Pho noodles, Dan Dan Mien and General Westmoreland...

It's been more than a year and a half since I left Tokyo for the northern hinterlands of Japan. While I do miss the friend circle I had there, I don't miss Tokyo as a place at all. Except perhaps for one thing - the various ethnic food varieties available in Tokyo. Especially, recently I was reminded of my favourite Vietnamese place called Saigon in Yurakucho where they serve delicious Pho noodles, Vietnamese spring rolls etc. Once, when the place was very crowded, a lady there offered to take us (me and my wife) to its sister establishment on the other side of Ginza. It turned out that she was the owner of the place. She drove us across Ginza in her expensive Benz, all the while talking about her experiences in Tokyo. The other, newer place was modern and spacious but lacked the cosiness and ambience of the older, cramped establishment.

Then, there is the Ethiopian restaurant in Shibuya (forgot the name), which serves a green chilli dish. A person eating one is considered to be a man. I had two and was considered to be two men!! Well, not exactly. I don't think many Indians would find those chilis to be hot. It is a tasty dish though, and could well be a manhood test for Japanese people in terms of its hotness. Perhaps the real stuff in Ethiopia is hotter than those being served for the Japanese palate.

Whenever I feel like eating Kerala food, I go to Court Lodge, a Sri Lankan restaurant in Shinjuku. They have appams, idiappams, parottas, kotthu parottas and even a decent beef curry. Again, the dishes could be made a bit spicier but when you think of the clientele they get, it's difficult to blame them.

The best spicy food I ever had was in Taipei in a Szechwan (Sichuan) restaurant aptly named "Chili House". The first thing that hits you when you enter the vast hall is the pungent smell of red chilis being fried. Their signature dishes are the Dan Dan Mien (known as tan tan men in Japanese, but this was an entirely different thing) and Wontons. Both these dishes come in a small bowl with red chilli oil-based sauce at the bottom. In the case of dan dan mien, the noodles are in the middle with fried minced meat, some greens, pine nuts and Chinese pepper on top. I started sweating after my first slurp of the noodles and couldn't stop. If you love spicy food, this is the place to be. I went there again for the noodles and Wonton the next day, just before I departed Taipei. I'm eagerly waiting for my next trip and have marked at least one meal (wouldn't mind all meals) at Chili House on all days. Chili House was started by people who fled Szechwan, famous for spicy food, in Mainland China during Mao's revolution. Good thing they did. My dreams of visiting Szechwan was quashed by my wife who didn't want to run the risk of contracting SARS, bird flu, pig flu, beef flu or any one of the many new flues and viruses being hatched there.

Anyway, this autumnal reverie on food was triggered by an article about an American General who died recently, and had nothing to do with food. This guy, General Westmoreland, commanded the U.S forces during the Vietnam War and later gave the following infamous comment. "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient". While he was demonised by many people, I feel there is some truth in what he said. Not completely, but to a certain extent. The high price on life is there for some selected people, not all. So, 500 people, mostly from the slums, dead in Mumbai because of plastic bags. It doesn't bother me. That is, as long as none of my friends or immediate family are affected. Ban the plastic bags and Mumbai is back to "yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan". Three hundred dead in U.P because of Japanese Encephalitis. Why are the Japanese doing this to us? Haven't we been together in our efforts to get into the Security Council? Well, anyway U.P. is far off and I don't know anyone from there. Pure self-interest.

So, when Gen. Westmoreland and his army spray chemicals on Vietnamese and kill millions, nobody says anything, because life is cheap in the Orient. Same thing is being played out in Iraq. About 1,800 Americans dead as opposed to 25,000 (officially) Iraqis. Roughly 1:12 ratio. I read the article on Vietnam War and think of Pho noodles. Pure self-interest and anyway, life is cheap east of Hellespont.

P.S: In India, most of us consider Orientals to denote the mongoloid people, though the western world considers all Asians as Orientals. Interestingly, many Japanese, especially the media here, when they refer to Asians, they mean the mongoloid people of Northeast and Southeast Asia and do not include Indians or Middle-eastern people. Nowadays, in Japanese media, "Asian-looking" person is a subtle way of saying "Chinese," as in "the convenience store was robbed by three Asian-looking men". This is part of the scare mongering by politicians that vast Chinese hordes have landed in Japan to do criminal activities, whereas in reality the crimes committed by such outsiders are less that 1.5% of the total (and many of these crimes are visa violations).
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