Christeph: On the Lam

This week’s eikaiwa was great because:

1. No new lesson plan was necessary because

2. I got a room full of people to cook me dinner. Woo-hoo!

Yes, this week’s “English” lesson was how to cook real San Diego food, which means… tacos, baby! Chris came along to help out with the cooking and delegating. First, he taught everyone how to make a flour tortilla. I think everyone was initially freaked out by the lack of an official recipe (flour, oil, and water? You just mix them til it feels right? But HOW MUCH?? AAAAAACK!), but then the class really got into it, and became a tortilla making machine. We mixed up some authentic smelling taco spices at home, made some fresh guac, and broke out the cheddar cheese Chris schlepped from Tokyo and BAM. Tastiness.

We had 2 whole hours to cook and eat, so the second hour we made s’mores (by request… someone had seen it done on TV), and whipped up some mexican hot chocolate, to round out the culinary theme. I daresay this is the first time any of my students have tried chili powder in hot chocolate. They’re probably thinking, “dude, what is it with these Americans wanting to put spices in all of their beverages? What the heck?” I shared with everyone the context of s’mores; how, to do it right, you need to be like 12 years old and at camp, sitting around a summer campfire, singing goofy songs and telling ghost stories. Everyone was all “this is a summer food?”, until I explained that most of America isn’t nearly as humid as Japan in the summer, and that many camps are in the mountains, so the evenings can be quite cool and conducive to campfiring.

All in all, it was a wildly successful evening of social eating, and the perfect prelude to Thanksgiving.

Way way back in October, several of the English teachers in town threw a sweets party and invited some Japanese friends. Well, small seeds plant wonderful things, because last weekend, we were all invited to the Japanese equivalent: a Kiritanpo party! Kiritanpo is basically the chicken soup of Akita, and it’s one of the foods Noshiro is famous for. It makes a nice communal experience if you make a whole huge pot of it that everyone can dip into. There’s also the gimmick factor, as a major component of the experience is pounding rice onto these sticks, which then get toasted and eaten with the soup. Kind of like a Japanese crouton, if you will.

It was a rather large gathering, with perhaps 15 or so in attendance, including my predecessor, who I haven’t seen or heard from for months. After the eats, we all played parlor games (!), and passed a very nice afternoon indeed. Chris even picked up a side job… he is now an English tutor for the very kind hostess of our party. She is taking the highest level English proficiency exam in a month or so, and has to memorize countless idioms of questionable utility. Unfortunately, she’s moving to Tokyo in March, but it’s always good to have friends in Tokyo, eh?

A year or two ago, my good friend Nik forwarded me this utterly hilarious video about that most Japanese of foods. The other day I discovered it’s on YouTube, friend of blogs everywhere. It’s a somewhat satirical (and spot-on) etiquette guide on how to behave in a sushi shop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8c2fMDatoU

These guys are the Rahmens, a well-known comedy duo in Japan, and I re-discovered them this week because they are starring in the Japanese versions of the latest round of Apple TV ads.

I am so happy, I could cry. Somewhy, somehow, we were served Indian food for lunch at my podunk Junior High School. We don’t even have any Indian food in town. I think the closest is like an hour’s drive away. Perhaps it was supposed to balance out the uber-Japanese meal we had yesterday: seaweed sauce on rice, sanma, miso soup with every Japanese vegetable I can’t name in it, and shredded salad of the same. But today! Oh gloriousness! There were lentils! Indian curry (kind of!) and Naan! Which was great not only gastronomically, but also comically, as anyone with a passing knowledge of Japanese can attest to:

Kore wa nan desu ka? (what is this?)
Kore wa naan desu. (this is naan)
Kore wa naan desu? (this is naan?)
So. (you betcha)

And then we all laughed for days. Nothing like a good language joke to really bring everyone together, you know?

Winter is finally here, and how do I know? Because the fall foliage has been mercilessly ripped off all the trees by the wind in all but a few spots, and little white things are falling from the sky. It wasn’t snow, and I don’t think it was hail. Maybe ice pellets or snow grains? Or graupel perhaps? The weather was so violent last night, so unrelenting in its pelting of our tin roof with liquid and solid forms of water, that neither Chris or I could sleep successfully. Whatever magical substance fell from the sky, it was gone by morning. But it’s out there. And it’s coming. As my supervisor cautioned this morning: “Get your snow tires. And soon.”

