New Year's Eve in Ijika

Even on an ordinary day, Japanese meals are the stuff of legends. They’re personalized banquets in the miniature - dozens of tiny dishes, each carefully coordinated for color, smell, and taste. A multi-sensual work of edible art. But nothing compares to the culinary extravaganza assembled every New Year’s Eve. And since Ijika is a fishing village, I’m not surprised that seafood rules the menu, from appetizers to ice cream.

But more than anything, the food is fresh – so fresh that nothing, it seems, has had more than a passing acquaintance with either the oven or the cooking pot.

The rice is covered in a thin layer of raw sea urchin roe, orange and creamy and tasting like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a bucket that’s been sitting in the low tide zone.

Oysters with the consistency of boiled tissue paper and a coppery aftertaste like sucking on a penny.

Thin slabs of raw fish layered with lemon, so tender that it melts like butter and has absolutely no smell.

Snails whose owners have been evicted, eviscerated, doused in vinegar and then stuffed back into their shells. Sea slugs, dried and smoked, and soaking up a salty seaweed-bonito sauce.

Salmon eggs that pop like bubble wrap and smell of stagnant seawater. And raw squid, sliced and left to ferment in their own innards until they taste like the inside of a carburetor and have the consistency of an inner tube. It all goes down the hatch under the eagle eye of the proprietress, who doesn’t smile until I’ve sucked my last crab leg clean of its tender thread of flesh.

I emerge from my guesthouse just in time to see a long line of young men disappear down one of Ijika’s steep cement stairs. They are on their annual New Year’s trick-or-treat – going from house to house, where they stand around the entryway and raise their voices in a kind of fraternity chant: "Yashoi, yashoi, whhoooooooeeeeiiiiiii!" For this they receive oranges, sake, dried fish, and rice. When their labors are over they retire to the headman’s house and drink themselves silly, apparently in preparation for the coming icy swim.

I follow for a while, chant a bit, and earn some oranges. "What time," I ask casually, "do you’all plan to go swimming?"
The tug each other’s sleeves and have a quick group think. "7 a.m.," one says. "Six," another adds. "11 tonight". "Midnight". They smile at me and trudge off to visit the next house on their list.

At 10:30 I dash down to the ocean, my cameras flapping at my side. Ijika’s tiny stretch of beach is completely surrounded by a four-story cement beachhead with a single set of stairs that angles steeply down to the sand. The wind is howling and the waves are tall and sharp as razor blades.
I find a place among the rocks and close my eyes, relishing the icy sting of salt spray against my face. After three months in Osaka -- the smog, the crowds, the blinking neon lights – my body craves the emptiness, the raw and unfettered beauty of nature left to its own devices. I take a deep breath of ocean air. The sea slugs in my stomach catch a whiff of home and abruptly wake up.

10:45. There is a riot going on inside my intestinal tract. That overly-fresh dinner is clawing its way out. The slugs are dragging bags of sea urchin eggs like Santa Claus and the oysters slithering around in search of their shells. Even the squid is squirting up the aftertaste of six-week-old fermented ink.

11:30. I’m completely alone. The village above me is eerily silent – not a soul on the paths, no music, not even the momentary gleam of flashlights. Perhaps the purification rites are no more than a rumor after all.

12:00. I’m oddly disappointed. I’ve been working myself up to this for days. Knowing that a spectator with a camera might be frowned upon, I’d planned to take the dip myself, my bathing suit carefully concealed beneath a modest towel. Just slinking home and climbing into my warm futon seems like a cowardly way to end the night.

But wait a minute. I’m here. The ocean’s here. Why not? I store my gear beside the stairs. Off comes the Woolrich jacket, the down vest, flannel shirt and long underwear. Since I’m alone, I don’t bother with a bathing suit. I pick my way through the jagged boulders to the water’s edge. I’m not one for graduated pain, so I dive in and takes several quick strokes straight out into the ocean. Instant, icy splinters shoot up into my sinuses and it’s suddenly quite difficult to breathe. The waves are steep and unpredictable. It’s glorious and terrifying. Ten more feet, I think, and then I’ll head back and –

"Yashoi, yashoi, yashoi…"

I turn. A long string of lights is making its way down the steep steps of the sea wall. It’s the fraternity chanters, sodden with sake and finally ready for their midnight dip.

The beach is only ten feet wide. My clothes and camera are hidden behind some rocks above the high tide line, right at the foot of the steps. I’m trapped. And mortified. What on earth am I going to do? At least I can level the playing field -- I’ll wait until they get naked too.

This turns out not to be such a good idea. I’m far more motivated to get out than they are to get in. They take their time, turning the sandy shoreline into an open-air locker room -- snapping each other with their towels, passing around bottles of toe-warming sake, and anxiously scanning the black waters for hidden dangers. I, in the meantime, am losing all feeling in my arms and legs. I remember reading about some trees in Glacier National Park during a recent cold snap. Their cells all froze and eventually exploded.

Finally I can’t stand it anymore. If I get any colder they’ll have to help me out of the water.

"Good evening, gentlemen," I say in my most honorific Japanese.

Everyone freezes – a herd of humans caught in the headlights. They’re searching the black waters for real now.

"Who’s there?" a brave soul asks, loudly.

The only thing I can come up with is "Candid Camera." Fortunately I don’t know the Japanese word for "Candid" and my dictionary is lying next to my towel. None of those sample dialogues in my assorted grammar books have prepared me for this kind of encounter. More importantly, I’ve come to Ijika – to Japan itself – to make a documentary. It’s time to choose. My camera or my towel?

"Could you pass me my towel?" I ask with pretend nonchalance. It’s my first great failure as a filmmaker.

The Japanese may not be used to dealing with unfamiliar situations, but courtesy is bred into their DNA. At last, here is something they can act upon. Towels instantly snap free from a dozen waists. They hold them out to me like bullfighting capes, eyes modestly averted. I make my way to my stash of clothes enveloped in a wind-whipped wall of terry cloth. While I’m dressing a disembodied hand reaches through the towels, offering me a bottle of sake, and a cup.

Once I’m properly attired, they see no reason not to go ahead with their spirit-cleansing swim. Bodies hit the water. I nonchalantly pick up my camera, but given their chivalrous behavior, I just can’t bring myself to point it in their direction.

I say my farewells. Unfortunately, Ijika is built on a steep mountainside and my guesthouse is at the very top, 434 steps away. As I climb the steps I feel my body stiffening like a piece of road kill on an icy day.

There is a certain etiquette to the Japanese hot bath. Clothing must be folded and put in a wicker basket in the bathroom foyer. A thorough scrubbing at the midget showerheads. Hair properly pinned up, and fingernails scraped. I manage to kick off my shoes and unshoulder my cameras before toppling, like an oak tree, into the tub.

Luckily it’s after midnight and everyone has long since gone to bed.

Excerpted from Japanland © 2005 Rodale Press. To purchase, please visit japanlandonline.com