All this said, there is a Costco in Amagasaki just two hours of bridges and highways from here, and Aaron and I were invited to go last week with 68 year old Tama and her son, Hiroshi. We had spoken of it during a culinary discussion over dinner one evening at Tama’s house. She was shocked when I told her that I usually cook Japanese food at home, and I went on to explain that Japanese supermarkets carry little in the way of western staples, especially for those of us who can’t stomach factory raised meat and are attempting to avoid potentially radioactive fish products. We spoke of a place, a large and distant and brilliantly lit place boasting high ceilings and delicacies such as dill pickles, Spanish olives, Havarti cheese and granola. It’s cheap, we told her. Big and cheap. This is the conversation that led to our borrowing a friend’s Costco card, piling into Hiroshi’s futuristic white van with the automatic doors – which, despite the fact that they slid back and forth rather than opening up like wings, reminded me of a certain DeLorean – and driving the pricey highways to Hyogo prefecture.

So, negotiating throngs of Sunday afternoon shoppers mindlessly pushing jumbo trolleys full of jumbo miso, jumbo mayo, jumbo nori, jumbo chocolate covered pretzels, we shopped. Pushing past the food-mileage-related guilt, I selected some mascarpone.  Giving in to homesickness, I seized tortillas and salsa. We piled high the olives and pickles and muffins and Corn Flakes and bricks of aged cheddar and yes, even jelly beans.

The contents of Tama’s cart were a bit more sparse: dog food, cling wrap, sliced beef and bag full of a stomach-turning product that seemed to consist of processed meat product wrapped around animal bones. If you can somehow imagine a meat popsicle – a collection of processed animal parts wrapped around a recycled bone from some unfortunate and unidentifiable animal species – this was it. I assumed Tama’s judgment had been impaired by this overwhelming shopping experience to which she’d been subjected by her foreign friends.

After the shame-inducing checkout experience during which we watched our gluttony gliding along before us on a rubber conveyor, we paid a visit to the sticky, grimy-floored food court. The look on Tama’s face when we ordered our 200 yen lunch combos and were handed 20oz cups with foil-wrapped hotdogs inside them was one of sheer bewilderment.  We apologized to her many times over the course of the afternoon, embarrassed to have this greedy, filthy, nasty side of our culture revealed to her so nakedly. I realized that places like Costco are intrinsic to the perpetuation – nay, validation – of negative stereotypes, stereotypes I live with each time someone’s jaw drops when I tell them that I can use chopsticks, I do eat vegetables, I don’t eat meat three times a day, and that hamburgers are not my favourite food.

Tama announced in the car ride home that she’d like to visit Costco monthly, and that she’d like to have us over for dinner the following evening.

* * *

Upon arrival at Tama’s 24 hours later I presented her with a gift of boxed and shamelessly yet attractively over-packaged cookies. Like lightning, she disappeared into the kitchen and returned brandishing a bag of large red apples – which, while perhaps a modest gift back in Canada, here is quite a generous offering as this fruit retails for well over a dollar a piece, each apple nestled in its own protective styrofoamy netting – and I learned yet another of the myriad important lessons when it comes to gift giving in this country: wait until the very end, literally until you are saying goodbye and getting into the car to drive home, or else your hostess will give you a gift in return from her personal stash; now not only will you be served a home cooked feast, but have also just been handed eight dollars worth of apples and are left with nothing else to give in return for the apples except fifteen or so apologetic domo arigato gozaimasu’s.

We followed the mouth-watering aromas into the kitchen; gyoza, vegetable soup, squid tempura caught locally by Tama’s husband. I could see a bowl of her famous potato salad, a dish of gomae, and something else sizzling away in a fry pan. Suddenly my mind was swimming and my stomach was turning and I was in a state of complete disbelief at my misfortune. I elbowed Aaron and mouthed to him look on the stove, and he did, then looked back at me wide-eyed and terrified.  The meat popsicles. I was trapped. I could feel my throat constricting as I realized that at some point very soon I would actually have to raise one of these abominations to my lips and politely eat it; even pretend to enjoy it.

