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Purchase of the Week

This Laputa calendar was given to me by my wonderful girlfriend Christina so it's not technically a "purchase", but I think it's still cool enough to be put in this section.

March 10, 2003 - 12:59 AM Wes Ehrlichman

Since the most prominent type of humor in Japan is making fun of foreigners I like to get a sort of mini-revenge whenever possible. For one such example, read on.

I'm sure I've talked about my weekly Wednesday Japanese class before, bust just in case you missed it last time here's the deal. Every wednesday night I pick up Doug and sometimes Cindy and we take a 45 minute drive to Sendai for Japanese class. After Japanese class we often go out to dinner with some of the other students in class, and even the teachers if possible. We usually eat at sushi place, but sometimes we go to a place that has a really nice Macaroni Gratin. That's about the closest you can get to Macaroni and Cheese in Japan, so I really savor those nights.

During the trip to the sushi place that took place just before I came home for Christmas break everyone put their names in for some sort of drawing. Honestly noone knew what the drawing was for, but we put our names in anyways. Word came back a week or so later that one of our teachers (and good friends) Megumi had won a Red Snapper. I thought that was a strange prize even if it was from a sushi place. I guess someone else won a mug.

My theory on this is that the contest was pretty much a way for them to get rid of stuff that someone might want without directly throwing it out. I've gotten tons of gifts this way. It's how Japanese people do things. They give presents of things they don't want anymore. I get a few of these weekly from my English Conversation Class. "Make sure to eat these by tomorrow or else they'll go bad," they tell me.

So anyways, a few days after I found out that Megumi has won the contest she gave me a call. I will relate this call through the ancient art form known as the play (mostly because it wasn't reading well as straight dialogue).

Wes is at his computer playing on the internet
a phone is heard ringing offstage
Wes picks up the phone

Wes: Moshi Moshi.

Megumi: Moshi Moshi. Megumi desu.

Wes: Hey, what's up?

Megumi: Do you remember that contest we entered?

Wes: Yeah, of course. I heard that you won.

Megumi: Yes. You did too!

Wes: Really?

Megumi: Honto ni.

Wes: I did! Wow. That's the first time I've ever won anything.

Megumi: Haa~i. You won a crab.

Wes: A crab? Crab as in Kani?

Megumi: Yes. Kani. Crab.

Wes: Hmmmm. Do you want it?

Megumi: Really?

Wes: Hai. Watashi wa vegetarian desu ne.

Megumi: Wow. Thank you.

Wes: Ok. We can pick it up on Wednesday after class.

Megumi: Ok. Bye bye.

Wes: Bye bye.

Wes hangs up the phone
lights fade out

Ok, so I guess there was no reason to write down that conversation at all when I could have just said that I won a crab and I'm giving it to my Japanese teacher. The only thing that having it play form accomplishes is to show you how little Japanese I use here, even when speaking to my Japanese teacher!

That Wednesday night during class we made kites. I made mine of a warrior being slaughtered by a demon. Mostly because I'm influenced by the nutty art that the kids in my school do (that and I wanted to frighten my Japanese teachers a bit).

That evening after class Megumi didn't go out for sushi with us. When we went to the restaurant we told them that I was the person who won the crab and I asked them if it would be ok to pick it a week later. They said yes, and they asked what time we would be coming so that they would have time to prepare it. I couldn't figure out why it took a lot of preparation to hand someone a crab but apparently they had to do something special.

During the next week I kept wondering about this crab. If it was a live crab I wouldn't mind keeping it as a pet until I left Japan and then releasing it into the sea. Then I remembered that it was lobsters that you cook alive and the thought of having a crab for a pet was shot down. When I brought up that I was thinking of keeping the crab as a pet at school they laughed at the prospect of me keeping food as a pet, but they don't even consider bacon a meat so I just blew that off as a cultural thing.

When the next week's Japanese class finally came around, my predecessor David Maroni showed up to class. He was the ALT in Kedouin for three years before I came to Japan. Furing that time he got married and is now staying in Japan as an English Teacher in a town/city called Izumi. ALTs are normally limited to three years but if you're really good and want to stay a fourth year they will sometimes transfer you to a new town for you to be a genuine English teacher.

It was great to talk to him after I've been here for a while to find out how I compare to the job he did. It sounds like I'm nowhere near as good, but that is to be expected I guess. He has foreign language teaching training and I think when he lived in Arizona he taught mexican kids English. Not to mention his Japanese is light years beyond mine, due both to him being here for over three years and to his having a Japanese wife.

After class that day we headed to the sushi restaurant to eat some dinner and pick up my crab. Again, Megumi couldn't make it to dinner, so I gave up on her and instead decided to give my crab to my predecessor David Maroni. He has a Japanese wife who may actually know how to cook the thing.

When we got there we ate sushi. You've probably been wondering how a vegetarian can eat sushi. Well there's actually quite a few things on the menu I can order.

Tamago - egg on rice with seaweed wrapped around Tamago Salad - scrambled eggs on a bed of rice wrapped in seaweed (haven't tried it yet) Inarizushi - rice in a sweet yellow blanket of fried bean curd (the bomb) Corn Salad - corn and mayo on a bed of rice wrapped in seaweed(it's actually really goodNatto - fermented soybeans (not my favorite) Kappa Makki - Cucumber and rice wrapped in seaweed Edamame - beans in a pod (not sushi) Udon or Soba - noodles in broth

As you can see, there's more to sushi than raw fish. Actually raw fish is known as sashimi, but sashimi is the most popular thing to put in sushi (I could be wrong here, but this is my current understanding). Actually they eat horse and chicken sashimi in this area as well as fish. These are the times when I'm really happy I'm a vegetarian.

As we ate I had the chance to speak to David about Kedouin. The biggest thing that I noticed through our conversation is that the kids that I talk to the most are the same students he used to be friends with. I don't know very many kids names (STILL!), but I knew all of the kids he mentioned.

After eating we went up to the counter to recieve the free crab. Here's where it got fun. I decided since I'm going to talk about this moment on the internet I wanted to get as many good pictures of the crab transaction as possible. I had Doug stand back with the camera and capture every moment of the crab recieving ceremonies with my digital camera. Here are those pictures along with captions:

The atmosphere