The Most Japanese Thing I Have Ever Done, Pt. 3 - Super Delayed Edition

I previously began writing about a trip with my coworkers and boss to a resort in Hiroshima under the theme of the most Japanese thing I every did. Which in fact it is. Now one month delayed, I think it is best to just hit the highlights.

Starting with dinner (this was only an overnight trip)

This area was known for one thing - Red Snapper and Homeishu (保命酒) - lit. life perserving liquor

Two things - this area was known for two things - Red Snapper and Homeishu (保命酒) - lit. life perserving liquor, and Sakamoto Ryoma, a famous guy who did something important I can't remember but you can read about here

Three thing - this area was known for three thing - Red Snapper and Homeishu (保命酒) - lit. life perserving liquor, and Sakamoto Ryoma, a famous guy who did something important I can't remember but you can read about here, and being the setting for the Miyazaki film Ponyo

Four things! But back to red snapper - dinner was definitely not for people who dislike fish:







Aside from the usual assortment of cooked and raw seafood, there was another aspect to the meal which was a first to me: eating a living shrimp. Pull the head off, and down the hatch - surprisingly delicious.

All this was followed by a lion dance!




To be continued...

How to skew your average life span upward and make bank!

Japan is semi-legendary for the long-livedness of its inhabitants. While people stateside are dropping dead(1) of coronaries at 32 after essentially main-lining saturated fats and nacho cheese at a Herculean rate, the Japanese regularly live to 284 on a diet of fish, rice, seaweed and cigarettes.

BUT perhaps a look behind the curtain will reveal that the number of centurions living on this fair isle are not as high as once supposed.

The latest scandal to rock the very foundations of Japanese society is the discovery that hundreds of families have simply buried grandma and promptly failed to inform the government allowing them to continue to collect on her pension. Now every town and city is hustling to verify that the woman born back during the Tokugawa shogunate is in fact living at the address where the government checks are being sent each month. Apparently in one actual case, there was a resident who was supposedly 150 on the books, but no one thought to check this out, or call the Guinness Book for that matter. Not surprisingly, no one was able to locate this Oriental Methuselah.

Nevertheless, they are still outliving us western-types so perhaps it is time to unplug the pork rind IV.

(1) I suppose at 342 pounds you are more "tipping over" dead than dropping.

It's Back On!

One of the beautiful parts of an English teaching job in Japan - if you are lucky - is some serious vacation time at full pay. I distinctly remember swearing up and down that the month of August would not be spent in idle pursuits but rather would be focused and dedicated to a long laundry list of activities and endeavors all aimed at improving myself as a human being. But then I got a good book.

And another.

And rediscovered Mystery Science Theater 3000.

And then realized that my complete lack of productivity was in no way interfering with the impending bank transfer that is my monthly salary.

So I did nada aside from finally taking care of some medical and dental business (yay health insurance) and finally getting my Japanese drivers license (as of today).

But now reality and work have returned and my screwing around genes have started to go regressive so back to letting the world know about Japan one questionable factoid at at time!

Finally - some good old fashioned bad English

Accept no imitations!

The Most Japanese Thing I Have Ever Done, Pt. 2

Since I work at a public school and promotions/placements are decided by the BOE (1), there is little point to sucking up and participating in the office trip, thus we were a mere nine souls rolling down the highway for Hiroshima (2) on that crotch-meltingly hot summer's day. But thankfully at least three of those folks had bladders the size of a grape so we were able to stop at absolutely every single rest area between northern Osaka and Hiroshima (3) which should be a four hour drive but why not make it six!

The rest stops however are a delight.



For starters there is the food - nary a McDonald's or Roy Rogers in sight! Instead we actually had lunch at a restaurant.


(4)

Also - clean bathrooms, and coffee vending machines where you can control the amount of sugar and milk, as well as convenience stores, soft-serve ice cream, and local souvenirs (called omiyage) so you can have an answer to the kids' question "what did you get me!?"

Tomorrow, we may actually get to the part where we are in Hiroshima...

(1) Board of Education - not every one has a joke, sorry
(2) Hiroshima means "wide island", and for the record Tokyo (東京) means "east capital", Kyoto (京都) means "capital city", and Nagasaki (長崎) "long cape" - the geographical kind, not the clothing. But along with the literal names come some interesting ones like Tottori (鳥取) which means "bird take", Iwate (岩手) which means "rock hand" and Chiba (千葉) which means "1,000 leaves" - although to think that Japanese people take these more fanciful name literally would be a mistake.
(3) The highway system in Japan is all toll roads so the rest areas are all built on the highway - no pulling off and hunting for something.
(4) Bonus! The Japanese are strangely known for mopping the floors with us when it comes to eating contests - TV is lousy with teeny tiny people eating comical amounts of food - apparently this restaurant played host to such an event:



She ate two of these - can't wait to bring her home to mom!

