オカズ・Okazu

The East Asian tradition of serving multiple dishes at once during mealtimes, makes it unclear to those of us who are seated around the table as to which is the main dish. Is there even a main, or are they all simply side-dishes, which you pick at ease with your chopsticks? The pickled cucumbers, they make you tremble in delight as your appetite is awakened by its tantalising sourness, and you can't help but reach for more.

A bowl of steaming white rice, fragrant on its own yet lacking in the many tastes that come together to satisfy the insatiable taste of the diner, is never enough. Its purity is almost unsettling to one whose habit is to mar it with sauce. Only with the addition of these side-dishes, can one begin to feast, properly.

"Not enough, and never enough!"

That's because Okazu come in tiny, refillable portions. Treat them as an all-you-can-eat miniature buffet, if you must. At least if you can't pay your way into the international buffet at a 5-star hotel, Okazu, with the warmth of home, will always be laid out; even on the most run-down table at some dingy back alley eatery you happen to set foot in on one of your desolate night walks through the slums.

On a rainy day, you sit in the kitchen making Okazu. You think, wouldn't it be better to make enough side-dishes to get me through this season of endless rainfall? After all, to walk in the torrential rain in search of cheap dens is to debase that rationality which makes you You.

Albeit you trouble yourself by preparing your spread of side-dishes, some of which you pickle with care for days, maybe even weeks, rarely do you appreciate them with the same zeal that guided your hands at the kitchen counter. Perhaps as your blend of spices seep into the cells of the freshly sliced vegetables, you start to lose whatever appetite you had for what you'd originally chosen, for now, its taste has become one that is inherently yours, retaining little of that fresh crisp which had aroused your craving.

But the rain doesn't stop, and your fridge is still stocked up with Okazu.

Its indispensable quality with which you've associated with all those you've commodified, bind their silent resentment in unison and start to creep towards the neck you non-chalantly left exposed as you passed out drunk on the couch at 6AM.

The blasé montage that is your life numbs your tongue by the day. Do you even notice it when all you do is swallow mouthful after mouthful of rice seasoned with limp side-dishes?

...

As the Okazu ferment past their palatable prime, you throw them out, and wash your hands afterwards, with soap.