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UPDATE: Saturday, June 12, 2010      The Japan Times Weekly    2005年4月16日号 (バックナンバー)
 
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LOST IN FRANCE

Generalizations accepted here

By MARIKO KAWAGUCHI

I don't mean to insinuate anything, but when I happen to mention to compatriots that I live in France, the standard reaction I get is, "Oh, the Louvre! The Eiffel Tower! Wine and cheese! Hermes! Cartier! Ah, how lucky you are!"

I mostly agree with these sentiments. I rather like the Eiffel Tower and frequently visited the Louvre when I was an art history student in Paris. These days, being 700 km from the capital, I have little to do with them. As for Cartier and Hermes, I imagine they must be good quality brands, even though I've never owned anything by either.

It's rather perplexing to me when people say, "Oh, you are so lucky," because I don't know if I'm truly fortunate to be living in this small village called Auterive. Very roughly, it's somewhere between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean (don't even try to look it up in an atlas).

I've been drifting in this remote place for some time. When I started this column a year ago, I doubted it would last as long as 12 months. In Paris, there would be sufficient restaurants and strikes to write about for another 12 years. The probability of encountering topics here is, like the village itself, remote. (Please see my first column on The Japan Times Weekly Web site).

I was asked to write about food and wine, and hadn't expected another year, so I've almost run out of ingredients. So this year, I need to blend cuisine with a more pseudo-socioethnological sauce.

By way of introduction, France covers a larger land area (550,000 sq. km) than Japan and has a smaller population (61 million). Japanese tend to have the wrong image of the French. I had erroneously associated them with berets, baguettes, bottles of wine and Bohemian notes on accordions. When I attended a certain French institute in Tokyo about a decade ago, most students (predominantly girls) were dressed in black (a la Yoji Yamamoto), seated with legs crossed, puffing on Marlboros while nervously turning the pages of a copy of the Liberation newspaper.

Yet, fortunately and unfortunately, life isn't that simple. In this country of changing landscapes and climates, there is a deep divide between northerners and southerners, between the mountain and coastal regions, between the cities and the countryside -- in people's accents, manners as well as temperaments (like anywhere else).

Here in the southeast, I don't often hear the French I learned in school. To me, it often sounds more like Spanish than anything else (the purest tongue apparently belongs to the Tourains, as the inhabitants of Tours are known).

According to my Lillois companion (he's from Lille, in northern France), people in the South of France tend to be more open and happier than they really are.

Of course, similar cases abound: Parisians (and Bordelais, from Bordeaux) are regarded by provincial people like plain Toulousains (from Toulouse) as being arrogant and cold, while Auvergnats (from Auvergne) have a reputation for being mean over money matters.

Whatever their (often merely caricatural) regional rivalries, French people have one thing in common: They are at their happiest when at the dining table. Like somebody saying, "French discuss food while eating," their passion for food and drink unites them.

Finally, today's food topic: pale asparagus. Thicker than those in Japan, they only need peeling and steaming before being eaten with vinaigrette sauce. Being so simple yet delicate, it's one of the tastes of spring in France.

If any of you are visiting Paris soon, be sure to try it -- on a break between the Louvre and the Louis Vuitton stores.

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: April 16, 2005
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