The Most Japanese Thing I Have Ever Done, Pt. 1

This mark --> (1) will be for footnotes. I think my wild tangents have been making the reading as smooth as a bike ride on train tracks, so look for the numbers in parentheses and check at the bottom for more boring and flawed insights!

Last week I did something more Japanese than anything I have ever done before. But of course I can't just tell you what that is without a profoundly long-winded and round-about back story. So grab some popcorn, crack a beer (or soda) and possibly skip ahead to where the pretty photos are to save yourself three minutes you are never getting back (I try and stay true to the subtitle of this blog).

In Japanese the word for society is shakai (社会) and the word for company is kaisha (会社) which are the same two characters in reverse. Much has been made (2) of this in the sense that the company is in fact your entire life. Of course we have all heard of lifetime employment, although even Japan has been trimming back on that in recent years. In some cases the company even provides your wife (3). Your are there from dawn til dusk most days, and when the boss finally knocks off at around 8:00, you all go drinking together until you stumble home around 12:00 only to rise at 6:00 the next morning to live the dream all over again. Your whole life - social, romantic, economic - was centered around the company, so it should come as no surprise that Office vacations are a common practice. Why plan your own trip to somewhere you want to go when you can let the collective hivemind decide for you! Hate skiing? Tough shit slope-a-phobe! You better buck up and participate if you want to show the boss you have the right spirit! Hot springs not your bag? Better grin and prepare to see all your same-gender coworkers in the buff or you can count on low-level middle management for the rest of your life!

So if you haven't guessed, I participated in this years Office trip, not because I am in line for a promotion (4), but because I had read about them and thought it would be a good experience (5).

And so two Saturdays ago, I found myself in a car bound for coastal Hiroshima prefecture, for two days, one night, and a figurative mountain of Red Snapper.

More in the next post!

(1) See! First one!
(2) I read this once in a book somewhere, so "much" may be overstating it. But inaccuracy is the hallmark of this blog.
(3) Not really in the contract negotiations, but in the sense that your future cohabitant may well be one of the lovely OL (office ladies) puttering around and serving tea and hot photocopies.
(4) We Assistant Language Teachers serve at the pleasure of the Board of Education, just like the federal attorneys, but with less Alberto Gonzales - so really a step up!
(5) The $250 price tag for one night was NOT mentioned at the time of registration

The world's most delicious commercial.

This past weekend, I made a visit to the Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda, where I take the train everyday. I had seen this place on TV, and it was often listed as a top destination for foreign visitors so I figured it was worth a visit.

Now, before you think this is a museum about all instant ramen as this sign might lead you to believe:



It is in fact an entire museum dedicated to and built by the company Nissin (日清) and their founder Ando Momofuku, making it one massive (and delicious) commercial for the company. Admittedly, these guys pretty much have cornered the market on instant ramen so the name is not a complete lie.

Here is a statue of Mr Ando holding a package of his original invention, "Chikin Ramen" (in case you though poor spelling of English was something new over here)



The museum is free and most of the displays are just terminals where you can watch old commercials, or look at massive models of Cup Noodle or noodle cutting machines or learn how the noodles are put into a cup (cup on the noodles, not noodles into the cup - and I'll understand if you need to sit down and have a break after hearing that).

There is also the "Instant Ramen Theater" featuring God-knows-what as I didn't really have any desire at all to see dancing cups of mono-sodium-glutamate, but next to it was the entralling "Instant Ramen Tunnel" showing all the products produced by Nissin since 1958:



There are also displays of overseas products such as this unfortunate entry from Brazil:



And of course for there is the savior of all college students:



However, the reason for any trip to the Instant Ramen Museum is to visit one of the "kitchens"

There are two kitchens - one where you can make your own pack of chicken - excuse me, 'chikin' ramen (however, this is booked up for the next 3 months), and another where you can make a custom Cup Noodle. (called Cup Noodles in the US since Japanese doesn't have plurals for nouns).

The wait for this was around 100 minutes but at 300 yen (around $3) per custom cup it was quite a deal.

First you buy your cup(s) and then go to a table where you can (to quote the literature "design your cup") which is really a long table with some markers where you can color them.



Here are the results of our decorating:



After decorating you get to wait in line and contemplate what flavor soup you want, and what ingredients you want to add (choose four).



The choices for soup are:
Original, Seafood, Curry, and Salt

The choices for ingredients are:

shrimp, pork, egg, scallion, fish-sausage slice, potato
asparagus, cheddar cheese, imitation crab, kimchi, (today's special - bacon)

First you add the noodles by turning a cranks that rotates a drum and pushes the noodles into the cup:



Then you choose your ingredients:



The cup then gets sealed:




And then shrink-wrapped



Then you put the cup into a plastic bag which you inflate with a hand pump



Tada! - your own custom Cup Noodle!

Worth all 100 minutes of waiting - although the proof of the noodle is in the tasting.