A big thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! This past Friday I turned 23, which means that soon I will be considering retirement and an AARP membership. It also means that I got booty (the pirate kind, as my sister's card indicated), and in my excitement and gratitude I want to show off my new treasures:
My Grandma and parents got together and sent me boxes and boxes of rice-a-roni (!!!), stickers (for my students), and a poem composed by my father. I will include a sample of his masterpiece:
“Oh An-da-rew!”
(A poem in the epic meter of “Chicken Soup with Rice”)
Oh An-da-rew, oh An-da-rew
in Western Oregon he grew,
but now he lives on big Honshu,
Oh An-da-rew, oh An-da-rew.
Oh An-da-rew, oh An-da-rew
to old Kyoto fast he flew,
bringing stickers, pens and glue,
Oh An-da-rew, oh An-da-rew.
My coworkers got me cookies and a new bento box, which is more masculine and much larger than my last one (and you know what they say about a man who has a large bento box!). And finally, my most adorable gift- my supervisor's son made me some origami animals. I am the proud new owner of two dogs, a penguin, and a polar bear. Don't tell my landlord though, I'm not allowed to have pets! (Which reminds me- there's a second hand shop on my street that has a taxidermy-preserved polar bear in its window. I'm not even kidding. Tempted as I am to have a polar bear in my Japanese apartment, it literally would not fit in the stairwell.)
By coincidence my birthday happened to be on the same day as our office's welcome party for Libby and myself. This may seem a bit odd given that I started working in the office two months ago, but it was the best time for everyone and I'm certainly not going to complain! The party was held in the traditional enkai style, which meant that there was lots of traditional Japanese food and the “all you can drink” alcohol service. Alas, I do not drink, but I did take photographs of each course of the extended meal. They are included below with my commentary:
Eggplant, chirimenjako, and seasoned/grilled tofu. I have to admit that these are three things I would have never put in my mouth before I came to Japan. However, when I came over here I learned pretty quickly that no matter how gelatinous, raw, or tentacled an item was, if my hosts said it tasted good they were usually right. I managed to eat everything in this course, but the chirimenjako were a little difficult. They tasted a bit like jerky, but in reality they were hundreds of tiny marinaded and dried fish. Chirimenjako supposedly means “little fish,” so this is what we called them for the rest of the evening. Libby said she saw a little girl at the super market eating a sample of these things like candy- so I guess they aren't an acquired taste, even for Japanese children!
Raw salmon filet salad. This was the first time I'd ever had raw fish, at least in such an appreciable amount. It tasted good with all that dressing (like cooked salmon, but milder), but the texture took some getting used to.
Tofu Salad (with more little fish) and a sort of shrimp flavored croquette thing. People make some pretty awesome croquettes here in Japan, which is another reason I probably won't lose weight while I'm here.
Things start to get real. Actually, I'm not really sure what started to happen here. This was a little cup of savory jelly with something crispy in it. The taste was a little like miso soup, though much milder. Anyway, I wasn't able to finish this. We don't eat a lot of jelly-like things by themselves in America, and this was just a little too different. Nice, but difficult to swallow.
Whitefish and cheesy mashed root vegetable! One of the teachers traded me some of her fish for the rest of my previous course. I think I came out ahead in that deal. The fish was a little on the sweet side, which actually went very well with the mashed vegetable...maybe it was daikon, but I'm not sure.
...at about this time some champagne glasses were passed around and the lights went out. The next thing I knew, my supervisor came in carrying a Japanese-style birthday cake! For me! The chocolate wafer in the middle had my name written on it and everything! Note that I'm blushing so much in this picture that you can't tell I haven't been drinking.
The cake wasn't very big so it could only be cut into four pieces...with about 12 of us there besides the birthday boy, everyone else had to play Japanese-style rock-paper-scissors to decide who got the remaining pieces. ...although between high spirits, tipsiness, and some unsureness about which rules we were following, this took a while. In the end it was a moot point because all the winners shared their cake slices anyway. ^^;
But then it was time for the soup course! The colorful bit in the middle is a little fish cake modeled after a maple leaf.
I'll admit, I wasn't quite prepared for the steak and potatoes. Mike had been explaining the food to everyone else all evening (including some of the Japanese teachers), so when the steak came out I entreated him to tell us about the history of this particular Japanese dish. We concluded that it had originated in the Heian period, to the confusion of the Japanese staff- “But- but surely this is American?”
According to the teacher sitting next to me the next to the last course is always rice-based. This is because rice is supposed to be very filling, so the host wants to make sure everyone is full before they leave. This particular rice had some very expensive mushrooms in it, although I worry this was lost on me.
Dessert came last, although I neglected to take a picture of it. It was vanilla mousse and grape sorbet on top of pudding. I approved, although Japanese pudding is very different from American pudding. I'm still not sure how to describe it.
(Mike, I hope you don't regret giving me permission to post this photo of you!)
And suddenly we were looking around at each other over tables covered with empty dishes and beer bottles. The last course had been eaten, so all that was left to do was to take a group photo and totter out into the night unsteadily. Certainly, it was an evening never to be forgotten.
-Andrew
No comments:
Post a Comment