Wonder-full.

Now, at last, I understand the reason for the existence of quarter tones. I will never be able to relive this moment. A realization that’s been plaguing me all day: I am in Japan, and in four months and two days, I will not be.

This is real Japan, with a realness that I’ve been utterly missing out on for the last year and a half: the click-pop of the strings of the sanshin as I warm my legs beneath the blanket of the charcoal-heated kotatsu. I am living in a world that I never could have dreamed existed in even the most imaginative years of my childhood.

Japan. It has tortured and changed me. I have loved and hated it in almost equal measure. What will I be, exactly four months from now, when I say goodnight to my last day on this island for who knows how long? Perhaps I will never come back. I am prepared for that. But, oh! I will miss this country so much!

Today was Good Friday. It was also the last full day of my homestay on a Japanese farm, organized through the network of the WWOOF program. Through email, I got in touch with Shigemi, the woman of the house, and we agreed that I would come stay with her, her 86-year-old mother, and her two teenage children for a certain period of time, during which I would work on her farm in exchange for room, board, and a chance to learn a little bit of what she has to teach (which is a lot).

I almost didn’t come. Standing in front of the ticket machine at the train station, I nearly decided that it all sounded too difficult and I was feeling too homesick and depressed lately, and I just wanted to go home. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown. I called Josiah and told him I was having second thoughts. He encouraged me and, in the end, I went ahead and bought that train ticket. And, wow. I am so glad I did. I learned things I never expected, like how to prepare takoyaki (bits of octopus fried in batter and rolled into spheres about the size of golf balls) and that, if your house is cold enough, you don’t have to refrigerate perishable food but can just leave it out on the kitchen table for days at a time (the house was definitely cold enough). The entire experience was a little bit miserable. But it was also a little bit life changing.

Just a little.

Shigemi finished practicing the sanshin and put it back in its case. When I said, “Maybe this is my only chance to ever hear this instrument played," she replied, “No! When you go to Okinawa you will find that they have one in every house.”

When I go to Okinawa? Yes, I suppose I do want to go. “Yes,” said Shigemi, “you have to go.” It seems that every word of conversation that passes from Shigemi to me is a bit awkward, but it's also laden with wisdom. I nodded. "Okay," I said.

After five days, I’ve just about come to like being here. But five days was enough. Or, maybe, it was more than enough. Maybe it was everything.

Curiosity

For some reason, there's something about seeing me whizzing by on my bike after school that drives Japanese elementary students wild. They're standing by the street with their friends, they turn, see me coming, and suddenly they're hopping up and down, waving their hands over their heads, and shouting, "Meghan Sensei! Meghan Sensei! Haro! Haro!" I won't pretend it's not a nice confidence booster for me. I wave back enthusiastically, shoot them a smile, and return their salutation, adding "Goodbye!" as I speed past.

But the other afternoon, as occasionally happens, a group of about six kids were standing in the middle of the sidewalk and I was obliged to slow down for them. Seizing the opportunity, they immediately began to drill me with questions in rapid-fire Japanese:

"Are you going home now?"

"Yes."

"To America?"

"No, I live in Japan."

"Really?! Where in Japan?"

"In Moka."

"Eh?!...no way."

"Yes, I live in Moka."

"Where in Moka?"

"In Namiki-cho. Do you know where that is?"

"...No. Do you understand Japanese? (asked, as have been all preceding questions, in Japanese)"

"Yes."

"Can you read hiragana [phonetic Japanese writing system used mostly to write the grammatical parts of sentences]?"

"Yes."

"Can you read kanji [Chinese characters]?"

"A little."

"Amazing. Are you married?"

"No."

"How old are you?"

"What do you think?"

"Fifty."

"Fifty?!" They all burst into hysterics.

"Do you like Japanese food?"

"Yes."

"Do you drive?"

"Not in Japan."

"Do you $#!*?"

"Um...what?"