Last Friday was our monthly meeting with the Guys from the Block. They asked us last month what our favorite Japanese food was, and delivered a breathtaking spread of sushi and tempura. And it was damn good. Pictorial evidence is here.

They asked us about “traditional” American food, a question for which I always at a loss. Um, food from everywhere else? Either that or McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, and who wants that as their culinary claim to fame? Before you can say “cheetos”, we are now preparing the vittles for next month. We’re either making mac n’cheese, or burgers. Or Thai noodles. Or grilled cheese w/ tomato soup. Or hamburgers. Or Mexican food. Or pizza. Or… ?

The question is, do we make them something we know they’ll like, or do we make them something totally strange they’d never eat in a million years? (hello, sun dried tomatoes with pesto and artichoke hearts. Yessss!!) I’ve had to eat enough funky stuff during my tenure here. I say turn about is fair play. Besides, our concoctions couldn’t possibly hold a disgusting candle to naka.

We’ve been making progress on the food front. Mexican food is notoriously absent in Japan, but thanks to our friend Britt who’s done this whole JET thing before, we made something approximating a tortilla. Accompanied with the suspiciously ripe and inexpensive avocados from Mexico that our grocery store somehow carries, we had tacos last night. Woo hoo! 100 yen for an avocado… isn’t that like 80 cents? I couldn’t get avocados that cheap when I was living next to Avocado Central. What the heck? My guess is it’s a simple supply-demand-Japanese people don’t really like avocados all that much-kind-of-deal.

The local bakery has also just started producing something called a “bagel”, which is similar in shape and function (but not quite taste or density) to the same lovable item back at home. Well slap cream cheese on it and call me Philly, it tastes good enough for me.

Just a short note today that I have now officially lost 15 pounds since moving to Japan. About 2/3 of that happened within the first month, to my amazement. It’s amazing what small food portions and walking/biking all over town will do for you.

We’ll see what winter does in this department… it’ll be a lot harder to just jump on the bike when there’s a foot of snow outside.

If I cut my hair I’d probably lose another couple of pounds:

The other day I was sitting in the teachers’ room, minding my own business, trying to prepare some materials for class. I needed some glue, and I knew I had seen some around. It’s a pale yellow liquid that comes in clear plastic bottles. So I started rooting around in my desk, digging through all the materials left to me by another JET, and I found such a bottle.

I was just about to spread this substance all over my papers, when something made me take a closer look at the bottle. It looked unusually… pretty… for a glue bottle. I noticed the word “nori” for glue was conspicuously absent from the packaging.

I went against all my training as a chemist and smelled the unknown substance. Lo and behold, I just barely saved myself from having to explain why I poured honey all over my schoolwork.

That would have been a tough one…. looses something in the translation.

But honestly, see if YOU can tell them apart.
(those living in or having lived in Japan are exempt)

Why are there SILKWORM PUPA sitting out for consumption in the teachers’ room?!?!?

Bread technology marches on. I was amazed to find this lovely apparition in the grocery store the other day:

The trouble is, no matter how many slices, the loaves are always the same size; the slices are just thinner. So now I have to eat two, which defeats the point. Guess I’ll stick to the six-slicers from now on.

Of course it’s too much to ask to put the whole loaf in the bag. I think they really like the perfect-cube shape and if they changed the size, it would no longer fit in everyone’s perfectly-organized fridge.

So they feed me lunch for free in the junior high schools, but I don’t have any choice as to the menu.  I eat with all the other teachers, so they can see exactly what I don’t like and how much of what I don’t choke down.  When we’re finished, the leftovers go into all these special compartments… used rice in one bag, other uneaten food/soup in another, flattened milk cartons in another, other miscellaneous trash somewhere else, wipe off the trays and clean our chopsticks.  I feel like I’m at summer camp again.

Usually the food is decent, and that’s about it.  But at least I get exposed to food I may not have discovered otherwise… like the strange pumpkin filled fried thingy they fed me the other day.  Today’s particularly tasty vittles included:

corn chowder
fried fish with mayonaise
sauteed broccoli and carrots
a croissant
half a kiwi
whole milk

Someone pinch me and remind me what country I’m in again?…