Toriya Otori, Otaru, Hokkaido
The Back to the Future trilogy is, unashamedly, my favourite film franchise. It’s a classic Hollywood take on a childhood fantasy. I mean, who hasn’t wondered what they would do with the inevitable gambling winnings if provided with an almanack of the baseball scores for the next half century?
Above all else, its success is a reflection of the alluring possibilities if we let our minds roam free and glimpse with wide eyes at the divergent possibilities of alternate realities.
It is a slightly wacky story about time travel, yes. But it is also a film that reflects our own very real relationship with time and our own fragile egos. How we covet, question, fantasise about them.
Time, and the passage of it, has been very much on my mind lately. I suddenly find myself in my late 30s, desperately comparing myself to other, more successful/grown up/settled, adults on social media, whilst also perpetually trying to recapture a semblance of my youth (the latter, mainly by maintaining a steady stream of soft tissue injuries by participating in team sports with much younger men).
It’s one of those times in life where alternate realities feel particularly acute.
On the one hand, things are going swimmingly. I live in a cool city with easy access to things I like. On the other, you can’t help but wonder what would have happened if you had gotten even more lucky and found a Baseball Almanack which paved the way to untold riches.
Sometimes to counter this you need a rock. A touchstone. Something you can go back to reinforce how lucky you are, but that also reminds you of the value of consistency and mental fortitude to “just do you” in the face of an ever changing, preening, death-by-comparison world.
These moments of zen are few and far between, but stand out in my mind like a time travelling DeLorean in a 1950s parking lot.
On a recent dairy-fuelled trip to Hokkaido, and in between visits to a strange local festival of taiko drumming and people dancing down the street, I stumbled, by chance, on one such zen like experience. Looking for a local izakaya in a fishing town in Japan would normally conjure images of uni (sea urchin) and ikura (salmon roe) piled high on glistening, pearlescent and perfectly vinegared white rice. But, in what must have been some quirk of the time space continuum, our dinner spot of choice served meat of the land rather than of the sea.
Specifically, Toriya Otori was an izakaya dedicated to chicken, the very tastiest of land meats. The main event was mizutaki, a chicken soup into which various delicious things are dropped and simmered and then eaten with a vinegary dipping sauce. If it sounds bland, I can assure you it is not. The chicken soup is a milky, collagen heavy delight, made from long-simmered chickens and vegetables. The chicken pieces that are lowered in are juicy, tender and, speaking frankly, the best bird you will ever likely experience.
In a nod to Hokkaido’s rich dairy heritage, the side skewers – I mean, who doesn’t want side skewers - of tsukune (chicken and cartilage, minced, skewered and grilled over coal, before being slathered in a sweet, savoury sauce) came with gratings of cheese on top, taking them from the realm of great to literally out of this world. Even the skewered liver was mild and tasty enough for my usually liver-averse dining companion to enjoy. The (intentionally) half-raw chicken breast and wasabi dish was delicious and, mercifully, free of secondary consequences for my gut, reinforcing the unparalleled quality of the birds that died for my dinner.
But what made it, to be honest, was the homey, husband and wife vibe and the unashamed feeling that “this is just what we do”. There was no need to compare to alternative realities/restaurants/experiences. It simply didn’t matter. It is the perfect representation of calm, firm-handed assuredness in a world dogged by unhelpful comparisons and “what ifs”. So to hell with Marty McFly’s baseball almanack. Films are for dreaming, but life is for living and being in the moment. And you won’t live much better in the moment than you do right here.
