Traditional Japanese cuisine in a (very) unconventional setting

The American beside me gulps the last of his beer, just as one of the Aussies drains another cup of sake. She nearly chokes, coughing as she reaches for more food. The elderly Japanese gentleman who proposed the toast – and whom none of us at the table had met before this evening – seems pleased by all this. “Very good!” he says, as one of the woman’s friends repeatedly smacks her on the back. 

I can’t help but grin. Everything about this place is a little mad, even the concept: we are sitting in a corner of what was, once upon a time, the local strip club. 

A few streets back up the hill, the village is in full swing: bars are rammed with aprés crowds, the main street is thronging, and somewhere, I’m sure, someone is making ears bleed at the karaoke machine. As with most things in Japan, they do skiing a little differently here. And while it may not have the nightlife credentials of Val d’Isere or Val Thorens, the quaint resort of Nozawa Onsen has plenty to offer once the sun sets.

Wander down the main strip on Oyu street, for instance, and you’ll pass a number of hip watering holes, such as the vinyl-spinning Guru Guru, where the eclectic soundtrack, featuring everything from 80s house to jazz-funk, is supplied exclusively by turntable set; or the lively Balance Bar, which boasts a ping-pong table and a retro Nintendo console. For something a little more grungy there’s the underground Stay Bar, identifiable by its large sign bearing the face of Jackson Brown (the owner is apparently a big fan). Descend its steps on a Monday night to catch the open mic event, where everyone packs in like ski school kids in a gondola to jump around to the live performers. It’s a great place to go if the karaoke rooms seem a little tame.

You’ll also see the stands selling fresh oyaki, a street food specialty here in Nagano prefecture: Japanese dumplings made of gelatinous fermented buckwheat dough and stuffed with a variety of tasty fillings, such as the local Nozawana pickle, and the popular adzuki (sweet red-bean paste). The dumplings are steamed using slitted wooden crates which billow vapour into the night sky, adding an extra layer of atmosphere to the already very charming mise-en-scène of bars, restaurants and gift shops.

The centerpiece of the thoroughfare, though, is undoubtedly the building it is named after. The Oyu onsen stands at a corner of one of the main crossroads in the village, and is visible from almost every angle of approach. Not that it is easily missed: its three-tiered, pagoda-esque facade, framed by traditional upturned eaves and made of golden-hued wood, is a commanding sight. It is especially impressive at night, when the vapour rising out of its snow-capped roof is lit up, ghostlike, by the neighbouring lights.

It is one of the thirteen public baths, the so-called Soto Yu or ‘onsens’, from which the village takes its name. For over 800 years, the Japanese have enjoyed the natural hot spring waters which flow from the mountains here in Nozawa Onsen, which lies in the heart of the Japanese Alps, a few hours by train northwest of Tokyo. The baths, which are collectively owned and maintained by the villagers, and are free to use, are something of an institution, a place where locals bathe and exchange chit chat – and even do their laundry – à la the Romans of old. 

They also happen to be a great way to unwind after a day’s skiing. The resort hosted the 1998 Winter Olympic biathlon event, and celebrated its centenary last year. The weather conditions rolling in over the Sea of Japan from southeastern Russia mean Nozawa is graced with over fourteen metres of powder a year – making it not just one of the snowiest resorts in Japan, but in the world. 

Something else the resort has an abundance of is restaurants. Like the rest of the country, Nozawa takes its dining very seriously. Great emphasis is placed on using local ingredients, and there are more places to eat than there are kilometres of piste (of which there are just shy of fifty). In keeping with the nature of the village, most of them are quaint mom-and-pop joints, serving up a hearty mix of Japanese favourites.

The place I am dining at tonight is a reflection of the changes Nozawa has experienced over the years.  Often referred to simply as ‘the old strip club’, its proper name is Jiyu Gekijo – which, loosely translated, means ‘free theatre’; an interesting choice, given that once upon a time it served as the village gentlemen’s club. 

