Radies and radishes: Part 11

Posted on 3 February 2010

Teetering around Tottori

… the journal of a South African vegan in Japan, by Carey Finn

2 February 2010

Since Japan is colder than Sheldon’s vegan ice-cream right now, I’ve been reluctant to do anything other than eat and sleep. Why humans don’t hibernate in winter, I’ll never understand. But in a feat of superhuman effort and much cursing, I dragged myself away from the heater and took a bus to Tottori prefecture to try some snowboarding.

It doesn’t snow in Osaka, except for the odd flurry of tiny white flakes, which melt on contact with the ground. So if you want to see the real deal, you have to head out of town. The nearest ski resorts are in Hyogo, Tottori and Gifu. Hyogo is the closest, but we have connections in Tottori.

A 3-hour bus ride later, one of these connections collected us at the station, and showed us around her town. Dressed in a (farm) stylish snowsuit and gumboots, I excitedly crunched through the snow on the pavement, made a snowman in a parking lot and lobbed snowballs at my sidekick.

Tottori is a fairly small town, with very few (possibly zero) vegetarian restaurants, but luckily there is at least one Indian restaurant. So for supper, we chowed down on vegetable curry and rice. The curry was warm and tasty, if a bit watery. It was also reasonably priced, at about 1000 Yen (don’t convert back to Rands if you don’t want a shock). There is a franchise of these Indian restaurants in Japan, but this was the first time I’d been to one. They’re a good choice if there are no all-vegetarian restaurants around. It’s a lot better than stuffing yourself with convenience store rice balls.

The next day, we took a 2-carriage ‘local’ (that means very slow) train to Yonago, a rural area on the other side of the prefecture. We spent the afternoon on the slopes of Mount Daisen, a famous skiing spot in the area. I used the plural, ’slopes’, but in truth we didn’t get past the beginners’ slope. Still, we had a lot of fun, and were able to stand and navigate most of the way down the almost-level incline, by the end of the day.

Ravenous after all that slipping and sliding, our Yonago connection took us to a great vegetarian restaurant for dinner. It’s called ‘Hibi no Kate’, and is run by a lady with pink hair, who calls herself ‘Honey’ (although only to foreigners).

The restaurant is labelled as vegetarian, but we couldn’t find a non-vegan dish on the menu. The ‘egg omelettes’ were actually tofu, and all of the sauces used soya milk. The desserts were all vegan too. For dinner, I tucked into a veggie burger, which was served with the tofu omelette stuff, salad, miso soup and rice. It was filling, but luckily I have a second stomach just for desserts, so I managed to squeeze in the chocolate cake and green tea ice cream in the picture, too.

We tried to convince Honey to move her restaurant to Osaka, but the Yonago connection, a vegetarian herself, objected. When she leaves Japan though … the trucks will be ready.

Next time: Seoul food. A weekend in South Korea.

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