Be careful what you ask for in a Japanese Restaurant
A while back my friend Lee called to tell me about this new method of fly fishing that he seen at a Sportsman’s show that doesn’t use a fly reel. He said that they were using a super light weight rod about 15 ft long with no ferrules or line guides because the rod telescopes and the line attaches to the tip of the rod. The more he rambled the more excited he was getting and it was all he could do to contain himself.
Do you remember “Wildcat”Bob Goldthwaite, the hyperactive comedian from the seventies and eighties, well, that’s Lee. Talking to Lee is like communicating with someone who has been diagnosed with PTSD, ADD, St. Vitas Dance and Tourettes Syndrome all rolled into one. He might be a little excitable and unpredictable at times but he’s fun to be around as long as he is on his meds. I asked him as many questions that I could about this new fad of fly fishing trying not to set him off and he told me that he couldn’t remember the name of the booth or what they called it. He then proceeds to tell me about the new reels he seen there that had metallic paint jobs to match your boat, hyper drive disk brakes with 25 to 1 gear ratios and a whole bunch of other things. The next thing I know he’s talking about sports cars so when I finally get him back on track about fishing he tells me that it sounded like ”ten carrots” which didn’t make any sense at all. Lee said he had to go because he was getting a headache from trying to remember this stuff and he had to take his pills.
Fly fishing without using a reel seems very interesting and I became intrigued by it’s simplicity but I had some reservations about how it would feel when actually hooking and landing a big fish. I thought I would research this method of fishing since I’m a big advocate of the kiss factor and the less complicated something is, the better I like it. I made a few phone calls to a couple of my fishing buddies asking them if they ever heard of a Japanese fishing method that sounded something like “ten carrots”. One said he thought he seen something on the Outdoor Channel a while back and another one told me he ordered it once at a Japanese restaurant and he said it was delicious. Being a big fan of oriental cuisine and I thought the Japanese restaurant was a good tip because who would know more about Japanese fishing than a Japanese chef who specialized in fish. I told my wife that I was taking her out to a Japanese restaurant and the first words out of her mouth was “and I suppose you’re going to order fish”. I forgot to mention that my wife was traumatized by fish when she was younger so that anything that looks like a fish, smells like a fish or swims like a fish she wants nothing to do with it. As a youngster her and all her siblings would go swimming in the old farm pond and the bluegill would nibble on her leg hairs which really freaked her out, not to mention the stories that her brother told her about their grandfather stocking the pond with piranha’s to eat the trespassers. Right after we met she told me this story and I tried to convince her to let her leg hairs grow longer and when she shaved her legs I wanted them to use the hair as tails on my hand tied fly’s. I was convinced that this would be a sure fire fish bait.
Meanwhile back at the restaurant, from the time we left the car and was seated she s telling me if she even gets a whiff of a fish she was leaving. The waiter, a polite young man who spoke broken English gave us our menus and asked what we would like a drink. Before my wife could say another word I told him; two Sake’s. Now she wanted to know what Sake was and I told her it was a Japanese drink made from rice and she would enjoy it. The waiter returned with our drinks and she took a sip letting it run around her palette, swallowed and gave her approval by downing the rest of the cup. I quickly ordered her another and by the time we were ready to order our food she was up to three. After three Saki’s on an empty stomach I was almost convinced that I could have ordered her a raw octopus and she would have eaten it with delight.
While scanning the menu I causally asked the waiter if he ever heard of “ten carrots”. He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face then with a big smile he said; “Asooo, Tempura, velly good velly good”. Now about this time my wife got a bad case of the giggles while winking at a mackerel with glazed over eyes in the bowl of fish head soup that was served at our adjoining table. While she was trying to get the fish to respond her winking, I ordered Habu-Habu and another Saki for her and I ordered the Tempura. After a delightful meal I called the waiter over and asked him to give my compliments to the chef and to ask him if what he knew about fly fishing, Japanese style. I knew I wasn’t getting across to him so I called Lee on my cell phone and asked him if he could explain to the waiter what I was talking about. Lee assured me that he knew a little Japanese since he was stationed in Japan when he was in the service and it wouldn’t be a problem so I put the waiter on the phone with Lee. After a short while, the waiter looked at me in total disbelief, handed me the cell phone, muttered something in Japanese and took off the kitchen in a dead heat run. I told my wife, this is great I finally found someone who knows something about Japanese fishing. After a short while the doors to the kitchen burst open and out comes this little man with a head band wearing a white apron that was way to big for him shouting something I could not understand, frothing at the mouth and waving a large meat cleaver that you could have cut a horse in half. He was followed by our waiter who points out our table and both came on like a banzai charge with the chef in the lead waving his cleaver. I got up from the table and was going to respectfully bow but the waiter got between us and was shouting No Bow, No Bow he will cut your head off. I looked over to my wife who was sipping her fourth Saki with a devilish grin on her face thinking how hilarious it was that I was about to be decapitated by a Sushi Chef.
The Japanese language has to be properly annunciated with the correct pronunciation along with guttural sounds and tonal inflections in order to correctly communicate your message. I have no idea what Lee told the waiter but I’m sure something got lost in the translation. The waiter informed me that I wanted to know why The Chefs Mother’s breath smelled like the rear end of Macaque Monkey. After many humble apologies and explanations along with a very large tip for both the waiter and the Chef, I finally soothed his feathers and as he regained his composure he said to me in perfect English; you crazy American I don’t fish, I buy fish at the local fish market like everyone else.
The Japanese are given credit for inventing or replicating a lot of things but I don’t think they invented fly fishing. The style of fishing with only rod-line-fly has existed throughout Europe and much of the world for centuries and even after fishing reels became common, the Japanese did not adopt the reel as part of their fishing gear. This method seems to be related to another method of fishing that roughly gets translated as “Zero Fishing Method” meaning fishing only with the bare essentials in Japanese.
Tenkara, The term tenkara became popular in Japan about 30-40 years ago but it is also called "kebari tsuri" (lliterally translated to "fishing with a feathered hook"). The Japanese have perfected this form of fly fishing only using a rod, a line and a fly that allows drag free drifts which keeps the majority of the line off the water while presenting the fly in its most natural form. Fishing a fly in the western world usually necessitates a reel but the Japanese has taken the concept of presenting a fly with only a rod and line and has elevated it to an art form. The Tenkara method was reintroduced to the western world in the last 60 years but has never caught on until recently.
Since we all know that the Internet doesn't lie I will have to come clean and tell you that the above story was a dash of truth, A little fiction, and a whole lot of imagination.
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