The Ramen King And I : How The Inventor Of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life Part 11

THIS LOOKS LIKE A SHOE, NOT A DUCK.

And then I understood that the purpose of the exercise was to hear that voice, and that there were many ways to begin hearing it, not only trying (and failing) to meet the inventor of instant ramen without an appointment.

A woman in the cla.s.s said, "My drawing so does not look like a duck!" She must have found the voice in her head unbearable, because soon she was in tears, hitting herself over the head with a pencil sharpener. She left the cla.s.sroom and never came back.

Momof.u.ku: I want to try yoga again. I want to try yoga again.NOT WISE. I THINK THERE WILL STILL BE PEOPLE WHO REMEMBER.

Momof.u.ku: I want to buy a new trombone. I want to buy a new trombone.WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE YAMAHA?

The trombone I had played for twenty-five years, the one my parents bought me when I was in high school, had been stolen from my car in a San Francisco parking lot. For several years I had played a spare Yamaha model, but I didn't like it very much. It just didn't feel like me.

I tracked down a used instrument shop in the phone book, and drove over. I blew into nine used trombones, but they were all either too wispy- or fat-sounding. On my way out, I spotted a tenth trombone, a 1959 Conn 78H, and when I blew into it, I heard a tone that was not too wispy and not too fat. It sounded regal, but kind of dirty. Like a king standing in a swamp.

I traded in my Yamaha for the 78H, and on the way home from the instrument shop, I stopped at a Starbucks, where I sat down at one of the tables to read the essay at the end of Ramen Discovery Legend Ramen Discovery Legend Book 13, the one about hard versus soft water in ramen broths. (An essay by real-life ramen critic Hideyuki Is.h.i.+gami-under t.i.tles such as "Toppings," "Scallions," and "Roast Pork"-appears at the end of every Book 13, the one about hard versus soft water in ramen broths. (An essay by real-life ramen critic Hideyuki Is.h.i.+gami-under t.i.tles such as "Toppings," "Scallions," and "Roast Pork"-appears at the end of every Ramen Discovery Legend Ramen Discovery Legend paperback.) Halfway through, I noticed a woman standing in front of me. paperback.) Halfway through, I noticed a woman standing in front of me.

"You play bone?" the woman asked.

I looked up. She had gray hair and she was pointing to the instrument case at my feet.

"Yes."

"You like jazz?"

"Yes."

She asked a barista for a napkin and a pen. Then she wrote an address on the napkin and handed it to me.

"Go there on Monday night," she said.

"What's there?"

"Just go. And bring the horn."

The following Monday night, I found the address on a gray warehouse in a narrow alley. As I approached the building, I began hearing the sounds of wind and percussion instruments. I knocked on the heavy front door, but no one answered. I gently pushed the door, but it wouldn't budge.

I pushed harder, and the door flew open. The band was coming to the end of a modern, up-tempo arrangement of "Take the A Train."

The musicians were all men. Most looked past retirement age, and they sat surrounded by lathes, drills, and computer-controlled saws. I noticed the cereal-box man staring down from the open loft above the saxophones, and the golf-cart-c.u.m-s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p parked near the piano.

"Come on in," the ba.s.s player said. "We were hoping you'd show up."

A big band usually has eighteen members. This one had only seventeen, because n.o.body occupied the third trombone chair. I set my case on one of the lathe tables, a.s.sembled my horn, and took that seat. The first trombonist reached out a well-worn hand.

"Name's Gary."

"Andy."

After shaking my hand, Gary examined my trombone.

"That's a fine instrument you've got there, son."

"Thanks. Just bought it the other day."

The ba.s.s player called out "one hundred thirty-five," which was the number of a tune called "Blues Machine." My 78H sounded warm and full on it, and when we got to the last note, I wanted to hold it out forever.

"You know, my old friend Archie used to play that horn," Gary said.

The 78H had once been a popular model.

"Is that right? I heard that a lot of people played this horn back in the day."

Gary shook his head.

"No. I mean, he used to play your 78H."

The C. G. Conn company must have sold thousands of 78Hs. I had never met anyone who could identify an individual trombone just by looking at it.