Luckily – perhaps unluckily as at the time as I didn’t deem such monstrosities worthy of pre-gustation discussion, not wanting to know any more about them before taking the plunge – Aaron was not too shy to ask Tama about them.

“What are those?”

“What?”

“Those things in the pan?”

Tama, who was slicing vegetables at the counter, blinked. She looked at me then back at him. She seemed worried that she was being tricked. “Frankfurters,” she said, with a slight intonation that insinuated something like What are you, simple? Tama was puzzled by this question because she believed she was preparing western food for her western guests and therefore that we should already be familiar with, and even excited for, this rare taste of home.

If these are enjoyed in anywhere in the west it is surely by a remote few who keep it as a shameful secret.

Aaron continued. “Is that a bone?”

“Yes.”

“From what animal?”

“Chicken. Maybe. Maybe pig.”

“Why?”

Now Tama stopped what she was doing – putting the finishing touches on the boneless green salad – and turned and looked at us. It was a long hard look, both accusatory and confused. I smiled. Really big. Then I stopped when I realized my eyebrows were raised and I was grimacing a bit. “Why why?” she asked.

Aaron explained that this sausage-on-a-bone-stick does not exist in either of our native western countries; that it is a Japanese conception. Tama was clearly stunned.

This is not the only food I’ve encountered that the Japanese have embraced and marketed as something exotic and foreign, placing such delicacies in the American Food section of a menu along with fried potato (fries) and corn soup. I once got in an argument with a ten-year-old student of mine during a discussion about his favourite food. This took place shortly after my arrival in Japan and I had not yet encountered the family restaurant favourite known as Hamburg (pronounced ham-bah-gu).

Me:                  What’s your favourite food?

Yoshitoki:       Hamburg.

Me:                  No, your favourite food.

Yoshitoki:       Hamburg.

Me:                  You mean hamburger.

Yoshitoki:       Hamburgu.

I went on to explain to little Yoshitoki that there was no such thing; that Hamburg is a city in Germany, not something to eat. I even showed him a map. I mistook his silence for concession, though realistically his English conversation abilities were insufficient to hold ground in an argument with his ignorant new sensei. I later discovered Hamburg on a menu and ordered it in an act of atonement. What arrived before me was a ground beef patty dripping with brown sauce and accompanied by a cube of fried chicken and a limp broccoli floret.

After a few more moments of silence Aaron continued. “I mean, why a bone?” And Tama gave the only answer there could possibly be.

“To hold on to.”

When the time came I ate the monster quickly and efficiently, and even though the processed meat itself tasted of any old hot dog, my gag reflex required that I douse the beast in the ketchup and mustard Tama had thoughtfully put on the table next to the soy sauce and matcha salt. When I got down to the recycled bone of ambiguous origin I held my breath. I was contemplating what amount of processed pork meat is acceptable for one to leave on a chicken bone or pork bone or whatever it was when I noticed Tama, still shaken by our incomprehensible line of questioning, observing us. When I saw the pleasure she was taking in watching us enjoying her Frankfurters I smiled, closed my eyes and went for it: distracting myself with thoughts of the waiting gyoza, I nibbled that bone-stick clean.

Aaron was offered a second and, after feigning indecision for a mere moment, he accepted. A teeny bit of my respect for him floated away. I reached for the salad, feeling triumphant in having endured my first “Frankfurter,” hid the bone under a lettuce leaf, and got on with my life.

]]> http://astrumberger.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/foreign-food/feed/ 0 astrumberger Domo-kun Hamburg http://astrumberger.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/childrens-literacy-me/ http://astrumberger.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/childrens-literacy-me/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:23:54 +0000 astrumberger http://astrumberger.wordpress.com/?p=242 Continue reading →]]> Book Fair again. The bi-yearly event returns. Book Fair means a stressed-out boss. Book Fair means male coworkers insisting they don’t need help carrying the tables. Book Fair means male coworkers complaining about sore backs. Book fair means a full day of nonstop favourites like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the one about Muffin Man with whom it seems oddly relevant to be acquainted. Book Fair means going into work early to sit on a Winnie the Pooh (here in Japan known as Pooh-san) rug in the corner and read to weary, unsure children. Book Fair means generally playing the part of English-speaking monkey.

