Paul:

About Food

Food here has been different to say the least. While most foods are healthy for you, at least the portions are smaller, they look strange to the American eye. I remember thinking Louisiana strange for eating crawfish, craw-dads. I realize that crawfish are just small lobsters, but they’re fresh water lobsters…good things don’t happen in fresh water. After all, mom always described them as fish bait. Well, I look at a lot of food in Japan and think that I wouldn’t even use that for bait, let alone put it in my mouth. However, I see my co-workers enjoying it so why not? Here is a list so far of strange things I have eaten.

1. Seaweed – Not that strange, actually tastes like ocean. It is everywhere and in most everything, including pizza toppings. The Japanese wrap their rice in it or chop it up and put it in their soup. I am told that it is full of iron and fiber so the cost benefit of the ocean taste makes it worth eating.

2. Fish – I can’t really put fish in one category since it is everywhere. There are many types and ways of preparing fish in Japan. I’ll try and split them up.

a. Mackerel – this fish is quite common in school lunches and is usually pressure cooked so bones are not an issue. I had a whole mackerel one day, minus head and tail, and it wasn’t too bad. It actually tasted a lot like tuna fish salad, but sweeter. However, I had it one day for lunch and it had this soupy sauce on top and was not appetizing at all. It was a larger portion of fish that day and when the taste combined with the slimy skin…it almost came out. My favorite preparation for this fish is sushi which I will cover next.

b. Sushi/Sashimi – okay folks, this is raw fish, but if it makes you feel better, I call it “fresh.” Sushi deals with many cuts of fish on an oval of rice about the size of the cup of your palm. Sushi can be anything on rice from scrambled egg, called tamago, to dried baby squid…which is much too salty for my palette. Sashimi is the fish without the rice. Just sliced and on your plate; it resembles cranberry dressing out of the can. Both Sashimi and Sushi are served with plenty of soy sauce and wasabi.

i. Wasabi – this peculiar green paste should not be in Japan. In all my eating research this past month I have noticed the Japanese do not like spicy things. So when one little bit of this stuff on the end of my chopstick made me breath fire through my nose, I was very confused. I am not sure the process of making it but I am pretty sure that it is not far from how mustard is made. I enjoy this in moderation.

ii. Soy Sauce – this isn’t that weird, but I felt that it needed to be mentioned that one liter of soy sauce costs $4.00. A liter, a huge amount that I will never go through in one year.

c. Tuna – this was is my favorite fish so far in Japan since it is very versatile. On one hand it can be combined with mayonnaise and make a mean tuna salad that everyone back home could recognize and on the other, it can be prepared “fresh” and be silky smooth and taste better than any other fish on your plate.

d. Octopus – this guy is a bit strange with its red color and somewhat rubbery texture. It is served as sushi or sashimi or randomly thrown into your plate of fried rice. If you’re a texture person, be careful for this…it doesn’t chew well. But if you’re accustomed to the texture of an overdone roast and don’t mind a sucker on a tentacle…dive in!

e. Squid – they serve in many ways but I will only eat a couple. I can’t stand when they serve it as Sushi. When it is “fresh” it is a translucent slice of white stuff on rice that is chewy and tasteless and not cooked…I do not like that. And if it isn’t a large piece it’s a full baby squid which I just cannot do. My favorite is when it is fried; we would call it “calamari” in the US. At school they make a large fried piece by taking scraps and compacting it together…sort of like bologna or hotdogs. It isn’t half bad and the texture is much better than octopus. One restaurant I like serves fried squid legs and I always get it when we go.

i. This covers fish for the most part, there are a lot more styles of preparation, frying a whole fish on a stick, but not most are not worth mentioning.

3. Soup – the Japanese love their soup and eat it a lot. They never have thick soup, chowder or potato soups are non-existent, rather liking broth with vegetables in it. One type is called Miso soup is made out of a bean paste and put into warm water to make a mild pleasing soup in which they usually put seaweed, bamboo shoots and typed of roots. You might also find small cuts of meat in the soup, usually pork.

