==JAPAN: KM== [Cooking]

I gave a loud cry in my untidy kitchen. "Why can't I cook well!!" It was too difficult for me to peel potatoes, so they became very small and slender. And the salted salmon in the frying pan was belching smoke. The mere sight of the lump in the pan turned my stomach. Looking down at the book's cover which was telling me How to Cook "Fried Salmon" just a few minutes before, I laughed at the words that said, "Anybody can be a cook!"
I sat down and refused to move. I could do nothing but stare at the black lump which had been a salted salmon only moments before. And the pan beside it reminded me of the previous day.
"To cook," I had thought, "I need tools." I had gone to a department store to buy such things. To my surprise, there are countless tools for cooking in the world. Giving careful consideration, I had decided to buy a lot of utensils. The clerk had asked me, "Who will use these utensils?" I had answered with a smile, "Of course, I will use them!" "Oh, that is great! Can you cook by yourself?" "Of course, I can...." "I hope your cooking will turn out well," she added. "Thank you very much. I will try to do my best!"
"Of course I can," I muttered to myself again. And then, I gave a deep sigh.
After that, I made mistakes again and again every time I cooked. We often hear, "Every failure is a stepping stone to success." But as for my cooking, "Every failure is a stepping stone to a fresh failure!"
In this way, my mistakes in cooking got to be too numerous to be counted. If there were a wonderland named Machigai no kuni, where individual human worth consists in a failure, I should be elected the chairman of the cooking committee.
But, strange to say, I still didn't come to dislike cooking. On the contrary, a limitless number of mistakes were real lessons to me, so cooking became a very interesting challenge. This was my conclusion. Why must we worry about bad taste! Cooking for its own sake has a meaning. Since then, I haven't let my mistakes or even the terrible taste bother me too much.
And I don't give a sigh any longer when I fail. Of course, I didn't want to give up cooking. "Enjoy cooking!" I always repeated it when I got depressed.
One day, while whistling merrily, I was cooking my dinner as usual. I cut a head of cabbage into fine strips. The strips were irregular in size, but I found the song that was sung by a kitchen knife and a chopping board gratifying. Enjoy cooking! A pot was on the boil. Portage was properly cooked. It gave out a pleasant odor. "Oh, this smells very nice !" I thought. But just at that moment, I heard myself saying, "Well, I never!"
"A sweet smell? It is strange, because this is a soup cooked by me!" I was upset by the fact. At last, I made up my mind to try to eat the disingenuous creation. I took a taste of it doubtfully. The taste was flavorful! "This is fine!!" But I couldn't believe it at first, because I got used to the idea that my cooking was not delicious. "Try again!" I muttered to myself. I did deep breathing exercises, and tried another mouthful.
You see, it was delicious! There was no doubt about my modest success!! How happy I was!!!
I wondered, "What has made me a better cook?" My sense of cooking which had been sleeping might have awakened. Or just the fact that I had used up every chance for mistakes might have made me cook well. But still after that, some of my dishes were not nasty. However, some of them were, if anything, excellent cuisine.
Of course, even now there are as many mistakes as before, but I have become considerably better at cooking. And even beyond that, to tell the truth, I sometimes think that I am an expert in the culinary art.
The day when I failed miserably and planted myself down by the side of the salted salmon which was scorched black and heaved a deep sigh still comes to my mind now and then. From that day, I have made numberless mistakes in cooking, and learned countless lessons from them.
But if you would like me to sum up my experience, I would maintain, "There are no nasty ingredients. There is just nasty cooking."

COMMENT Since most men are not good at cooking--of course, I am not, either, good male cooks are few and valuable. Today, men have to cook as well as women. In this point, I think this writer is great. "Cooking is Trying" is a proper saying. This essay is very interesting to me, because I can read the writer's experience, and his feelings toward cooking over the whole essay. In addition, difficult words are few, and every sentence is brief and to the point.

Seiji Saito