"You don't believe me?" Gary asked.

"I don't think so."

Gary pointed to the tuning slide atop the bell section of the horn. "Archie loved tuning that horn extra-sharp for ballroom gigs-he wanted room for slide vibrato in first position-so one time he cut the inside of your tuning slide with a hacksaw. Take a look, you'll see."

I had never looked closely at the inside of my tuning slide. But when I pulled it all the way out, I saw that the ends of the metal tubes were slightly jagged. It wasn't a factory cut.

The next tune the ba.s.s player called out was the Thad Jones arrangement "Low Down." Gary played the first trombone part on it. In spite of his age, he was a powerful player. His high-note range was far better than mine.

THAT'S NOT SAYING MUCH.

At nine o'clock, the band took a fifteen-minute break. I put my trombone back in the case and explored the warehouse. A pistol catalog from 1968 lay next to a belt sander, and hanging on one of the brick walls was a framed newspaper article about the band and how it had been together for more than fifty years. (The article had been published in the early 1990s.) Atop a tool case, I found a plastic alarm clock shaped like a samurai warrior. I pressed the topknot on the samurai's head, and a voice came out in j.a.panese.

"Wake up! Wake up!" it said. "The sun is rising over j.a.pan!"

Gary heard the alarm clock.

"Son, when I was a teenager, I played on a cruise s.h.i.+p to j.a.pan, and oh, boy, that was fun."

The way Gary said fun fun suggested that his fun had involved j.a.panese girls. suggested that his fun had involved j.a.panese girls.

"I've spent some time in j.a.pan," I told him. "I was in Osaka a few months ago."

"You don't say. Gig?"

"Not a gig."

"What, then?"

I wasn't sure if I should get into it.

"You know what instant ramen is?"

"The noodles?"

"I tried to meet the inventor of that."

"Why?"

I definitely didn't want to get that that into it. into it.

"I was researching a story for a business magazine where I'm on staff."

"How'd it go?"

"Not so well. I didn't get to meet him."

"Sorry about that," Gary said, and I could tell that he really was.

I asked Gary when the band's next gig would be, and one of the trumpet players, a thin man with a mustache, overheard. He and Gary chuckled as they explained that the band had been rehearsing, more or less consistently, since 1939, but that the last gig had happened sometime in the 1970s. Then the two of them debated whether what happened in the 1970s actually qualified as a gig.

The following Monday night, Gary brought me a CD of his friend Archie playing my trombone in a 1960 session with the Woody Herman Orchestra. There was no mistaking the lush yet gritty sound of the horn.

"You like prime rib?" Gary asked, the Monday night after that.