4. Curry – Oh yeah, they love their curry and I do too! It looks like brown gravy with meat, but the taste is very good! It’s not Indian curry by any means, rather much more mild with many selections of meats and vegetables that go with it. Always served with rice as a side.

5. Rice – another food that is not that strange but worth mentioning since they eat it at every meal. For breakfast, or a snack, they like to eat balls of rice known as Onigiri, I am pretty sure I’m slaughtering every proper spelling I attempt. Onigiri is a ball of rice made with the hands that combines the leftovers of a meal. So it might have fish, baby fish…gross, seaweed or sesame seeds in it. These are all pretty good and a good snack on the go.

6. Pizza – you know what pizza is…but you don’t know what all they will put on them. Potatoes, clams, corn, squid, egg and seaweed are just a few. Pizza is pretty expensive because of the cheese that’s on it but you can find deals and get a medium for about $10 once a month. Little Caesars would make a killing in Japan with their $5 pizzas.

7. Funny looking root thing – I don’t know what it is called but it has the texture of a fruit roll-up and has specks in it. It is tasteless, but a lot of people have trouble with the texture. I like it, and apparently it cleans your body on its way out.

8. Onko – once again, don’t know if I messed up the spelling. Onko is a bean paste that they have sweetened and put in various baked goods…it takes some getting used to but it’s pretty good once you do get used to it. I think they use black beans.

9. Donuts – I saved this one for last since they’re my favorite. Donuts are not fried in Japan but baked sweet rolls dipped in delicious frosting or filled with cream. I would take Japanese donuts over American donuts any day of the week. They’re that good!

Well, that covers a lot of food items in Japan…I could go on but I know you just read a lot. I made this list mostly for people to refer to before they come and visit. American food is here but difficult to find. Food is a bit difficult for Devan, she isn’t crazy about anything from the ocean or pork…both of which the Japanese love. I try and cook American food at home to help her adjust. I often feel like a dove bringing an olive branch back to Noah as if saying, “No really, it’s safe to get off the boat.” Luckily for us Japan bakes bread better than the French. Bakeries are common, tasty and all very cheap. Well, that about covers food…it’s time for school lunch and from the smell I think I am looking forward to it. Thanks for reading.

Devan:

Sea Side Park

About 30 minutes away from our apartment is a park called Sea Side Park. There are a few rides and some amusement park stuff there. It’s mostly geared towards children but this park is most famous for it’s gardens. A group of the new AETs went to the park a few weeks ago. We started by taking the train towards the beach but the station was about 6 miles from the park entrance. Good thing we got started early.

At the park there are bikes that you can rent to ride around. Paul talked me into getting a two-seater bike. The first 30 minutes on this bike were one of the scarier things I’ve done. Paul was in the front seat and he thought it was hilarious to let go of the handlebars on our way down hills.

There were lots of things to see at the park. There were giant fake pandas you could pay 2$ to ride around on. There were also lots of flowers and nature type stuff to see. My favorite part of the day was towards the end. We walked down to the beach. The beach near Mito isn’t what I would call picturesque. About half of what we walked by was covered in trash and rocks. We finally found a good spot to stop and I had a lot of fun watching the “Oklahomans” play in the water. Paul found lots of cool looking shells that are now decorations on the back of my toilet.

By the end of the day we were all very tired, it was starting to rain, we needed to find dinner, and we got lost. We finally found a train station that took us in the direction we wanted. I had to laugh when we did find the train because the station and the train car (yes singular train car) were so beaten up and old looking . The whole episode felt very third world.

Sports Festival and First Enkai (Teacher Party)

Japanese schools have sports festivals once a school year. My school had theirs this past weekend. Most schools have their festivals in the fall but it can still be really hot in the fall so my school has their’s in the spring. These festivals reminded me of a state track meet. My school has about 1000+ students, all in attendance, plus their parents. I got to school on Saturday around 7:30am to help set up but most of the parents had already been there for several hours so the work was done.

