This is the story: When last we left our hero, he was sitting proud in the knowledge that he had conquered the connoisseurial cooking of his host nation. Believing himself invincible, he thereby fell into one of the most devious traps laid out by his now arch enemy: Cantankerous Curry. Imagine, if you will, a room filled with the delicious aroma of admirable attainments: the rice cooker silently steaming in the corner; the pot on the stove boiling boisterously, filled with delicious carrots and delightful green onions. Then, to the water is added the curry, and the trap is set, for within this brown lump of pre-conglomerated powdery goodness lies a mind with psychic abilities beyond the abilities of mortal man! This fiend frolics in a space between AM, PM, and FM, a telepathic wave merely known as M. Dispersing itself among the now native boiled produce, Cantankerous Curry implanted within the aroma a thought: this dish needs tofu. Ah, tofu, the savior of the vegetarian in a land of flesh-filled meats. Away our hero flew to the fridge to divide up the last of the tofu, only to find a study in orange. Yes, for sadly lacking the fortitude and forthrightness of its less curdled brethren, the tofu had turned a sickly and soured hue. "Ah well," thought our hero, "better luck next time. No tofu tonight." But Cantankerous Curry had other ideas, and insured that our hero had them as well. For, he then reasoned, food = money, money = work, therefore this tofu represented a small fraction of the total time tuteling tots, teens, and tinkers. Ergo, countered fair Reason, we can always get more. But, never the one to be persuaded and drunk upon the power of M, Cantankerous Curry played the trump: yes, money may be used to purchase more, but in order to save money my grandparents must have eaten worse in the Great Depression, and they survived! Have I not feasted upon their food? Is my stomach so weak that it cannot handle slightly aged tofu. So into the pot it went, only to be fished out thirty seconds later when the curry turned a corpulent color and a strange smell began to emanate. But the damage was done, no sooner was the curry devoured, then the trap itself was sprung; our hero learned well that night why the entirety of history since WWII has been in a constant direction away from the Great Depression. But never fear, for though he was brought low, our hero's stomach had still been trained since infancy to fight against expired edibles by said aforementioned and truly loving grandparents! For, despite the best efforts of Cantankerous, the curry did not make a reappearance and, after a cool bath and a good night's sleep, our hero rose rested and better for the adventure.
And the moral of the story is: If food is fuzzy, or has changed hue, use your mind, and take a clue.
~~~~~
The following is best viewed as a bunch of vignettes, because it is getting late, I am tired, and I cannot think of a better way to express these stories. So, without further ado: life in Japan.
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In Upper School, we whose brains had yet to develop a funny little thing called reason and caution played a game that we called, "Fugitive." The object is simple: make your way from one end of the street/ neighborhood to the other without getting caught by the cops, who happened to be driving cars at the time. I never played, but some part of me really wanted to. We were young, it was silly, nothing painful happened, and I thought it a relic of my not-so-long-ago past. Boy was I surprised yesterday when I turned on my TV to find a show with a familiar set of rules. They call it, "Run for Money," and, with a ludicrously high production budget and hundreds of able and active actors, they have added a strange subplot about a samurai. That's right, there was a samurai subplot...in a town full of actors who looked like they better belonged in Victorian England...while, "normal" people ran around in really bright clothing helping those in need while simultaneously avoiding serious men in black suits, black ties, and sunglasses with a camera attachment. And every second 200 yen was added to the winner's total. Imagine my surprise indeed to turn on my television to find this, especially considering that my introduction was to see a women in bright colored clothing streaking--as in running fast you pervs--down the street, pursued by a very well dressed man. Imagine my further surprise when, instead of tackling her as I assumed he would, he very gently tapped her on the shoulders, which resulted in her stopping, then falling down and crying. Welcome to Japan, where even game shows that make sense still make no sense.