The woman at Starbucks turned out to be the girlfriend of the second tenor saxophonist. I think they broke up, though, because I never saw her again.Dear Momof.u.ku, Only one kid in the cla.s.s gets a perfect score on the electricity test."It's Andrew!" my sixth-grade teacher announces.I am so proud of myself that I beam as I walk past my cla.s.smates to pick up my test. Later, in the hallway, a girl named Debra approaches."You are so conceited," she says.I don't know what the word means, but from Debra's tone I know that it must be something bad. Maybe it's dirty. At night, I look it up in my dictionary.YOU SHOULD NOT THINK YOU ARE A SMART PERSON."Oh, right," I start saying in algebra cla.s.s, "you have to divide by x." As if I've just realized the mistake. I used to get straight As, but by giving wrong answers on purpose, I've turned myself into a solid B student. That isn't winning me friends either, though. Other kids begin dating and going to parties where everyone plays spin the bottle. I don't get invited.LISTEN, NO ONE WANTS TO DATE OR KISS A KID WHO'S CONCEITED.To not face that fact, I go to bed after school and sleep until dinnertime. I wake up to eat and do my homework, but then I go right back to sleep. I do this every day for three months."Why are you sleeping all the time?" my mother asks. "And why do you destroy your model rockets when you get mad?"I don't know how to explain it. My mother is concerned, so she takes me to see a psychologist named Dr. G.We're sitting in Dr. G's waiting room, which is on the second floor of his home. A bust of someone I a.s.sume to be Sigmund Freud ( (I'll learn later that it's Dr. G's idol, Carl Jung) rests on a pedestal. rests on a pedestal.CRAZY PEOPLE GO TO PSYCHOLOGISTS.The door to Dr. G's office opens, and he invites me in. He's a middle-aged man with greasy gray hair. On the first visit, he runs me through a battery of diagnostic tests that include sentence completion, short-term recall, Rorschach inkblots, scene drawings, storytelling, and pattern recognition. The tests take several hours.A week later, my parents accompany me to Dr. G's office to hear the results. Dr. G first meets with them alone, while I wait in the waiting room and stare at Freud ( (Jung). When Dr. G opens his door, I take a seat between my parents on the sofa in his office.Dr. G starts with the sentence completions."Let's look at the first one. The sentence says, 'My father ___.' And Andrew filled it in with 'is Frankenstein.' "YOU SHOULD NOT BE A FATHER-HATING BOY.I try to deny it."Just before taking the test, I was watching The Munsters The Munsters."The Munsters is a TV show about a family of monsters in which the father looks like Frankenstein. Dr. G goes right to the next sentence completion. is a TV show about a family of monsters in which the father looks like Frankenstein. Dr. G goes right to the next sentence completion."This one says, 'I want to go ___.' You wrote 'to Paris.' Hmm."Dr. G's "hmm" makes my mother anxious."What does that mean, Dr. G?""It indicates," Dr. G says, straightening his gla.s.ses, "a certain desire to escape."YOU SHOULD NOT BE A FATHER-HATING BOY WHO WANTS TO ESCAPE.I protest. "It says 'go.' So you have to go somewhere, right? How would you fill in that blank without sounding like you want to escape?"Dr. G smiles. "You could have said you wanted to go swimming. Or fis.h.i.+ng."YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THAT DR. G HAS A POINT ON THAT ONE.The next piece of evidence on Dr. G's docket is my drawing of an adult woman. He holds it up for my parents and me to see, directing our attention to the woman's chest."Notice," Dr. G says, "that this woman has no b.r.e.a.s.t.s."My drawing is little more than a stick figure with a wavy line meant to indicate long hair."Is that unusual at his age?" my father inquires."He's twelve," Dr. G says. "Well, a little."YOU SHOULD NOT BE A FATHER-HATING BOY WHO WANTS TO ESCAPE AND WHO HAS AN UNUSUAL s.e.xUAL ISSUE.By the time Dr. G tells us how high I scored on the memory portion of the test, I am no longer paying attention. That's because my entire consciousness is focused on a single thought.YOU ARE CRAZY.For the next two years, my mother takes me, two afternoons a week, to see Dr. G. Usually I just sit on his sofa and talk about what's going on at school.IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU TALK ABOUT, AS LONG AS IT ISN'T ABOUT BEING ANGRY WITH YOUR PARENTS, WANTING TO ESCAPE, OR BEING UNCOMFORTABLE ABOUT s.e.x. BECAUSE IT'S PRETTY CLEAR FROM DR. G'S TESTS THAT THOSE ARE NOT FEELINGS THAT A NORMAL, SANE PERSON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE.Dr. G often stares at me from his big, black leather chair. There are many uncomfortable silences during our sessions. The two of us just stare each other down for minutes on end.YOU SHOULD MAINTAIN EYE CONTACT WITH HIM. BECAUSE IF YOU BREAK IT, IT WILL BE EVIDENCE THAT YOU ARE HIDING SOMETHING, LIKE THE FACT THAT YOU HATE YOUR PARENTS AND THAT YOU WANT TO ESCAPE AND THAT YOU HAVE AN UNUSUAL s.e.xUAL ISSUE.I often have the urge to look away, but I always resist it.