The building lies a couple of streets down from Oyu street, and, perhaps understandably, is fairly inconspicuous. There are no neon signs or menus in the window, the customary red lanterns hanging outside the only giveaway. Ironically, it also happens to sit directly across the road from the police station. (Whether this is due to unfortunate town planning or simply a happy ‘coincidence’, I was unable to verify.)  

Lascivious activity came grinding to a halt at Jiyu Gekijo several years ago, when the club was converted into an izakaya, Japan’s version of a pub. Usually a little cramped, sometimes scuzzy (in some of them you can still smoke), and always humming with energy, an izakaya is casual Japanese dining at its finest. They’re typically run by only one or two people – often the owners – who juggle the multiple hats of the maitre d’/waiter/bartender/chef all evening, and prepare all of your food and drinks at the bar right in front of you. (A rather more wholesome type of ‘free theatre’ for the foodie.) 

A bandana-wearing chef emerges from behind the curtain to the kitchen at the tinkling of the doorbell. We’re only two, I entreat him in my best Japanese, holding up two fingers just to make sure. My girlfriend and I haven’t booked, an oversight I very quickly regret. Rows of shoes are piled by the doorway to the main dining room, where diners are spread cross-legged on tatami mats; likewise, the counter in the room adjacent is completely encircled. The chef grins, and points to a far corner of the counter, where coats are stacked by the emergency exit.

A moment of hesitation; is this just where we leave our coats? Is he telling us to leave? Surely, there isn’t room for us to sit there?            

As we’re led to our seats, I scan for clues to the venue’s seedier past. In the main dining room I spot a stage, and note several suspicious-looking wooden beams which rise to the high-ceilinged roof. There are also various platforms which remain in situ, though they are occupied by diners instead of performers.

And while lap dances may be a thing of the past, things still get… intimate. We squeeze in next to the other customers at the counter, where there aren’t really seats, but a thick wainscotting which protrudes from the wall behind, with a wooden foot rail for your legs. It is cosy, to put it mildly: I am knee-to-knee with the guy to my left – just as he is now knee-to-knee with the friend to his left – and there is very little room to manoeuvre. Thankfully, though, the setup is all very casual, and I don’t feel that we’re intruding. 

The whole place, in fact, oozes a laid-back cool. A large wood-fire stove, complete with a rustic kettle, crackles away in the next room, and corners are taken up by stacks of firewood, bookshelves chock full of manga, and a vintage gramophone. Meanwhile, the only thing being mounted these days is the soundsystem, which projects a suitably suave soundtrack of classic jazz; I find myself tapping my fingers to the irresistible beat of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. This is somewhere you can imagine spending a few hours with your nose buried in a good book rather than a bosom. 

The chef moves a few plates around on the worktop and produces a hibachi grill – a small charcoal-filled device with a fine metal mesh on top, about the size of a small saucepan – along with a couple of plates. This is to be our station for the evening, he explains; because here, you cook your own food. I notice that everyone at the counter has a similar grill upon which their dinners are slowly simmering away, which explains the all-pervasive smell: a mix of smoke and cooked meat, the kind of infuriating scent which drifts over next door’s fence during BBQ season. It has me practically drooling into my neighbour’s lap.

My Japanese is shaky at best (I can just about order a bowl of rice and a beer), and I start running through vocab in preparation for ordering. Seeming to sense my trepidation, the chef waves his hands, and explains that ordering isn’t necessary (there aren’t even menus to decipher). The restaurant specialises in kushiyaki – skewers of meat and vegetables cooked over a grill – and we are directed to simply help ourselves from the assortment of bamboo skewers occupying almost every free inch of the worktop. 

It is a veritable collage of cuisine. There is the staple yakitori – pieces of chicken (frequently offal such as heart, neck, or tail) garnished in either salt or a mix of soy sauce, mirin, and sugar; rose-pink pork cuts, an aspic-like rind to them; plump golden squares of rolled Japanese omelette; fresh shitake mushroom; huge green edamame pods; fishcakes; crimson crab sticks; and potato cakes. There is also a wide range of less colourful but no less enticing tempura (battered items), such as whole fish, cheese croquettes, quail eggs, more mushrooms, courgette, sweet potato, even melon. 

