KITCHEN

Tokyo cohabitation
WA R S by Marie Teather
An oven means luxury in a Tokyo apartment.

image: iStockphoto/Nicolas Loran

And in the kitchen that oven sits there. TJ
develops a relationship with her that only a
man and a piece of machinery could.

I have never had a prouder moment during my

Japan years than recently, when a select few
were invited round to see the new addition to
our coupledom. TJ and I had of course revelled
in excitement about how our lives would change
for some time now. How the spontaneous
excitement of dashing out for late-night fodder
would have passed, how we would need to plan a
weekly shop together. Oh, the smugness in how
we’d grown.
Everyone gathered around and with decent
manners they cooed, they ahhed. We tried not
to show-off, so in mock embarrassment we joked
how small she was (but we loved her anyway).
Our guests said ‘don’t be silly’. They were clearly
jealous and most probably bored.
We gathered around her in the kitchen,
the christening about to begin. TJ reached over
to crank her up and a second later our little
oven was alive. She was breathing, clicking and
emanating gas. We were cooking.
InTokyo,  rents don’t come cheap.  Apartments
with more than two measly little hobs are so far up
the accommodation ladder it had taken the best
part of a year and a couple of job promotions for
our hard work to warrant this new, almost lavish
living. We told friends and family back home of
our upgraded lifestyle.“We have an oven!” TJ told
his mum, “we have a carpet!” I told mine, “we can
see trees outside our windows!” we told all who
would listen. Everyone from old school friends to
the window cleaner thought times in Tokyo must
really have been tough.
After two weeks of us sprinting to the
kitchen, yelling over our shoulder to the fake
defeated, “Let me cook for you baby, this meal’s
on me,” the strain in the relationship begins to
show. One day TJ told me that I just didn’t make
lasagna like his mother could.
The words cut like a knife but still it wasn’t
a total surprise. In this modern world of Gordon
In secret, I read Delia Smith, wondering if she can deliver
me some kitchen-maiden sex appeal, but it seems ownership
of the kitchen has been lost.
Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, and Anthony Bourdain
who have been marching the ‘testoromnes’ back
into the kitchen with gleaming knives and too
much attitude, the news has been out there for
sometime: Women Don’t Cook These Days.
I tried to remember the last time I cooked
and back there in my days as a singleton, I find
a vague memory of serving an ‘English’ meal to
Japanese boy-interest from long ago. He was
sitting on the floor of my small tatami room as I
pulled a bowl of bubbling baked beans from the
microwave, which balanced precariously on the
top of my second-hand refrigerator.  “Here,” I said,
sloshing the red goo onto a slice of convenience
store bread, “this is what English girls cook.”
I don’t recall seeing him again but at some
point in the ensuing years I had concluded that
unlike his Japanese counterparts, a modern day,
equality–supporting English gentleman would
never expect their girlfriend to cook like their
mothers used to.
I was wrong. Men love women who cook, but
a modern man has to be better at it.
And in the kitchen that oven sits there. TJ
develops a relationship with her that only a man
and a piece of machinery could. He explores
her cooking abilities whilst revelling in his own
culinary mastery. Hearty lamb shoulders and
roast potatoes are paraded from the kitchen
while I feel awkward and forgotten. In secret, I
read Delia Smith, wondering if she can deliver
me some kitchen-maiden sex appeal, but it seems
ownership of the kitchen has been lost. Let the
battle of the bathroom begin, no man, no matter
how modern, will conquer that one. BAB
25

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Being A Broad July 2008