Sincerely, Andy

Josh twirled spaghetti on a fork.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

After I returned from j.a.pan, he promoted me from senior writer to senior editor, and then again to a.s.sistant managing editor. But he was putting pressure on me to develop stories about famous technology companies. "I want you to do stories about Apple, Microsoft," he was always saying. "You know, companies people care about." I knew that he needed those stories to sell his magazine, but big companies like those have big public relations departments that are very good at controlling what's written about them. Where was the fun in that? He had taken me out to lunch because he knew something was wrong.

"I don't know," I said, biting into a slice of pizza.

"Well, you don't look happy. These last few months, you seem like you're somewhere else. You don't talk much at the idea meetings. You don't seem like you want to be here."

I thought about telling Josh that, after failing to meet the inventor of instant ramen, I had been paying attention to things that I wanted to do (aside from dating and s.e.x), and that they included making art and watching samurai movies and playing the trombone in a 1940s-style big band that had not had a gig in thirty years. I thought about telling him that I watched samurai movies on company time, and that I suspected I might be preparing for a battle, the nature of which I did not yet understand.

"I've just been going through some things," I said instead.

Josh slurped his spaghetti.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you need a vacation?"

I had another two weeks saved, so I took Josh up on his offer.

Momof.u.ku: I want to get back in shape. I want to get back in shape.YOU SHOULD JUST CUT PROCESSED SUGARS FROM YOUR DIET THE WAY YOUR MOTHER HAS. IT'S THAT SIMPLE.

I spent the first week of my vacation at a spa resort in Mexico, near the U.S. border. It was the type of place that attracts women of a certain age who also want to get back in shape. I went on hikes in the surrounding mountains, and did Pilates. Every week, the spa hosted a guest lecturer, and the week I was there, the guest lecturer was an elderly woman with a Ph.D. who had coauth.o.r.ed a seminal book about the G-spot. One evening, she led a s.e.xuality workshop in which she discussed, among other things, a surefire method for giving men multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms. "Can anyone lend me a water bottle so I can demonstrate?" she asked the audience. The technique involved squeezing, and as she acted it out on the water bottle, I glanced at her husband, who was running the slide projector. Amazingly, he wasn't smiling. While at the spa, I felt that it would be good to get Ando off my mind for a while, so I tried not to think or talk about him. I wasn't entirely successful. As I boarded the bus to return home, a graying lesbian announced that she was changing her cat's name to Momof.u.ku.

Momof.u.ku: I want to study creative writing with Katy Butler at Ta.s.sajara. I want to study creative writing with Katy Butler at Ta.s.sajara.WHAT, BUDDHISM?

For the second week of my vacation, I enrolled in a creative writing workshop at Ta.s.sajara, a wooded retreat area affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center. I wasn't drawn by the Buddhism part of it, but rather by Katy Butler, a creative writing teacher who had been recommended by a friend. I found out when I arrived, though, that Katy would be co-teaching with a monk. I enjoyed the cla.s.s, though it was often difficult to reconcile Katy's insights about narrative structure with the monk's koanlike directives, such as "Start anywhere" and "You don't need more knowledge." Every morning at five thirty, members of the monastery would run around ringing chimes to summon guests for a Zen sitting mediation. I usually slept through it, but one morning I dragged myself out of bed and walked to the Zen-do, a temple in the middle of the grounds. The ritual wasn't unlike the sitting training I had been forced to do as a student in Kyoto, except that everybody was American (and no one, as far as I could tell, worked at a gas station). I had been sitting silently on a cus.h.i.+on for half an hour when the head monk began chanting in English: Beings are numberless, I vow to save them Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them Buddha's way is unsurpa.s.sable, I vow to become it Later the head monk identified what he had chanted as the four great vows of the bodhisattva. I didn't know what that was about, but number two made me think of the hosts on Go Forth Go Forth.

I came home thoroughly rested, and before reporting back to work, I wrote something else in my notebook.

Momof.u.ku: I want to quit my job. I want to quit my job.YOU SHOULD JUST HUNKER DOWN AND WRITE SOME STORIES ABOUT BIG COMPANIES. YOU SHOULD NEVER QUIT A JOB BEFORE YOU HAVE A NEW JOB. SHOULD NEVER QUIT A JOB BEFORE YOU HAVE A NEW JOB.

