish our simple meal. Things like this are pretty delicious.

Murakami goes on to note that they eat more sushi, grilled sardines, and tsukemono for dinner, which is an exception. They mostly live off of pasta.

It’s a nice visual. The two of them standing around their apartment in Rome, devouring this fresh seafood. I do wonder about eating it raw. I’m not sure I’d be bold enough to eat sashimi prepared from a random outdoor market. Although I guess I probably have without realizing it. Most of the raw fish I’ve eaten in Japan probably traveled through any number of markets, and I did see what Tsukiji was like before it moved, as far back as 2003 when it was truly a Wild West and you risked your life to get a glimpse of the giant frozen maguro. So maybe this isn’t quite as much of a gastronomic risk as I initially thought.

It does look like the Ponte Milvio Market is still alive and kicking, with both produce and antiques.