Author Archives: Daniel

Ponte Milvio Market

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A photo of Ponte Milvio in Rome.

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.

Beggars in Rome

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An image of the drawing "Nobleman Giving Alms to Beggar in Piazza near the Coliseum" by Conrad Martin Metz in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Week 2 of Murakami Fest 2025. Check out previous entries here.

The next chapter is “What exactly is the end of the year in Rome?” (ローマの歳末とはいかなるものか), and Murakami spends it discussing exactly what the title suggests. Italy, like Japan, exchanges a lot of presents at the end of the year and gets very crowded with shoppers, but mercifully there is no Christmas music. Murakami buys bottles of wine for the doormen at his apartment and sees immediate effects when they are extremely courteous for the next week.

The rest of the chapter, other than a short section at the end, is about the beggars in Italy that seem to increase greatly in number at the end of the year. Murakami highlights the different varieties of beggars (mothers with small children, old women, those who pretend to be hurt, and people who play instruments). It’s difficult to tell exactly what tone Murakami is taking here. Clearly this is something he notices because of how distinct it is from the situation in Japan, where you rarely see anyone begging on the streets. However, he does seem to make light of them in several places, asking what they do the rest of the year, noting that all the mothers with children look alike, and passing on a story from a friend that suggests they “rent” children to help with begging.

Murakami ends the chapter with a very short profile of his landlady Lynne, an Englishwoman who has married a man from Naples and is living in Rome. He brings her up after an aside noting how exhausting it is to go out in the city—just as it is in Tokyo. And then the chapter ends in a very abrupt fashion. This could be Murakami poking fun at himself, but I doubt it. Lynne is a caricature of sorts of the disaffected expat. Someone who’s been away from home forever yet is miserable in their chosen home.

The chapter isn’t really Murakami complaining in the same sense. I think instead he sees himself in a reporting mode and just happened to encounter his landlady, who is then subject to his gaze.

At any rate, here’s Murakami discussing this view that he seems to be taking:

世の中はさまざまな実際的な哲学がある。じっと街をみているとなにかしら学ぶことがある。東京の街で立ち止まってじっと何かを見ていたりしたら、変な顔をされることが多いけれど、ここローマではそういうことはない。みんなよく立ち止まって何かをじっと見ている。女房がマックス・マーラやらポリーニやらのウィンドウをじっともの欲しげに見ているあいだ、僕は通りを向いてじっと乞食の様子を観察する。ひとにはそれぞれの人生の方向性というのものがある。 (327-328)

There are countless pragmatic philosophies out there. Look hard enough at a city and you’ll learn something. If you come to a stop in Tokyo and stare at something, you get a lot of strange looks, but that’s not the case here in Rome. Everyone stops and stares at things. While my wife looks longingly at the items in the windows of Max Mara or Pollini, I turn toward the street and closely observe the beggars. Everyone has their own direction in life.

Less than stellar material, but there will be more interesting sections in the coming weeks.

TV and Beethoven Tickets

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Year 18 of Murakami Fest. Murakami Fest can legally vote. Wild. See the previous entries in Murakami fest here. This year, I’m continuing my look at his travel memoir Distant Drums.

A view of Piazza San Pietro with blue sky, taken in 1987.
Rome in 1987, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Murakamis are back in Rome for the winter, and the first thing on the to-do list is buying a television in this chapter titled “TV, Gnocchi, Prêtre” (テレビ、ニョッキ、プレートル). Murakami says he needs a more active source of news, particularly for the transportation information (there are lots of strikes) and the weather. In Japan he could just dial a number on the phone to get access to the information.

Strangely enough, it looks like this service may have just ended. NTT, at least, ended their 177 service on March 31 of this year after being in service for 70 years. An NHK news article notes that the usage of this service peaked in 1988 (the last year of Murakami’s trip to Europe) at over 300 million calls and fell to 5.56 million by 2023 (which still seems like a lot!). Thus, our bizarre look at Japan’s history through Murakami’s travel memoir continues.

Murakami spends some time describing Italian public TV and the newscasters who are all quite animated and colorful (which he claims to be able to detect despite the fact that he buys a black and white TV).