"Do you $#!*?" The child who used the word I didn't know began to elaborately act out his meaning. My mind made the linguistic connection and it quickly became clear what he was trying to ask me:

"Do you poop?"

I was a bit taken aback; I had to answer him in English, "You're crazy."

He stared back in confusion. "Eh?"

"Crazy," I repeated. "Bye-bye."

So concludes another successful lesson on American culture.

Guilt

It's 3:15 on a Friday afternoon—still one-and-a-half hours until it's time for me to leave school—and I have nothing to do. My plan was to watch the kids do sports practice after school, but today is PTA observation day, and the schedule is all funky. So I'm sitting at my desk, studying Japanese.

Suddenly my principal is standing over me and saying, "Go home now." I'm taken aback and cannot help but reply, "Really?" He said the same thing yesterday, because there was a teachers' meeting (they usually dismiss me early when there's a teachers' meeting after school, on account of the obvious fact that I won't be able to understand or participate in most of what's being said). And he let me go early on Wednesday, too, because it was about to start raining. I'm paid on salary, so it's no money out of my pocket; I can't help but feel as though three days in a row is getting to be a bit scandalous.

As I pack up my things and clear my desk for the day, I am plagued by an overbearing sensation of guilt. "I should have tried harder to pretend to be busy," I scold myself, "How embarrassing to be sent home early while all the Japanese teachers have to stay for another three hours or more!"

I'm in the locker room putting on my snow pants (I ride my bike and it's still really cold out) when it suddenly occurs to me: "Wait a minute...I'm an American! I don't have to feel guilty about leaving work early when my boss tells me it's okay. There are things in this world that are more important to me than my job. Lots of things. It's a beautiful day outside, and I've been given the chance to get out and enjoy a little bit of it. Why on earth should I beat myself up over it?"

I am not Japanese.

Sometimes I forget.

Graduation Day

But graduation from what? This is what I wondered to myself as I watched the third-year students of Yamazaki Junior High School march into the gym this morning to take their positions for sotsugyoshiki, the commencement ceremony.

The very fact that we use the word "commencement" in English to describe graduation from an educational institution indicates a sharp contrast in our attitude toward the event and the meaning that the ceremony signifies. In America, graduation ceremonies stand to celebrate academic achievement, as well as to point optimistically toward the future that our alma mater has (hopefully) prepared us for.

In a Japanese graduation ceremony, one has a hard time finding signs of any such things as "celebration" and "optimism." What you do find, however, are tears. Buckets of them. To be fair, I don't think there were nearly as many sobs wrenching from the throats of students, parents, and teachers this year as there were last year. But the reputation still stands: graduation day is a day to cry. Everything about the ceremony seems to be specifically engineered toward the purpose of making everyone feel really, really sad. Whether it's the solemn funeral-like atmosphere, the sappy funeral-like music, or speech after speech emphasizing that EVERYTHING YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH TOGETHER IS NOW OVER. YOU CAN NEVER COME BACK. THIS IS SAD. FEEL SAD.

For me, however, there are some positive points to this day. For starters, it's the one day out of the year that I really get to dress up. Despite the fact that it was a bitterly cold day, with snow on the ground and the temperature never rising more than a couple degrees above freezing, I enjoyed wearing pearls and makeup and a formal black dress. I have a few fans among the first-year girls at my school and, as I walked down the hall this morning, my getup elicited exclamations of, "Beautiful!" "Sooooo cute!" "Cameron Diaz!"

Hey, I'll take it.

After the ceremony, the graduates have a short while to talk to friends and teachers before heading home with their families. I went around shaking hands and giving hugs, telling kids "Omedeto!" (Congratulations!) and "Gambatte!" (Good luck!). One boy--Ryohei--flagged me down. I went up to him and shook his hand.