This event is the only one of its kind in fair Tokushima, and the largest draws are a significant selection of quality children’s books otherwise unattainable this side of the Seto Inland Sea, and the fact that from open until close on the Saturday there are native speakers on hourly rotation reading storybooks. While I would rather spend my free Saturday hours cycling up mountains or swimming in turquoise rivers – or even doing the laundry at home – than sitting cross-legged on an ancient carpet on which I’m sure my boss’ thirty-something children took their first steps, I suck it up and choose to treat it as a morning of field work; observing the strange behaviors of children in the wild.

Some children scurry over and drop their little bums down, exerting an adult amount of assertiveness in the way they choose a story and thrust it at me, toes wiggling and eyes expectant. Others wear an expression of combined curiosity and petrification. With some gentle coaxing from their parents – who smile in apology while offering me an über-polite succession of little bows – these children arrive before me wearing their inner conflict on their chubby little faces. They stand there with their little eyebrows raised and their tiny wet mouths shut tight, wringing their tender hands in bewilderment as I speak to them in my alien language, bearing down on them with my forced alien smile.

All that matters to anyone here is that I talk. Hell-O! What’s YOUR name? My words are slow and embarrassingly inflected with artificial intonation because, as everyone knows, that is the best way to communicate with little ones. It’s more about speaking like a Muppet and less about what I actually say. Would YOU like a STO-REEE? Do YOU like MAI-SEEE? Did you know that my KNEES are really SORE from sitting on this RUG on the FLOOR? I can tell you’re SPOILED, and that your DAA-DEEE didn’t come HOME last night, and THAT’S why your MUM-MEEES EYES are RED. The children look back and send telepathic SOS’s to their mothers who have already turned away and begun shopping. Deciding they are now stuck with me, the children’s level of trust miraculously increases and they take a bold step closer. Still standing they cock their giant heads and scrutinize the cover of the book I’m brandishing before them (Maisy books tend to make great icebreakers with this sensitive set), and as I open the book and begin to read they lower themselves first to their knees and by the end of the story they are sitting just like me: cross-legged on Pooh-san’s face.

Some children, out of an innate sense of politeness – or perhaps a complex understanding of guilt already inflicted on their young psyches by their mothers – will rise after this first story, as if sensing they’ve had their share, and scurry back to their mothers. These well trained wee ones who don’t wish to take from me more than they deserve, continue to stare at me for the duration of their stay, regretting the hasty decision to desert the story corner and resenting the baffling institution of manners. The less socially-aware, however – the ones who have been taught to grab life and all its story-times by the balls –  settle in and will force book after book upon me, having clearly realized they’ve hit the jackpot with this light-eyed storybook jukebox. Eventually the mothers have to drag them away as they wave and chirp bye-bye as if we’re pals from way back on the block.

Of course there are others, the ones who want nothing to do with me. Of these there are two classifications. First there are the ones whose parents understand and respect their children’s skepticism and allow them to hang back, hiding in the shelter behind grown-up legs as they make their rounds in perusal of tables and tables of books. These little ones are terrible at playing coy and their façade of indifference is transparent; they can’t help but abandon themselves to their fearful fascination and stare at me until they remember to look away. Eventually these ones leave without having taken advantage of the story reader and her incomprehensible services and wear a hint regret on their faces as their mothers complete their purchases and make for the door. These would-be aloof youngsters watch me as they put their shoes on, watch me as they take mother’s hand, watch me through the glass as the door closes behind them.

The second group of reluctant learners come with parents who wish to take explicit advantage of the free exposure to native English. These children are rapidly shaking their heads. Their brows are knit in frustration and fear, creating ripples and waves through the soft skin of their bright faces. Their eyes are tearing up. They are stamping their feet. They are screeching iie! iie! iie! (No! No! No!). They are being forced by their parents to approach me. Some are being carried over and placed before me, their nervous hands scrambling to keep hold of mother’s sweater or hair or handbag or whatever they can grasp. These ones makes me feel sad. These ones often run away from me.  I can’t help but feel rejected. Sometimes I feel like a monster.