He then shifts into a trip to Bologna for gnocchi. He highlights how pleasant it is to travel there because there are fewer tourists and because he’s found some decent restaurants. He ends the chapter with two music anecdotes. After watching The Sicilian in Bologna, he walks through town and stumbles on a Lee Konitz concert in the basement of a random osteria. Unfortunately it’s sold out. Later, back in Rome, he and his wife go to see Georges Prêtre conducting the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

This chapter is only OK. The sections on Italian TV—in particular the dramatic, aging weatherman—are probably the most interesting, but they border on caricature. The Bologna trip is mostly told in exposition. But taken together, there are two interesting stories that speak to the buying power of the yen, the economic mindset that Murakami was in at the time, and the (universal-ish?) experience of having life in a foreign country influence your perception of costs.

First, Murakami talks about buying a TV, and he’s operating on a particularly Japanese mindset:

でもわざわざ高いテレビを買うのもばかばかしいから、まず近所の中古電気屋をのぞきにいく。日本の量販店なんかだと小さいテレビなら二万円くらい出せば買えるからそのつもりで行ったのだが、これが思ったよりかなり高い。やたらでかくって古色蒼然としたのが三万円もする。画像もちょっとぼけてる。日本だったら絶対にスクラップという代物である。僕は昔、これよりずっと鮮明に映るやつを国分寺駅近くのごみ捨て場で拾って帰ったことがある。仕方ないから一番安い白黒の新品を買うことにした。ニュースと天気予報がわかりゃいいんだから色なんてあってもなくても同じである。 (314-315)

But it would also be ridiculous to buy an expensive television, so first I checked out the local used electronics store. At the big box stores in Japan, you could pick up a small TV for about 20,000 yen, so that’s what I had in mind when I went, but they were much more expensive than I thought. A TV much larger than I needed with a dim, faded screen ran 30,000 yen. The picture was a little warped as well. If this was Japan, it would’ve been on the scrapheap. A long time ago, I managed to go home with a TV with much clearer picture that I picked up at a garbage drop off near Kokubunji Station. Now I didn’t have a choice, so I decided to but the cheapest new black and white model. All I needed it for was the news and weather report, so it made no difference if it was color or not.

This reminds me of an anecdote from Matt Alt’s book Pure Invention of being able to score very lightly used electronics on trash day in Bubble-era Japan. Interesting to see Italy in a very different situation when it comes to the ubiquity of electronics and their costs.

It does seem like living in Italy has started to influence Murakami’s perception of costs a bit. He’s potentially started to anchor toward the cheaper cost of living, as shown when he goes to get tickets for the orchestra:

十二月六日、日曜日、ローマでジョールジュ・プレートル指揮の聖テチリア・オーケストラを聴きに行く。演奏曲目はベートーヴェンの交響曲の五番と六番という凄まじいというか何というか、かなりのものだけれど、年末でもあることだしベートーヴェンをまとめて聴くのも悪くないんじゃないかという感じで前日にヴァチカンの前にある聖チェチリアのホールまで切符を買いに行った。値段は5500円、3900円、2200円だが残念ながらいちばん高い券しか残っていない。それも前例のはしっこの方である。それで女房と二人で随分迷ったのだけれど、年末だからまあいいか（何がどういいのかよくわからないけど）、とあきらめて買ってしまう。どうしてかはわからないけれど、外国にいると知らず知らずだんだん生活がつつましくなってくる。東京にいると一万円のチケットでもさっさっと買っちゃうのに。 (321)

On Sunday, December 6, we went to hear Georges Prêtre conducting the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. The selection was Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies—which I guess you might qualify as staggering works, at any rate quite major—it was the end of the year, and hearing a number of Beethoven pieces at once sounded like it would be nice, so the day before we went to Saint Cecilia Hall in front of the Vatican to buy tickets. The prices were 5,500 yen, 3,900 yen, and 2,200 yen, but unfortunately only the most expensive were left. And those were on the edge of the front row. My wife and I had a lot of trouble making up our minds, but it was the end of the year so we thought it was fine (what was fine, I couldn’t say exactly), so we ended up buying them. I don’t know why, but when we’re living in a foreign country, our lifestyle gets increasingly frugal without even realizing it. Despite the fact that in Tokyo we’d shell out 10,000 yen for a ticket without a second thought.