For most of the day I just sat next to the announcer and watched the different events. The events were things like tug of war with a giant rope and 500 kids. I got to help with one race. I figured out the rules by the end of the race. What I was suppose to be doing is stopping the runners mid-race to play rock-paper-scissors. If the runner lost against me they had to rub my shoulders for 10 seconds if they won then they could continue the race. I wasn’t real clear what they rules were and couldn’t figure out why all these kids kept trying to grab my shoulders…I figured it out eventually but it made for a few awkward moments.

Our friend Port and Paul stopped by after lunch to watch the games and give me some company. It was funny to watch all the kids get so excited about more foreigners but they thought Paul and Port were my brothers. I don’t know enough Japanese to correct them.

After a very long day of baking in the sun and not doing a whole lot I went home to get ready for the teacher’s party. They call it an Enkai, or drinking party. The party was at a hotel downtown. When I got there I had to take a number out of a box and that would be my seat for dinner. I was a little hesitant about the randomness of the seating chart because only a handful of teachers will actually speak to me in English. I was really hoping I would get to sit next to one of them that night. At my table were six other people, most of them worked in our kitchen and knew 0 English. Despite the language barrier we had fun. Dinner was a lot of gestures and giggling. One of my first grade teachers was at the table and spoke quiet a bit of English, which I was surprised because I’ve never heard her speak English in the last 2 months not even during English class.

The food was pretty gross…I mean I bet it was actually really nice because dinner cost 70$ but…a bowl of uncooked whole shrimp is not my idea of a good meal. Lucky for me I had the human garbage disposal sitting across the table so whatever I wouldn’t/couldn’t eat I just passed it to him. His name is Ando, his desk is next to mine in the teacher’s room and we had already built a relationship based on me passing food I don’t want to him. He’s one of my favorite people I’ve met here because his friendship is so easily bought with food.

Dinner was relatively uneventful. You mostly just eat (or don’t) and walk around with tea and fill up people’s cups. It’s a tradition and sign of good faith to serve tea to the other teachers and say thank you. After dinner, the younger teachers (other than me) got on stage, the rest of us had to stand in a circle around the room holding our cloth napkins. Then the music started…it was this loud techno poppy music, they dimmed the lights and the teachers on stage started signing along while the rest of the room exploded in laughter and started waving their napkins around. The music went on for about 10 minutes and I was so confused. The Vice Principle who hardly gets up from his desk was dancing and hopping around the room while waving his napkin in the air. It really was the goofiest thing I had seen so far.

Overall, I’m glad I went because these parties are meant to build relationships with your co-workers but I was so tired from the festival and spending all day with non-English speakers that I was just ready to go home and get some sleep.

Update on the woman downstairs.

So, earlier I had mentioned the problems we have been having with the woman downstairs yelling at her daughter. Two nights ago, the yelling and banging and crying got so bad I went downstairs to do something…I’m not sure what I would have done if the woman had opened her door, maybe grabbed her daughter and ran. She finally stopped yelling when Paul pounded on the floor. The next day at work I asked the better English speakers what I could do about this woman and her child. At first, the teacher explained that in Japan there are “many problems between parents and children”. I think she was trying to tell me that these sorts of things are overlooked here. Maybe they think it is something that should stay in the family. It took some more explaining that I thought this situation was a little more than something that should just “stay in the family”. When she finally got the idea she went over to one of my Vice Principles and explained to him what was going on. From the look on his face I could tell he wasn’t happy. He asked me a few clarifying questions and then said he would deal with it for me. Several hours later I found out that he and the Principle went to our apartment to talk with this woman. She wasn’t home so they called my landlord who gave them the name of next of kin. This next of kin apparently was put in charge of talking to this woman and solving the problem. My Vice Principle told me that if I see or hear anything more that I should call him and he will call the police. I was a little surprised at their reaction and I feel that whatever is going on down there is not solved but I don’t know what else to do. For now I just hope things are going to get better for that little girl.