At the Christmas book fair last year two young mothers came and sat with me on the rug, each holding a tiny, droopy, drooly, eye-lolling infant. These babies were so young that if they were kittens their eyes would still be closed. The young women selected some books which I read to them. They repeated each sentence back to me and I quickly realized that, embarrassingly, this was becoming an English lesson for two grown women. I was reading Spot Goes to the Beach to peers. Awkward.

Finally after four-or-so stories the women were preparing to leave when one asked, in her few English words, which books I would recommend for children of her daughter’s age. I looked at the baby, curled like a snail in a little pink sling against her mother’s chest. She was sleeping, emitting a barely audible purr. Small glistening rivulets were leaking from her lips and nostrils. I looked back at the mother who was quite seriously waiting for my answer. Maisy, I said. The Maisy books are wonderful.

These little beauties are made up of a combination of iron (for oxidization when oxygen is introduced), activated carbon (heat dispersal), cellulose, vermiculite (insulation), water and salt (catalyst). In order to keep oxygen from reacting with the ingredients before the desired point in time, this product is the quintessential incarnation of over-packaging and, according to Aaron, sheer wastefulness.

I bought a bag of twelve of them at the beginning of the cold season last year and, until discovering them during my late spring cleaning frenzy last weekend, had entirely forgotten about them. I used one of them back in late November when Aaron and I slept in our little white van near Imabari in Ehime prefecture, despite the explicit warning on the label against doing so, indicated by an illustration of a figure tucked up in bed, haloed by a red circle and struck through by a thick red line. This was a chance worth taking, I rationalized, as there were no warnings against using the product on a futon rather than in a bed, or in the back of a van rather than in a bedroom. I’ve been meaning ever since to unload the rest of my Kairos on friends via post and accompanied by a kind note on unique, locally obtained stationary (like the greeting card bearing a picture of Little Red Riding Hood and the wording I am the girl who wears red food, or the letter set with the panda bear header exclaiming I dream of one day riding a camel), but seeing as this hasn’t yet happened and it’s twenty-two degrees outside, I scooped them up last Saturday and stored them away for next year along with my ear-warmers, leg-warmers, and mittens-on-a-string.

A Kairo is one of these environmentally irresponsible products that promote personal convenience – and which in no way could be considered a necessity here on Shikoku, where wintertime lows plummet to eight degrees Celsius – of which a society of earners and spenders and innovators and infamous over-packagers is so fond. Starting in late October, when the temperature here is still relatively warm and I for one am still donning t-shirts and flip-flops, the drugstores and convenience stores begin to stock boxes of these things in a plethora of sizes and types. (Five-year-old Tomoe, a student of mine, wears adhesive ones which she sticks to her undershirt to keep her tiny tummy warm; little Ayana carries two mini ones which she decorates daily with a Sharpie to resemble parrots named Ao and Chu and keeps tucked in her jacket pockets.) I voted for what seemed, by its sheer dominance of the shelves, to be the leading brand; a gold bag boasting garish yet commanding lettering of red, black and yellow and the face of a rabbit that I can only compare to the Mad Hatter and describe as a little creepy. Combining my limited knowledge of Kana, my extensive knowledge of Romaji, and my expertise in body language, I was only able to decipher the words ‘kairo,’ ‘new,’ ‘hand,’ ‘warmer,’ and the rabbit’s menacing expression.