When I told Josh I was going to leave, he seemed to understand. He threw a good-bye party in the large conference room, where he made a speech about my contributions. Everyone ate Vietnamese sandwiches, which was what Josh always served at resignation parties. I left the office in the afternoon and rode home on the Muni streetcar.

The next morning, I got dressed and walked out to the Muni stop. When I remembered that I no longer had a job to commute to, I just stood at the stop and watched the trains come and go. Matt had asked me to pay attention to my desires, and now I was not only single, but also unemployed. I didn't know whether to move my right foot or my left foot, so for a long time I didn't move either one.

Eventually I went home and watched a samurai movie.Dear Momof.u.ku, I wake up and my nipples are burning. I tell my mother about it, and she makes an appointment with Dr. D, our pediatrician.Dr. D examines me, then directs me to wait in the waiting room. This is unusual, because Dr. D always invites kids back to his office to hear the diagnosis with their mothers. In the car on the way home, my mother doesn't say anything about what Dr. D has told her. I wonder if it's something serious.I'm doing homework at night, when there's a knock at my door."Hey, And. It's Dad. Can I come in?""Yes."My father enters my room and sits down on the floor, cross-legged, next to the blue-and-red bookcase that he built for me. I have decorated the bookcase with Planet of the Apes stickers."So your mother tells me your body is going through certain changes," he says, "and I thought I would come in and talk to you about that."Now it's all clear. Dr. D saw my p.u.b.es, the nipple burning is a symptom of p.u.b.erty, and my mother has ordered my father into my room to give me a talk about the birds and the bees.My father's version is more like a vocabulary lesson."There are certain words and phrases you're probably hearing from your friends," he begins, "and I just want to make sure you know what they mean."THIS IS EMBARRa.s.sING. YOU SHOULD TRY TO GET HIM TO LEAVE."I'm really busy, Dad.""For instance, bag bag." Do you know what bag bag means?" means?""Dad, I have a lot of homework to do!""It means 's.c.r.o.t.u.m.' "My entire life, I will never hear anyone use the word bag bag in this manner. in this manner."You also might hear your friends throw around the phrase jerk off jerk off. Do you know what that means?"OH G.o.d, JUST SAY YOU KNOW."Yesssss, Dad."I have no idea what jerk off jerk off means. means.My father gets through necking, intercourse, necking, intercourse, and and b.a.l.l.s b.a.l.l.s before he finally leaves. A year later, our family moves from Brooklyn to the suburbs on Long Island because my mother wants better schools for my sister and me. Our new house is not far from Dr. G, so I still see him twice a week. The kid next door, Stuart, asks what my name is, and I tell him it's Andy, not Andrew. Andy sounds less conceited, friendlier. before he finally leaves. A year later, our family moves from Brooklyn to the suburbs on Long Island because my mother wants better schools for my sister and me. Our new house is not far from Dr. G, so I still see him twice a week. The kid next door, Stuart, asks what my name is, and I tell him it's Andy, not Andrew. Andy sounds less conceited, friendlier.My parents join a yacht club in Manha.s.set Bay, which is not far from our new house. They belonged to a yacht club in Brooklyn, too, but it wasn't very fancy-just some docks and a locker room. This one has a pool.I'm swimming in the yacht club pool when a girl named Sharon jumps in next to me. She's wearing a lime green bikini, and she has long blond hair. She's treading water. That night, before going to bed, I think about Sharon treading water in her lime green bikini, and after about an hour, a jet of milky liquid shoots into the air and lands on the clock radio behind me.It's the kind of clock radio where white digits are printed on black plastic tabs, and the display is illuminated by an orange LED.Every night I think about Sharon and her bikini before bed, and every night, after about an hour, my clock radio suffers a hit. The reason it takes so long is that I don't yet know how I can speed the process along.I'm hanging out at Dan's house, listening to Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, when I notice a crusty tube sock on the floor near his bed. when I notice a crusty tube sock on the floor near his bed."What's that?""My spooge sock," Dan says, and because he's cupping his hand and shaking it in the air, I get the idea that you're supposed to touch yourself."What do you use?" Dan asks."Spooge sock," I say, even though I've never heard of one. I've been using plain old Kleenex to wipe down the clock radio, but from the way Dan talks, it sounds like all our friends have spooge socks.My family takes a vacation at the Nevele, a resort hotel in the Catskill Mountains. We go ice-skating and enjoy all-you-can-eat buffets. Every evening, there's a celebrity guest speaker, and on the night before we leave, the celebrity guest is Tommy Lasorda, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The New York Yankees, my favorite baseball team, have just defeated Lasorda's Dodgers in the World Series, and he's recapping the games. The TV announcers made a big deal about how Lasorda dedicated the World Series to the memory of his friend, a baseball player who recently pa.s.sed away. I am such a huge Yankee fan that I want to rub it in."Yes, the girl in the back," Lasorda says during the question-and-answer session. My hair is puffed out in what will become known as a "Jewfro." I think it looks great, but Lasorda thinks I'm a girl."You dedicated the World Series to the memory of that friend of yours. Now that you lost, how do you feel?"The Nevele audience buzzes. I've said something I shouldn't have.ARE YOU SO INSENSITIVE, SO UNCARING, THAT YOU COULD EQUATE WINNING A BASEBALL GAME WITH THE DEATH OF A MAN?"You know, young lady," Lasorda says, "that's just baseball. And you're talking about a good man's life. Shame on you."My mother is sitting next to me, and she's clearly embarra.s.sed."I wish you had told me you were going to ask that question."My family checks out of the Nevele the next morning, and I am silent in the car.WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?When we get home, I go to my room and think about Sharon in her green bikini. For a little while, at least, nothing is wrong with me.