So the cost of electronics is expensive in Italy, but the orchestra is relatively affordable. The opposite of in Japan. To provide some reference, in December 1987, the yen was around 130 JPY/USD.

ということです

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The newsletter is out for August. I’ve switched over to Ghost from Substack. I have my fingers crossed that it’s a seamless experience bringing everyone over with me, so apologies if there are any difficulties and please feel free to unsubscribe if you’d rather not read. Take a listen to the podcast for a little more background on why I made the switch, something I’ve been considering for a while:

Perhaps fittingly, I’m started the Ghost era of How to Japanese with a topic that I first wrote about way back in 2008: How to convey information in Japanese. I looked at ということです (to iu koto desu), an alternative to そうです (sō desu), the pattern I originally wrote about.

As a little lagniappe for blog readers, I found this interesting Yahoo Chiebukuro post where someone asked about the difference between the two. There are a couple interesting answers, and I think the best answer may not be the one with the gold medal.

The general gist, however, is that ということです is used to report unvarnished information while そうです is information that has been confirmed/refined/focused. So the latter can be taken more as the truth, whereas the former may need further examination.

Also, そうです is more of a spoken phrase, while ということです is more of a polite phrase that can be used in written contexts, which is what we see in the newsletter this month. Do go check out the newsletter for a very fun passage from the book I’m reading right now.

And I thought I’d also share this very cool Google Trends data showing search results for かき氷 over time. I mention this in the podcast:

Odds and Ends

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The newsletter and podcast are live:

This month I wrote about 奇数 (kisū) and 偶数 (gūsū). Any idea what they mean? If this is the first place you’re encountering them, give it a think before you dive into the pod or newsletter. See if you can figure it out. I think you might be able to get 奇数 on your own.

I also wrote about 商店街 (shōtengai) over on my personal site. I’ve been trying to write about them for a few months now and seeing Craig Mod’s newsletter about overtourism and The Guardian’s article on the “cult of convenience” gave me a way in to the topic that I needed. Give it a read if you have the chance.

Murakami in Athens Again

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My look at Murakami’s Distant Drums continues!

The next chapter “Athens” (アテネ) is just a two-page interstitial section that establishes the narrative for Murakami’s trip: He’s arrived in Athens from Rome, not to see any of the sites but to meet with a real estate agent who will help him find a place to stay. Here’s the first sentence:

アテネに来るのはこれでもう三度目か四度目である。 (41)

This is my third or fourth time coming to Athens.

There’s not all that much interesting or compelling in this chapter, it’s just Murakami getting things set up, but it is interesting that Murakami had been to Athens at least twice, potentially three times previously by 1986.

Last year I looked at outgoing tourists numbers from Japan.

There’s a jump between 1970-1977, and then the numbers are somewhat flat until around 1985 when the next big jump begins. So while it’s not that unusual that Murakami had been abroad, having visited Athens three times by 1986 is pretty remarkable.

Looking more closely at this chart, you can see a brief hiccup with the popping of the Bubble in 1992, but then Japanese just…kept on traveling. I didn’t notice the massive drop in 2004, which is due to SARS and the Iraq War. I’m curious what the numbers will look like for 2024, and I wonder when we’ll see the update.

The only other section worth commenting on is Murakami’s characterization of Athens, which is a small area of tourist sites centered on the Acropolis surrounded by unremarkable residential area, which of course people wouldn’t visit:

たとえばあなたが東京に来た外人観光客だとして、ひばりヶ丘とか多摩プラーザだとか西国分寺だとかにわざわざ観光に行きますか？

Say you were a foreign tourist visiting Tokyo, would you go to the trouble of checking out Hibarigaoka or Tama Plaza or Nishi-Kokubunji?

Not really being familiar with any of these areas but knowing vaguely of their reputations, I enjoyed the comparison. I’m sure these places are great these days, though. Am I wrong?

五月雨式

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The newsletter is online here! And I have a podcast to accompany it:

I’ve decided that I’ll mostly be limiting my tourist recommendations to the end of the podcast, but they won’t always be as lengthy as the posts here the past two months. This month I’ve got two quick recommendations for nice spots in central Kyoto. If I have any longer dumps worthy of a blog post, I’ll be sure to post them here.