Ryohei is a small kid and not a very good English student. But he's always very enthusiastic about speaking up and volunteering to answer questions in English class. It's a characteristic that quickly made him one of my secret favorites. I greeted him cheerfully. He said, "Ms. Meghan..." then faltered. I congratulated him on graduating and wished him good luck. He seemed momentarily taken aback by my use of non-English, but then composed himself, looked deep into my eyes, and said, "Ms. Meghan...I love you."

"Oh. Thank you."

Awkward moment.

I will really miss this year's graduates. It's quite a different feeling from last year, when I had only been in the country for six months and didn't feel like I'd made a strong connection with many members of the graduating class. This year's third graders were a fun group and I really enjoyed teaching them. It's a weird feeling: it's not as though I can ever have a seriously deep connection with my students, at least not on the same level as their Japanese teachers do. But I did have some good inside jokes with several of them. And there were the few who always seemed a bit aloof, but who lit up every time I greeted them by name. In some ways, they're the ones I'll miss the most.

Two more weeks until closing ceremony and spring break. As I mount my bicycle and ride through the frigid air to a job where I spend a whole lot of time doing nothing (I'll be spending even more time sitting at my desk doing just that now that a third of the students are out of school), I tick the days off one by one and whisper to myself, "Gambatte."

Name That Tune

For all of you folks who have lived in or visited Moka at some point, here's one to take you back. Relax, imagine that you're in at little corner in the southeast of Tochigi Prefecture, it's a cloudy day, and the clock's about to strike noon. Now click the link below.

12:00 in Moka - meghanjanssen

Posted using ShareThis

But What Do Gaijin Eat?

Today I’ll let you in on a little secret I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about for the last year and a half or so. I didn’t just choose to name this blog “Gaijin Cuisine” because it rhymes (well, uh, kind of). Back in August 2008, when I was setting up a space where I could electronically catalog my experiences in Japan for all to read and follow religiously, I had in my heart the vision that it would be written from the angle of a food blog.

Well, if you follow this blog very closely (as I know you do), you’re aware that it hasn’t exactly lived up to my initial ambitions. I don’t usually write about food here. Or, when I do, it’s seldom a central theme to my writing. But now I feel I have an avenue by which all that is about to change.

I’ve been a fair-weather vegetarian for quite some time now. Ever since my sophomore year in college, when I decided I would be participating in a short-term mission trip to Kenya the following summer, my motto has been: “If you might possibly make someone uncomfortable or offend them by not eating it, then just eat it.” I carried that principle on with me through the rest of college and beyond, always feeling that it was better to keep my mouth shut when a friend suggested going to a burger place for dinner, rather than butting in, “Well, uh, I’d rather not. Because, uh, they don’t have any vegetarian options there and conventional beef-production practices are detrimental to the environment, to the cows themselves, and to the future generations of this planet.” No, that usually doesn’t fly in most circles. So I just went with the flow.

Since moving to Japan, I’ve eaten things that I didn’t even know existed before I came here. Some of them have been outstandingly delicious; and some, like raw shrimp, I now avoid at all costs. I’ve learned to appreciate certain kinds of fish as they come into season, and to savor the first persimmons of fall with an enthusiasm that I never would have foreseen. This is a country with rich culinary traditions; every meal has the potential to be a deeply memorable (whether in a good way or a bad way) experience. And I’ve been pretty eager to not miss out on any such experiences. So far.

I could easily go into lengthy detail as to my reasons for deciding to go vegetarian in Japan. But, for now, suffice it to say that my personal moral convictions regarding the decision to eat meat have finally outweighed my hesitancy to offend others by not eating the same things they do. It wasn’t an easy decision. Most of the vegetarians that do exist in this country are foreigners. If a Japanese person ever really prods me (which I doubt would ever happen, but for the sake of speculation...) as to why I don’t eat meat, I’m still not sure how I will manage to provide a satisfactory answer. The easiest thing would be to half-lie and blame it on my upbringing: “My family never ate a lot of meat while I was growing up, so I never developed a strong liking for it.” That’s only half true. What it really boils down to, for me, is: “All things considered, it’s just not worth it.”