Sincerely, Andy

Between watching samurai movies and writing the letters, I searched the Internet for books written by Ando. I found the two autobiographies, Conception of a Fantastic Idea Conception of a Fantastic Idea and and Magic Noodles Magic Noodles, and I learned that he had penned several essay collections, including Peace Follows from a Full Stomach Peace Follows from a Full Stomach, Noodle Road, Noodle Road, and and Food Changes with the Times: Field Notes of Momof.u.ku Ando. Food Changes with the Times: Field Notes of Momof.u.ku Ando. I ordered them all. I ordered them all.

In his essay collections, Ando doc.u.ments a series of culinary research excursions-in j.a.pan and abroad-during which he studied noodles and other foods. Some of these have oddly beautiful t.i.tles, such as "Noodles Are Amba.s.sadors of Peace" and "The Sadness of Tea." More interesting, however, is the way in which the autobiographies seem to hide details of his life. There's his murky decision to reside permanently in j.a.pan, the paucity of details around his marriage to Masako, and of course, the mysterious disappearance of his eldest son, Hirotos.h.i.+. I knew from Nissin annual reports that Hirotos.h.i.+ served as Nissin's CEO in the early 1980s, shortly before his younger brother Koki took over, but in the books published after that, there was no mention of him.

One night, just as I was about to go to bed, an instant message popped up on my computer screen.

"Did you hear about the summit?"

The message was from Zen.

"The what?" I instant-messaged back.

Zen e-mailed me the URL of a j.a.panese newspaper article describing the fifth biennial World Ramen Summit, a conference sponsored by an organization called the World Instant Noodles a.s.sociation. Under the official slogan "Happy World with Ramen," the summit had brought together representatives of the world's largest instant noodle manufacturers. Previous summits had taken place in Tokyo, Bali, Bangkok, and Shanghai; Seoul had hosted this fifth one. On the summit's official Web site, I found a photograph of Ando presiding over a dais, and another in which he was enjoying a performance by South Korean schoolchildren. The summit had ended with partic.i.p.ants signing the Seoul Declaration, in which they pledged to uphold common manufacturing standards and to donate more instant ramen to disaster relief efforts around the world.

"When did this happen?" I typed to Zen.

"Last week."

I probably could have gotten a press pa.s.s, even though I had quit my job. I could have met Ando.

I typed back an expletive.

"Andy, do you still want to meet him?"