I was surprised on opening my first one on that cold November night under a mountain of blankets on a pile of futons in the back of a little Honda parked at the side of the road somewhere between Matsuyama and Imabari, that it wasn’t a little more, I don’t know, magical… or something. The way they’d been described to me by my Japanese friends (which in retrospect was actually only something like They get hot and keep you warm) gave me an image of something heaven-sent, perhaps containing flecks of gold and promising perpetual happiness and immunity to the tortures of life, such as cold extremities. I tore open the seam of the bag and found two rows of six neatly stacked, individually wrapped enigmas. I selected one, and beneath yet another plastic sheath I discovered something flat and papery and beanbag-esque a little smaller than my hand. And it was cold. And not having yet researched the complex workings of its chemical components I couldn’t think of how it would get warm. I asked Aaron if he thought I had to microwave it. He, quietly disgusted that I’d even made such a purchase in the first place, said I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

So when three minutes of holding and staring at the increasingly disappointing sack of mystery yielded no result, instinct told me it was time to shake it. So I did. And it got warm. O! Bless the harnessing of chemical reactions! Bless the perfect hand-sized size! Bless the white rabbit who really, if one is to look closely, is mere degrees away from being cute! I tucked myself in with my Kairo between the palms of my hands and offered one to Aaron, but he would have nothing to do with it. Even so, as he drifted off to sleep I placed one beside his pillow in case he changed his mind in the night. Eyes still closed, he mumbled something like Get that f—ing thing away from me, but in the moment it sounded more to me like Oh Alison, what did we ever do before the Kairo?

When I woke in the morning and the Kairo was nowhere to be found, I must admit my sinking feeling gave way to a moment of  concern as I recalled the pictured warning on the wrapper. What actually happens to them in beds? I wondered as I rummaged under our pile of blankets, envisioning chemical spills and a smoldering hole in a spot on the futon where the Kairo had made its way to over the course of our slumber. We rose. We dressed. We talked about the Kairo. We rolled up the bedding and I was relieved to discover no chemical burns. As I was hopping into the passenger seat before we drove off I saw it outside on the damp grey road, hiding behind the front left tire. My Kairo. I’m not sure how it got there, but I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I grinned at Aaron. He rolled his eyes. It was still warm.

Having opted from a fairly young age in favour of lofty, intellectually superior pursuits of the mind – such as reading Kafka, writing poetry to the tune of being deeply misunderstood, partaking in the occasional psychedelic and philosophizing with a peer or two about important metaphysical questions like what if what I see as green, you see as red? (eventually declaring all to be ‘trippy’ and making our way to the Seven Eleven on a Pixie Stix mission), and lying on my bedroom floor staring up at a poster of Denis Rodman while listening to Hole and feeling eased by my decision that Courtney Love was also, in her way, misunderstood – I had little respect for pursuits of the body and therefore put in little effort or dedication when I joined the school track team. Despite the fact that I was a member of the team for three years, and that due to my long legs all coaches and teammates had high hopes for me, I consistently finished in the bottom half and eventually stopped being invited to the out-of-town meets.

In short, my self concept as a runner has been, historically, low.

So, besides several brief bouts of gym-going during my university years and a fairly solid two-year stint of biweekly Hatha Yoga classes at the Stanley Street Y, there has been nothing in my life over the past decade of reading and concert-going and open-mic-attending and lying-on-the-floor-music-listening that has prepared me for a day when, at 28 years old, I would voluntarily pay ¥1000 to race against others for a distance of ten-thousand metres.

My strict mind-over-matter mentality began to shift once I began to live with a completely different type individual than I was used to consorting with; the type of individual who views it as an acceptable challenge to sign up for an Ironman triathlon, thereby committing to months of training for a thirteen hour day of swimming, biking, and marathon running; the type of individual who, quite reasonably, does not view it as an acceptable challenge to battle the texts of Faulkner and Joyce and Chaucer. How, I ignorantly wondered as I searched the house for his nonexistent collection of novels, can this man be happy? And what, as I searched through his iPod for his nonexistent collection of indie post-rock, does he do? My curiosity got the better of me, and before I knew it I was not only jogging first two, then five, then ten kilometres each morning, but I was timing myself doing it. I even learned to use the lap function on my gaudy new digital Indiglo rubber-strapped Ironman Timex. (It was on sale, that’s all…) Suddenly I had an hour each morning to myself; a time to meditate, exorcise blocks, and work away gradually at that little belly roll that I’d sworn in the past – in an act of morally-superior bodily-transcendence – never really bothered me.