What this means for my blog, at least for the time being, is that I have a fresh opportunity to share with the world my experiences abroad on a meal-by-meal basis. Being vegetarian means that I can’t eat the school lunches, so that’s five more meals per week that I have to work out on my own. I started the week out strong with vegetable enchiladas and a spinach salad on Monday, and sweet potato stew with rice on Tuesday (today). And tomorrow…more enchiladas?

Tonight’s offering: a picture of a cupcake. A vegan cupcake. The recipe comes from the cookbook, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The authors, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, promise in the introduction, “A surefire way to get people to look at your blog is by posting pictures of cupcakes,” so I’m going to give it a go. These come from the recipe for “Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake” with “Peanut Buttercream Frosting” and “Rich Chocolate Ganache Topping.” I had a lot of fun with these. And, boy oh boy, were they rich.

Keeping Warm

I just went outside to check and, yes, it's still snowing. The whole concept of it snowing at the place where I live is a relatively new one for me. As someone whose sensory memories of snow have been largely fabricated from descriptions pulled out of children's books and memorable lines of poetry, I'm quickly held in thrall by even a few hours of coat-drenching sleet. Tonight I stood out in the darkness (which, with the street lights reflecting off the white on the ground, was really not that dark at all), and was held in awe by the astonishing stillness. How surprising, that a little change in the weather can make you feel like you're suddenly standing in some parallel universe and everything familiar is a billion light years away.



But I don't stay outside for long. Last winter's boots--which are soon headed for retirement--just aren't up to the challenge of the weather. Eventually I have to shun the cold and climb back under my kotatsu, a steaming mug of soy hot cocoa in my hands.

One handy remedy I've recently discovered for getting through these winter days is miso soup. It's especially good for those sluggish mornings where my blood can't seem to pump fast enough to get me out the door and to work on time. It's also surprisingly easy to make. After a little experimentation, I've settled on a vegetarian miso soup recipe that I can be satisfied with.


Vegetarian Miso Soup*

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

-one small piece of kombu
-four cups cold water
-eight or so little shriveled pieces of dried wakame
-tofu -- like, 100g or so -- cut into small cubes
-three green onions, chopped
-three tbsp red miso (or white is okay, too, just don't get the kind that already has dashi added to it [see note below])
-a dash of soy sauce (optional)
-a dash of sesame oil (optional)

Directions:

Place cold water in a pot. Clean the kombu with a damp clean cloth. Add it to the pot, and let soak for 30 minutes. Bring water to a boil, and remove the kombu. Set asside (you can use it again tomorrow morning!). Add the wakame. The wakame will rehydrate within a minute or two, but let it simmer for at least five minutes. Add the tofu and stir for a minute. Add the green onions. Remove from heat.

Here, I like to place a strainer over the pot and add the miso by pressing it through the strainer, as this makes it easier to mix it into the broth. Stir until dissolved. Add optional ingredients. Serve.

*But, wait: isn't all miso soup vegetarian? Well, no, it's not. A basic ingredient in miso soup is dashi, which is traditionally made with fish flakes. The Japanese put dashi into just about everything, so that it ends up in places you would never expect, like otherwise seemingly vegetarian soups and noodle broths. In this recipe, the boiled kombu serves as the dashi. There are other possible alternatives, such as dried shitake mushrooms, that I have yet to experiment with, and there is a trove of recipe resources on the Internet that I've yet to explore; I'm simply sharing the fruits of my own adventures in my own little kitchen.

I'm glad to know that it's easy to produce an animal free (and delicious) alternative to traditional miso soup preparation methods in my own home, especially since--as of today--I've embarked on a fresh mission to be a vegetarian. This means that I've had to cancel my school lunch plan and commit to preparing three meals a day in order to feed myself. I will keep you updated on the progress of this mission as it unravels.