~~~~~
After work on Saturday night, I had the unmitigated joy of visiting the house of my predecessor with the other American teacher at my school. My predecessor is married to a rather nice Japanese man, so this was an opportunity to visit a somewhat Japanese home--for those of you who don't know, this is really rare. Most Japanese rarely, if ever, use their house as a venue to entertain, in sharp contrast to Americans. And I must say, compared to where I have been living the house was quite spacious. Quite frankly, I would call it a Japanese version of a townhouse. Like my apartment, it consists of a single floor--though hers has an incredible staircase inside the house to get there--but unlike my apartment her house is divided into many rooms. These include a bathroom and a toilet-room, a bedroom, and a large kitchen/ family room. I am so jealous of that last one. I would say that I had an absolutely lovely time, I adore my predecessor even more to pieces, and I hope that we become even better friends. However, the story does not stop there. She lives in the next town over, so afterwards my co-worker and I hopped on the train back--had we stayed another half hour, we would have missed the last one--and off to Konosu we went! Upon arriving back at the station, we made our way toward our respective apartments. Picture us standing there, in the middle of the night, talking, when all of the sudden we hear a splat from across the street. We both look over...and then we look up. There, sitting on the wires, are pigeons...the same ones just outside of my bedroom window. And as we are watching, we see a glob fall from on high to go splat on the pavement across the street from us...which we then notice is absolutely covered in bird poo. This was the wall of terror that my co-worker had to walk under to get to her apartment. She succeeded, I believe--once the light turned, I was off to my own abode. I will say this, though: sitting outside for ~ten minutes to count how many times bird poop hits a piece of paper so that you can calculate the average possibility of getting hit coming back from work can get you some really weird looks...as such, I cannot imagine the looks a person would get for sitting out there for an hour to try to make more accurate measurements, nor the even stranger looks of doing so at multiple times of night to try and gauge if time is a factor.
~~~~~
Either American machines are smarter or dumber than their Japanese counter parts, because withdrawing money was one of the most frustrating activities in my time here. So, because I don't have a bank card yet, I had to go through a person (ugh...people...want...atm...) which means that I had to fill out a form I barely understood. I did it, though, handed it over, got all set to get my money and...the computer didn't like the form. I had written a letter once, and had not liked it. So, naturally, I had written over it to make a better shape. In America, this is fine; in Japan, this is not. So, I had to rewrite the form and, wouldn't you know it, habit took over again. And again. And again. Six forms later, I finally wrote it without correcting. Thank goodness that it worked, or I might yet be sitting there, trying desperately to overcome 22 years of habit.
~~~~~
I have a really fast metabolism. Like, fast enough that I have to eat a ton just to keep up my weight. Add in the additional exercise from a full day of teaching, plus the fact that my stomach is better suited to smaller meals rather than larger ones, and I have not been eating enough since I arrived in Japan. However, after careful observation of my habits, I have finally decided on a daily eating schedule that not only gives me enough energy to get through the day, but to hopefully gain weight as well--preferably muscle weight which, given my teaching style, shouldn't be too hard. How do I know that this is enough food? Because the day that I started doing it I spent a full half hour of one of my prep-periods--on one of my slower days, mind you--saying, "yummy, delicious, delectable lunch" over and over and over again. Because a) I liked the way that it sounded and flowed and, b) if I said it really, really, really fast I would sometimes say, "lummy" instead of, "yummy" so it became a competition to see how many times I could say it until I messed up. Also, it kept my body occupied while my brain thought about what it needed to do as I was reading lesson plans, so it all worked out for the best. And now, without further ado, my daily eating schedule.
7:00 First breakfast (2 eggs, one piece of bread covered in peanut spread, yogurt, fruit [generally grapefruit])
9:00-9:30 Second breakfast (bowl of cereal, after today the milk will contain protein powder)
11:00-11:30 First lunch or Elevensies. This is usually when I have my peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich. Thinking about sometimes adding avocado before my busier days.
2:00-4:00 Second lunch, usually being last night's leftovers.
2:45-6:45 Third lunch or Afternoon Tea, usually a bento that I buy after eating second lunch, and eaten depending on if I have time. Can be easily replaced with my numerous snacking bouts.
9:30 Dinner, being any number of things that I want to cook.
Add into one of these meals half of an avacado a few times a week and we're good to go.
That makes six meals, not including snacks. I think that, being roughly sized similarly with those who would normally be the big folk around me, my body has compensated by making me eat like a hobbit in order to survive. Hopefully now I'll gain some weight.
