Bar Bouton and Fuwari, Kanazawa
I thought it would be fun today to write about the concept of flow. Flow is the idea that, at certain times, your mind, body and surroundings are totally aligned, allowing you to perform your chosen task to an almost super human level of ability, even if only often for a brief window of time. Think of an athlete at the Olympics executing a perfect race. Or a musician spending a carefree afternoon writing a number 1 song. Normal folk can experience flow too. It might be as simple as a hard gym session which feels unusually easy, or really nailing that important presentation at work.
If you have ever experienced it, and I’m sure you have, being in a state of flow makes everything feel easy. Complex tasks feel simple, effort is no burden. Life is, well, good.
I thought it would be fun to write about flow as, at the moment, I am experiencing what can probably be best described as anti-flow. A rather suboptimal state where everything feels harder than it should be, mind and body are constantly fighting one another, and cobbling together a few short anecdotes about eating food in Japan feels like interminable purgatory.
If you could bottle flow and sell it, I’d be your biggest customer right now, gulping down hundreds, if not thousands, of your bottled potions and happily mortgaging my future to do so.
But even now, when I am wandering in a vast desert of anti-flow, a little oasis comes along now and again. One such oasis materialized, rather unexpectedly, in the western coastal Japanese city of Kanazawa.
Although a total unknown to me before we arrived - and selected on some fairly loose criteria for a weekend away from Tokyo – Kanazawa is a true gem. A small, walkable, city, with just enough attractions to keep you busy for a weekend, and just few enough to send you home happy and contented at the end of it.
There is a compact, yet teeming and incredibly high quality, fish market for your Saturday morning brunch. There is a nationally renowned castle and park, whose grounds you can marvel at between meals. There are museums you can think about going to before running out of time. There are small teahouse and samurai districts, which you can explore at your leisure to taste sake, eat matcha ice cream and buy tasty local snacks and treats. And there are, of course, because this is Japan, some quite unbelievable dining options.
The chosen dinner location that Saturday night was Fuwari, a well-known local izakaya that had been recommended to us by a friend, but more of that later. The immediate conundrum was how to fill the inevitable gap between post-nap-o-clock and our 8pm dinner reservation. Browsing bars on Google maps, whilst testing the limits of life on the motor of the free foot massage machine in our hotel room, I happened upon a listing for Bar Bouton, a small cocktail bar conveniently located between the hotel and dinner. The Google reviews were limited, if promising, making vague, poorly translated references to the gracious female bartender and homey atmosphere. It was hard, to be honest, to know what to expect, but hey, it served alcohol and was nearby, so why not, right?
Descending into the basement of a small office-looking block, aptly named “Tasty Plaza”, yielded precious little additional information of what was to come. There were no windows you could use to surreptitiously check out the vibe before deciding whether to enter. Just a plain wooden door and a sign above it.
At these points, when you are in a strange land where you have limited command of the language, there is typically, as there was on this occasion, a moment of slight hesitation before entry. Hand firmly on the door handle, I glanced momentarily at my wife and scanned for any signs that she thought I was leading us into some kind of hideous mistake, as I have done many times before. Either she has a great poker face or I am a bad poker player (or both), so – as is generally the case in these situations – without further thought I took the plunge and opened the door.
If flow were a character, at this point it would have firmly entered stage right. Because, as soon as we were through the door, I could feel it in every pore. From the moment we were seated until the moment we left (with the bartender kindly offering us one of her umbrellas to shield us from the rain), the whole thing just felt, well, easy.
The bar itself is a simple owner/operator creation of a female bartender, whose ability to make incredible cocktails was only outdone by her obvious passion for unobtrusive yet unbelievably attentive hospitality. Drinks were made based on your personal preferences and her recommendations, including, if you wished incorporating freshly squeezed juice from your choice of fruit. She didn’t even look down on me for ordering my usual, and rather downmarket, ginger highball, instead taking it as an opportunity to showcase her skill in elevating the simple drink to new heights. The drinks, atmosphere, vibe and service were totally and utterly harmonized in quality and experience. Drinking was easy. Conversation was easy. Enjoyment followed. Flow.
It felt, to be honest, like we had stumbled upon some great secret, a bar totally unknown to even those who lived close by (including to those in the more popular cocktail bar we went to for post-dinner nightcaps, and, probably rudely, raved about it to them). Japan is a place which hides its secrets well, making the discovery of them all the more joyous.
Fuwari, our next stop, was reached rather reluctantly having found such a gem of a bar, but itself did not disappoint. It’s busy, for sure, but the food was exceptional. The state of flow continued as we gorged on scallops, croquettes, the freshest squid sashimi you will ever find, grilled tender chicken, and more besides.
Having experienced such great flow on that evening, it is, in some ways, desperately unfair to write a slightly tortured piece like this while in a total state of anti-flow as I am now, but there you have it. Just knowing flow is out there, sometimes tantalizingly out of reach and sometimes right in front of your nose, is all you need to keep going.