Giorgio and Carlo

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I’ve finally caught my breath after a crazy first third of the year, so I’ve had a moment to get back to my project of reading Murakami’s travel memoir. I now have an index page and am slowly going back through the chapters I didn’t take an excerpt from. So check out the previous entries to get some context. This post is from the beginning of the trip, so not too much context is needed.

Fontana delle Api in Rome. A small circular fountain with a large sculpture that looks like a shell with three bees near the bottom where the shell meets the water.

When Murakami first arrives in Europe, he’s exhausted. When I wrote about the chapter after this, I mentioned that he personifies this exhaustion in the form of two bees buzzing around in his head, but I didn’t take a passage from this specific chapter, perhaps because the chapter, titled “Giorgio and Carlo, the Bees – October 4, 1986” (蜂のジョルジョと蜂のカルロ　1986年10月4日), is mostly Murakami spinning his wheels. He even tells readers directly that they should skip on to the next section if they aren’t interested in reading about his exhaustion:

…他人の疲弊になんかまったく興味ないという方は、とばして読んでいただきたいと思う。(28)

…for anyone with zero interest in someone’s exhaustion, I’d like you to skip and read ahead.

I do wonder if this exhaustion is partially just because of his long trip from Japan:

そんなこんなで、僕はすごく歳を取ってしまったような気がする。昨日は女房の誕生日だった。彼女の誕生日に我々は日本を出てきたのだ。時差の関係で、彼女はとても長い誕生日をもつことがだきた。とてもとても長い三十八回めの誕生日。僕が初めて彼女に会ったのは、僕らが二人ともまだ十八のときだった。十八で、酒を飲めば必ずぐでんぐでんに酔っ払っていた頃。あれから二十年。

でも僕が年をとったように感じるのはその二十年という年月のせいではない。それはジョルジョとカルロのせいなのだ。 (30-31)

With this and that, I feel like I’ve gotten incredibly old. Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. We left Japan on her birthday. Because of the time change, she was able to have a very long birthday. A very, very long thirty-eighth birthday. When I first met her, we were both still just eighteen. Eighteen, the age when you get fall-down drunk anytime you have a drink. Twenty years since that time.

But I don’t feel old because of those twenty years. I feel it because of Giorgio and Carlo.

Clearly he’s jet lagged here. And at the beginning of the chapter, he also notes that he’s on his fourth glass of red wine. Which is maybe why you see the lack of consistency with the kanji (we see both 歳を取る and 年をとる).

So while I’m sure that he’s tired from the writing work in Japan, I think maybe he just traveled half way around the world when air travel was much less convenient, hasn’t had a chance to decompress, is dehydrated, and has put back nearly a full bottle of wine. I’d wager that has something to do with it as well.

Kyoto Recommendations

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I thought I was all done with tourism for a while, but I had another friend in town this past month, and I showed her and her brother around Kyoto, so you’ll have to excuse my thoughts on Kyoto this month:

A view of Kiyomizudera at night in November 2022 with orange fall leaves illuminated and the city in the distance.