~~~~~
I have set up many routers in my short life time. Never my own. Always for a relative. And always an utter headache. As such, I prepared myself for the arduous task ahead of me. Not only was I going to buy a router, probably a good deal spendier than I would like, but I would have to set it up, too. All in Japanese. This was not going to be easy, I told myself, but it would be fun. A half hour train ride later, there I stood in Omiya, the nearest big city and the nearest electronic store, ready to do battle with the commissioned salesman. I knew my adversary would be witty, but I had utter linguistical ignorance on my side. Long story short, all of my preparation was for not; I was avoided like a plague infested zombie, shuffling through the aisles looking for a clue as to where the routers were. When I found them, I was disappointed, they were even more expensive than I had thought. As I turned to go, however, something pulled me back. I turned around, and there at the end were a set of routers that were on sale for about $50. They were apparently being advertised in some magazine, but I didn't care. Here was a router that I was willing to afford, the kind that still left me money left over, no less. So I grabbed the last one, purchased it, and half an hour later was standing in my apartment, preparing myself for the horrors ahead. What trickery would it endeavor to pursue? What malice would it unleash to disturb my afternoon? The only way to find out was to set it up...which I did. And guess what? It worked. First try. No problems then, and no problems since. I was utterly baffled, and still am, but pleased (knock on wood) with the most amazing router ever.
~~~~~
Imagine my surprise last weekend, when I opened up my load of whites to find, lying peacefully on top, a single, now very clean, black pen. My first thought was that I really should start checking my pockets better, while my second thought was that I had just irreparably damaged each and every single white shirt that I own. These are the same white shirts, mind you, that I wear under my dress shirts each and every single working day. These are the same white shirts that must be kept cleaner and in a better state of care than my usual attire. These are the same shirts that were dirt cheap and on sale back home, but probably a bit on the spendier side here. In other words: I feared that I had just cost myself a good deal of money through sheer stupidity. And so I began to sort the shirts and handkerchiefs and, lo, a miracle had happened. For as the pile of useable shirts began to grow, I started to realize that, despite the show, the unusable pile had an occupant of one, so maybe my finances weren't completely done. That lone shirt, I realized upon closer inspection, had valiantly wrapped itself around around the pen, shielding its contemporaries from the harmful escaping ink and sacrificing itself in the process. Behold (picture coming soon), good peoples, Whitey, the Valiant T-Shirt. May he forever more be a relic of how folly can serendipitously become humility.
~~~~~
This is a simple story, with an even more simple beginning: allergies. Namely, I have them, and when they go off, my nose becomes Niagara Falls--spell check's first option for that one was Viagra, though with the surprising further of the drip that might not be far from the truth--with a constant, if manageable, drip. Yet sometimes, things go horribly wrong, particularly in humidity where things get rubbery. So, there I was teaching a class sans shoes--because that's how kids classes are taught in Japan--when I feel a massive sneeze coming on. Quickly, I pull out my handkerchief, raise it to my nose, and just in time cover the sneeze...at least that's what I thought, before I felt the blob bounce off of the handkerchief towards the right, where it then bounced off again mostly into my hand, for which I am thankful. Now, I am sure that many people are squirming at this thought and wondering what madness possesses me to believe that snot in my hand is the preferable option. I will agree that it is gross--not to mention embarrassing as all get out to happen in front of students--but the worst was that not all of it went into my hand. No, a part of the blob missed and kept going down...down...down...until *plop*. Onto my sock. In front of my students. I was so embarrassed that I may never love again...not really, but it certainly sounds better than any other hyperbolic metaphor that I can think of at the moment.
~~~~~
I'm going to end today as I began it: with curry. Monday nights, I have decided, are curry nights, because I have an inordinate amount of stubbornness on both sides of my family and gosh darn it I will get it right. Cantankerous Curry had one more trick up its sleeves: yesterday I opened my fridge to find that it was emanating a cantankerous smell. Thankfully, my burnable garbage was almost full, so out it went, and my apartment spent the next few hours being aired out. However, now sans curry, I decided to rectify that fact by making more tonight...with similar results, though sans the tofu. I am beginning to wonder if I am either cursed against curry, or if perhaps either the curry itself has gone bad--not likely, according to the interwebs--or if perhaps the rice has gone bad. I am sure some normal person out there is going, "don't eat the curry man, it's just not worth it," but my sense of discovery and adventure will not allow such a path. After all, how can I finally make my darn curry right if I don't know why it disagrees with me in the first place. Ergo, tomorrow I will try some rice with my lunch. If I spend the rest of the day feeling like I'm going to puke, then we'll know it's the rice. If I don't then the question arises of whether or not it's the curry, or something in the curry. The science is waiting! Only the adventurous will find the truth! *update: it wasn't the curry...at least, not completely. It was the rice, part of which had turned a decided shade of fuzzy-wuzzy-beary-green--he really should have bathed more--and as such the curry should be fine...which we'll know when I make more rice.* Anywho, this has been another Adventure of the Austentatious; if you liked me, tell your friends; if you hated me, tell your enemies; and if you don't care either way, tell everyone.
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