The race was to be held at the older side of the newly renovated Tokushima airport in Matsushige, at the base of the Japanese Self Defense Force. We rolled up, a van full of expats representing Canada, Australia, and the US, at eight-thirty in the morning and were stopped at the entrance by military officials. We showed our race cards to an austere looking woman in fatigues and I felt less like I was arriving to do a Fun Run than to be enlisted for some sort of covert aviation mission. Our cards were checked and our faces briefly read before we were granted entry, and were ushered down a narrow road flanked by far too many smiling JSDF men in white rain ponchos wielding neon orange batons like Lightsabers and coaxing us toward the parking area which could clearly be seen to be two-hundred metres ahead. There was some brief speculation about what the world would be like if Japan had won the war.

The next check point was the bag check, at which point I approached a man sitting behind a table under a tent and had a little pang of anxiety when I realized that the setup was remarkably similar to the immigration tents at the border between North and South Korea; a border where one definitely does not want to be accused of identity fraud because one’s Canadian passport bears the words British Columbia, but the required ID card for entry to the north had cut the long province name short, leaving it simply at British and thus creating a somewhat severe disparity. This man however just looked at the exterior of the bag I placed before him, smiled warmly and wished me good luck.

We checked in and got our numbers in a hangar, of course, and this is where it became clear that the race would consist of two laps of one of the runways. It wasn’t clear until just before the race began, however, that the new airport still employed the old runways and that airport traffic would continue as usual, passenger and cargo planes alike taking off and landing on the adjacent runway. There was some shock expressed amongst the foreigners at the low level of security, and some discussion as to what it would take to get this close to an operating commercial passenger jet at any other airport we had respectively visited.

I pinned on number 3099 and changed into my short shorts and got looked at by the other women and tried not to feel self conscious about the fact that I would not be running in a cute matching leggings-skirt set but with my great white thighs exposed, or that I’d be running make-up-less, and at ten o’clock the recorded sound of a pistol quietly sounded through the air and we were off. And it went alright. Despite a bout of cramps, an untied shoelace, the stench of burning rubber from the activity on the other runway, and a deluge which formed great puddles and turned my shoes into sponges – bringing back memories of Herr Hoch hollering from the sidelines – I finished twentieth in fifty-six minutes; neither fast nor slow. I’m told this is a respectable time for a first timer, but all that really matters to me is that I finished. Really.

I’d completed my first 10km race at a Self Defense Forces base in Japan, been awarded with a sports drink and finisher’s certificate before I’d even begun, learned to see the merit in challenges physical as I cheered on all the runners who finished after me, and run beside aircraft on a runway, just like in the movies.

2. Try not to be sleepy or cranky or awkward when your student (who is in his 30’s and wearing track pants hiked high above his navel and a fanny-pack, and who happens to work in chicken processing, a fact that you try to ignore on a weekly basis as you stare at his hands during your 60 minute Tuesday night lesson) greets you with his black-toothed smile.

3. Pick up the other members of your strange entourage, representing Canada, Australia, Japan and Vietnam. Soon come to realize that the only two who seem to have achieved a decent night’s sleep are the Japanese representatives. Make labored conversation in the car.

4. Arrive in Minami-Awaji (a small city on Awaji Island, located between Tokushima and Kobe) at 0720. Attempt to nibble on the packaged pancakes* you bought earlier at Lawson before being chided by Midori, who tells you in, as she calls it, “strange English,” that you are not to spoil your appetite; from the sounds of it you will soon be eating a sashimi breakfast. Put the pancakes back in your bag.

5. Stand in an alleyway. Assume you’ll soon be eating.

6. Photograph children as they prepare the mikoshi, a portable Shinto shrine lavishly decorated and with a drum inside which will be hauled around town by a crew of strong and strapping men. The children will either ride on the back or sit inside and beat the drum. You are told that the men will later be shouting kakegoe, equivalent to English’s heave ho! as they wheel the large shrine through the narrow streets. The children know you’re photographing them and you can’t tell how they feel about it, but you continue because you’re hungry and bored and the light is good.