  • Sanjusangen-dō is criminally underrated and much, much less crowded than nearly any other sight in Kyoto. It is—by far, I think—the most impressive temple in the city. I’m not sure if “temple” is the right word here. I mean, it is, technically, a temple: Rengeō-in is its official name, and it was a small part of Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s imperial complex. But the highlight is the long main hall filled with 1,001 statues of Kannon. The entrance to the temple threads you into a hallway behind the statues, and when you turn the corner, the 100+ meter temple brings the vast array of statues into view. 10 rows of 50 statues stretching into the dimly lit distance with a larger Kannon in the center. In front of them are 28 guardians, including the famous Fūjin and Raijin. No photographs are allowed (and it’s been this way since I first visited in 2003, well before the Instagram era), so it’s also a forced exercise in mindfulness. I went by accident, without knowing or expecting anything, because I was heading to the National Museum just across the street and thought I’d check out a quick temple before I did. I’ve been back at least a half dozen times since then, maybe more.
  • For some reason—perhaps precisely because they prohibit photography—Sanjusangen-dō is very rarely crowded. While my family was in town, I went two days in a row, once with family and once with friends, and on the second day it happened to be Girl’s Day and entrance was free. It was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it but still was manageable. They were serving udon and other food in the courtyard, and within the temple, a stepped scaffold had been erected at the far end, just before you turn the corner to leave, so after you’d walked past all 1,000+ statues, you were able to get a view along the full length of the hall that is only available once a year. Very impressive. Do not miss.
  • On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Kiyomizu-dera is completely overrun with tourists but is still worth visiting. The temple has such an excellent view of the city, and the structure is so impressively situated up on that hill, that even if you hate crowds, you have to be a real grump to walk away unimpressed. The best time to visit is in late November when they stay open later at night and illuminate the fall foliage. I went my first two years in Osaka but skipped this past year and kind of regret it. I recommend going on a weekday because the place is packed and it can take 15-20 minutes to wait and get the best view of the leaves. To be avoided on weekends, especially during the busy tourist season.
  • Taxis are more useful in Kyoto than elsewhere: The bus situation is pretty dire right now. On one of my visits, I hopped on a packed bus at Sanjusangen-dō and briefly considered alighting at Kiyomizu-dera with friends but thought better of it when the entire bus emptied out. We decided to see Yasaka Shrine instead, which was much less crowded.
  • Nishiki Market is, in the parlance of our times, cooked. Unfortunately, central markets like this are always one of the first things to be destroyed by tourism. 20 years ago, Nishiki was still very much a green grocer at heart. Now there’s more plastic food than real food along the main stretch. It’s so central, that it’s probably worth a walk if you’re in Kawaramachi, but the other shopping arcades in the area are nicer and the side streets have better cafes and shops. Kuromon Market in Osaka is closer to a true Japanese 商店街 experience, but even it is a bit touristy.
  • This reminds me of the French Market in New Orleans. The French Market was a truly American 商店街. It was a long, covered shopping arcade that mostly sold produce. By the time I was a kid in the 1980s, only a handful of produce vendors remained, and the rest were occupied by artisans and flea market sales. I loved browsing the used books on offer, and every fall we went to take pictures in front of the massive stack of pumpkins that appeared and pick out our own to carve. But now, all the produce is gone and it’s been replaced by trinkets and a few generic artists. I’ve even seen writers hawking their self-published novels, which you have to admire.
  • Two museum thoughts: The Kanji Museum is only OK. It’s located near Gion, so if you’re in the area and happen to be a Japanese maniac looking for something different, it might be worth checking out, but the exhibits are (as you’d expect) all in Japanese and a bit plain/oriented to school kids. You can have your 漢検 practice problems officially graded on the second floor, which is kind of cool. The Manga Museum is slightly better but not superlative. It’s in an old school building, which makes the exhibits feel a bit disjointed. They do seem to have some cool rotating exhibits, and I came away with some interesting authors I want to check out. The gift shop was only OK. I’d recommend going to a massive BookOFF instead, if you’re looking to buy stuff.
  • Hiei-zan is a nice little hike! You can walk to the trail from Shugakuin Station on the Eizan Line, which is a few stops from Demachiyanagi Station on the Keihan Line. It’s a 2-3 hour hike that’s a workout but not overly strenuous, and at the top you get a great view of Lake Biwa at the Garden Museum Hiei. From there, you’ve got lots of options. You can hike back down, or take the cable car down the Kyoto side. You could also hike down the Shiga side (which I haven’t done yet). There’s also a direct bus from the Garden Museum Hiei to Kawaramachi, which is miraculously convenient. I’d recommend standing in line early to guarantee a seat on the bus because the bus stops by Enryakuji (which I also haven’t seen yet) and really fills up.
  • I haven’t seen much beyond that recently, so I don’t feel qualified to comment specifically on anything else. The Kinkakuji-Ryoanji-Ninnaji trail was always worth the trek, but I imagine it’s crowded these days. I’ll have to check out some other areas of town so I can provide more specific guidance.

Let me know if you enjoy these tourist recommendations and I’ll see if I can dig something up for future posts, maybe not quite so regularly.

The podcast is also online. In addition to the thoughts above, I go over 例文 (reibun, example sentences) there and at the newsletter with some guidance on how to identify and authenticate Japanese phrases that you’ve never used before.