Each skewer is a bargain, at only 100 yen (the equivalent of just over 50p, or about 60 cents). For collecting our stripped sticks we are given a plastic cup, which also acts as something of an abacus: to work out the cost of our meal, we simply count the number of empty skewers and add a couple of zeros. In this place, at least, Japan’s no-tipping policy makes sense.

I start with a couple of sticks of yakitori – beautifully seasoned, with just the right amount of sweetness in the glaze – followed by one of the pieces of rolled omelette, so fluffy it disintegrates as soon as I close my mouth. Then it’s on to the pork, which oozes fat teasingly into the coals, hissing as it does so. Impatience gets the better of me, and I end up with a stinging tongue and tears in my eyes. I venture some of the less risky veggie offerings next – shitake, edamame, battered courgette. 

The issue in trying to describe the food in a place like this, of course, is that each diner is largely responsible for the final taste of the things going in his or her mouth; whether something is over- or under-cooked, juicy or dry, depends on how long you leave it grilling. (I, for example, neglect an edamame pod while chatting with my girlfriend, and end up with something resembling scorched earth.)

Really, though, what makes this place such a delight – like the rest of the village – is its undeniable character; it feels less like dining in a restaurant than sitting around a campfire with a group of friends.

Judging by the number of bare skewers, our fellow diners are already very familiar with the system. The three guys to my left are all childhood friends from the States, all originally from California. On the opposite side of the counter are four giggly female Aussie graduates, a mixture of nurses and ‘bottlos’ (Aussie slang for wine-shop workers). Talk inevitably turns to snowsports, and I ask what drew them all to Nozawa.

“Guaranteed good snow,” says one of the Americans, a Big Tech worker from San Francisco, to serious nods of agreement from everyone else, especially the Antipodean contingent. “Even in the States these days, the conditions can be pretty dire.” 

(More nods)

“And it’s soooo expensive,” his friend, who lives in Santa Cruz, chips in.

How expensive?

“Okay,” he says, “let’s say you want to do just one day in Big Bear [a large resort in California]. That’ll set you back 150 bucks, just for the lift pass.” It is almost cheaper, he explains, to fly all the way out here for a week’s skiing, where lift tickets are a third of the price. 

“Well, it’s currently our summer,” one of the Aussies adds with a tilt of the head, as if this were a great tragedy, “and we thought this resort looked really cool. It seemed really… I dunno… Japanese.”

“Right,” the first American agrees, nodding and gesturing vaguely around the restaurant to make the point.

“Plus, it’s close to Tokyo,” one of the other girls says. “We’re spending a couple of days there before we leave.”

When we’re finally all skewered-out, we compare stick-counts: my girlfriend and I clock-in at a respectable 47; the four Aussies edge us at a figure somewhere in the mid-60s; but running away with it are the Yanks, who are just a nudge below 100, their cup fit to burst. When they announce their grand total  – and with this the maître d’/chef/bartender/waiter is very trusting: he asks us all to count our own tallies and takes us at our word (something I’m not sure I’d have done, given the number of empty beer cans and sake bottles littering the table) – there’s a small round of applause, led (of course) by the Japanese gentleman at our worktop, who has been steadily nursing a bottle of whiskey and hasn’t touched touched a bit of food all evening. 

Completely stuffed, my tongue and the roof of my mouth definitely burnt in several spots, my girlfriend and I stumble outside with everyone else, after nearly falling over trying to put our boots back on. We huddle in the cold as it begins to snow, all rhapsodising about which runs to hit first thing in the morning, all wincing slightly at our full stomachs. There’s something a little sad about saying our goodbyes; we feel we’ve shared something rather special this evening, and we don’t want it to end. 

When I wake up the next day, my symptoms are similar to those of spending too long in an actual strip club (I’m guessing): my clothes smell funny, my head is pounding, and my back aches from the unconventional seating arrangement. The first two are easily fixed – I’ll wriggle into my salopettes, throw my coat and helmet on, and head up for a dose of that oh-so-fresh mountain air. 

As for the third? That, I think, calls for a visit to the onsen.