7. The sashimi never materializes, and at 0915 the festival finally begins. Push from your head the question as to why it had been necessary to rendez-vous at such a premature hour.

8. Spend the next three hours slowly waking up, eating custard-filled buns and french fries bought from food stalls and avoiding being run over by the mikoshi as they tear through town. Remember your pancakes and eat them, too.

9. Look around and realize that you are in “the sticks,” and that you can now confidently say you know what the Japanese equivalent of a hick/redneck/bogan looks like.

10. After the continuous procession of mikoshi begins to wane, and after sitting on the steps of a shrine for an hour, wondering why so much loitering is taking place but also realizing that it would be impolite to pose such a question to your generous host, find that you’ve lost the man from Vietnam. Moments later find yourself invited to a picnic taking place in a parking lot.

11. Eat sashimi and o-nigiri (rice balls) and try to pace yourself as the strong and strapping mikoshi men refill your sake cup from every direction. Try to be polite as they get drunker and drunker and steal your sunglasses and hit on your friend and finally pass out with their head on your leg. Notice with mixed emotion that you’re getting sunburnt.

12. Notice the man from Vietnam is back. Ask him where he’s been and he’ll tell you he skipped the whole festival to spend the morning sitting in an izakaya (pub) and getting drunk. Soon he’ll disappear again and the Australian will later find him asleep on a bench.

13. Relocate across town and feel the friendliness and camaraderie in the air. Speak with strangers. Collect thrown-yet-uncaught mochi  from the ground. Realize that, although odd and slow to begin, the day has been a good one. It’s only 1400 and the festival is mostly over but now everyone’s had some sun and sake and no one’s feeling ready to leave.

_________
*Japan, again, I love you. A short stack of pancakes in a plastic wrapper, butter and syrup all sandwiched between. Miraculously not messy. Genius.

Pyrazine for blood clotting. Nattokinase for Alzheimer’s. Vitamin K for osteoperosis. Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) for healthy skin. Daidzein, genistein and isoflavone for cancer. Antibiotic effects. Phytoestrogen for digestion, anti-aging and the reversal of hair-loss in men. Pet food. Low in calories and cholesterol-reducing.

Hm? All this can be found within a 50g polystyrene container, sold three to a bundle in all grocery and convenience stores? Indeed.

Natto smells bad. Really bad. Like moldy cheese. Like rancid forgotten foods trapped in Tupperware in the back of the fridge. Like… soy beans that have been soaked for 20 hours, steamed for 6, and to which a bacterium has been added. Like… soy beans which are then fermented at 40˚C for 24 hours, left to age for a week, serve as a nursery for spores, and are then served for breakfast on rice with mustard and soy sauce. I know. Ew.

Nonetheless, Natto is considered a delicacy by many, and given its exhaustive list of health benefits is consumed by Japanese on a regular basis whether or not they claim to enjoy it. Two of my Saturday adult students, Keiko and Naoko, both despise the taste. Keiko, not having been raised on the concoction, won’t let it past her lips, whereas Naoko eats it in spite of its foulness. She told me she mixes it with a raw egg to make it taste better, a claim which I found to be most perplexing. On the other hand, five teenagers whom I asked about it on Friday all told me that Natto is delicious and that they eat it for breakfast almost daily. By Saturday night my curiosity was piqued and I picked some up on my way home. I stared at it on my countertop for some time, but finding myself unable to muster the courage even to take off the packaging I placed it on the top shelf in my refrigerator. I decided to wait for Jasmine’s assistance, and together we attempted to clear this hurdle on Sunday morning. Strength in numbers.

Alison and Jasmine’s Natto procedure in 7 steps

1. Remove the cheerful plastic wrapping which depicts an appetizing-looking mound of beans topped with an egg yolk of brilliant yellow.
2. Open the squeaking and resistant lid of the square polystyrene package.
3. Peel back protective paper layer and detect the first draft. Conceal alarm.
4. Open the tiny packets of soy sauce and mustard and squeeze out the innards.
5. Using chopsticks, stir. Observe the immediate desire of the beans not to separate from one another completely, and notice how similar the process becomes to the middle stages of making marshmallow squares, without, of course, the nostalgia and the sweet warm smell of sugar and vanilla.
6. Still using chopsticks, try to extract a bite-sized amount, and admire the silken, spiderweb-like strands that keep stretching further and thinner and finer and never quite break. Like gold to aery thinness beat.
7. Prepare a chaser of ginger ale and go for it.

Clearly more faint-stomached than my stoic accomplice, I lasted only a second before my Natto ended up un-chewed in the kitchen sink and I was fumbling for the tumbler of soda. Jasmine, however, chewed hers thoughtfully before looking at me from beneath a furrowed brow, reaching calmly for her glass, and declaring: “Yeah, it’s really gross.”

The world of a western English teacher in small-country-town Japan. Welcome to a world of celebrity in which your too-long limbs, reluctance to wear makeup, tendency to address others using the impolite second person ‘you’, hangnails, split-ends, premature greys, abrupt manners and total absence in your genkan of high-heeled shoes go unnoticed: here you are Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Kate Winslet, and all your male friends look just like Brad Pitt. Thus, this is a world of cross-cultural relationships which bear fruits like true love, marriage, beautiful bilingual mixed children, and spousal visas.

In my world I don’t speak much of the language, but constantly receive apologies from locals for their inability to speak mine. As I fumble through an encounter at the post office, bastardizing Japanese through my barely coherent strings of grasped-for words, the clerk becomes flustered and says, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English,” in English, running off to obtain a translation from google or an electronic dictionary or an English-speaking colleague. In this way I am a carrier of shame and awkwardness which I transmit via human contact and enigmatic exchanges.

The locals who are part of my daily life – such as the woman at the bus ticket counter, the university student with the red glasses who works at my regular Lawson, my colleague Taeko and my 68 year-old pal Tama – are the fixtures of my world that actually make its daily rotations possible. Taeko does things like meet me on her day off to take me to the Komatsushima DMV where we wait in a sticky office for two hours before I’m summoned to identify the respective orientations of a series of variously oriented horseshoes on a chart through my left eye, then my right, walking out another hour later with my new driver’s license. Tama-san brings fresh vegetables from her garden to my house several times a month. I think this is because she believes North Americans only eat hamburgers and not enough vegetables, and she likes the chance to work on her English. She invites me to her house for homemade dinners of gyoza, tempura, fresh squid caught by her husband, and politely pretends to enjoy the undercooked banana bread I teach her to make after the meal. The bus ticket woman always knows that I need tickets to the airport, and on the days that I don’t she nods to me as I pass her booth, and when I pass my rice ball, green tea and ¥235 across the counter at the convenience store, the university student with the red glasses greets me with a look of recognition which, when living so far from the familiar, goes a surprisingly long way.

In the realm of those with whom I share linguistic and cultural affinity, my world is populated by few, most of them best categorized as “The Stuck.” Married to locals or not, many of The Stuck have been working here for five or more years. The Stuck that I stick around are comprised of graphic designers, social workers, chemists, athletes, high school teachers, linguists, writers and journalists, all doing the same job, getting paid the same wages in reward for the same inherent attributes: for the ability to speak English; for having been born and raised in certain geographical regions; for looking and sounding and being different. The others, the non-stuck, are “The Transient.” The Transient, here for a year or two to figure stuff out (which incidentally is how all of us, even The Stuck, got here in the first place), arrive with a crush on the country, often speaking more Japanese than The Stuck, and still in possession of that glimmer of excitement, energy and adventure at being somewhere new. Nothing irritates The Stuck more (“Kyoto? Meh.”), and thus a divide is established. And, typically, as The Stuck get older The Transient get younger, a phenomenon that seems to make The Stuck stick harder.

As for me? Think of me as a messenger, attempting to offer a window into my world; floating somewhere between transience and permanence; not quite sure where I’m headed and beginning to forget how I got here.