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raw chickens and japanese pirates, feb n - mar m, 2002

first off, let me state what a queen sarah is for bringing me the largest box of honey nut cheerios i have ever seen, home made chocolate chip cookies (they were gone before she was...), nature valley granola bars, mac and cheese, and a whole lot of fun and love. thank you!!!

it has been quite some time since i have invaded your inboxen with another souped up rendition of steve's boring life. writer's block, a lack of motivation and skill to turn a completely boring month into semi-amusing entertainment, kept me rewriting the same tiny paragraphs over and over. [there are a couple amusing bits in those paragraphs so i'll post them on the web page once the web page is up-which will be soon!]. anyway, i guess i've just had nothing interesting to write about... until now! now i have some mochibayshown! for 10 days (plus a bit...) beginning on march 7, 2002, ms. sarah wruck graced japan and i with her presence. today we are pleased to bring you a completely fabricated but based on non-fiction interview with ms. wruck concerning her stay here. enjoy.

*************************************** ----completely fabricated interview---- ***************************************

************************* ----drink drank drunk---- *************************

so yeah, as you gathered from the above, sarah came for a visit that lasted a tad bit longer than it was supposed to, but i'm sure she'll tell you all of her adventures while she lived for 24 hours at the airport. but before that it was awesome! well...? i have been so punctual since i came to japan. i promise! i'm almost always on time...and if not, i'm only like two minutes late. which, as most of you know, is quite an accomplishment for someone who once showed up 47 minutes late to a 50 minute class. i was even on time when i picked sarah up at from the airport. but yeah, the whole missage of plane thing was a mix of poor planning (failing to check the train schedule for the *weekend*), poor communication ('sure we'll be on time...'), and me being cheap (3000 yen just to go to the airport! screw that! we're taking the cheap train...). as we watched the expensive train head out (that would have gotten us to our destination on time!), i realized that the next train wasn't until 30 minutes later and that we would never make it on time...but whatever. it's over now, and sarah isn't too mad at me anymore... now that she's home, showered, and not on YAT. or YACT. Yet Another Crowded Train. or YAFCT. or ... shut up steve!

let's see, she will probably send you guys all the details about her thoughts and stuff, but i'll mention a bit of the many interesting things that we did. now that i think about it, however, most of these things involved drinking, eating, and singing. ah, mirth! so this issue will focus on mirth. specifically, on two kinds of japanese parties: the company party, and the friend party.

=========================== interesting party the first --the company party ===========================

so after an introductory train ride from the airport home, we had a moderate dinner at a generic "family restaurant", or "famuri resu" [which now that i think about it could be easily taken for "family-less", which is kind of eerily appropos...], because one does not want to rush into raw squid intestines on the first day. the next day we took a train to north hanno and hiked through the mountains a bit. as usually happens when i hike in mountains, i got lost on many occassions coming back down. i can get up perfectly fine since it's always easy to find one's way to the top, but i often [always?] get lost on the way down because i'm having fun running or jumping down rocks and fail to realize where i'm actually heading. one wrong turn and you end up on the other side of the mountain. this is not a bad thing though, because there were plenty of what i kept calling "unnecessary signs" telling us which way to get back to the train station, and it's not like we had anything else to do. anyway, for those of you who don't remember or never knew, this also happened to me on a slightly larger mountain, when i climbed mount fuji three years ago with a group of tsukuba kids...ah, but that's another adventure.

in the weeks before sarah came i found myself turning into a japanese host. in order to have fun and show someone a good time in japan, one definitely needs a plan. what's this? steve planning?! well, believe what you want, i planned for a party with the co-workers, a party with the climbing guys, a tour with some friends, etc etc. and it turned out ok, but i failed to realise how stressful this can be to an ALWAYS worrying sarah: "why are people i don't even know throwing me a party? and why do they care what i like to eat?" it is so natural for me now that i could never imagine NOT having a welcome party of sorts with the guest of honor paying for absolutely nothing. it's just unheard of...they strive to accomodate. and i did my best at being a very white japanese guy with horrible grammar.

all my co-workers were looking forward to the party as well. as is very common in japanese companies, everyone knew of the party and knew of sarah several weeks in advance. and of course, though sarah didn't know this, they actually knew what she looked like. "oi, steve! omee, sarah-chan no shashin mishitekure yo" [oi, steve! show me some pictures of sarah-chan]. this was very interesting for me because i finally knew what everyone did for ME when i came here. i never would have guessed the "behind the scenes" things that go into planning a welcome party. there are people that sarah never even met that know what she looks like now. for example, the boss of the entire R&D center was also invited to the party, and so also knew that "steve who is the american intern this year who applied through JETRO from the university of michigan but his real university is somewhere by chicago and he lives in the NASA place in texas (but they don't launch the rockets there because that's in florida) is having his friend who is sarah wruck-chan and is a 24 year old female american who's picture is....ah, right there on the shared drive, ok...from college which is somewhere close to chicago come visit him thursday march 7 through march 17 and they're having a party for her on friday march 8 but i'm on a business trip so i can't make it. EOF". i'm sure sarah is now worrying what picture i showed to people she didn't know behind her back...well, let's just say it's cute. [i can hear her yelling right now...] so, this is how information travels so fast in japan.

incidentally, the party was fun. sarah learned that if not everyone is able to make it to the party on time a toast must be made when each new person comes trickling in. the first toasts are usually laughingly called 'practice'. and when everyone arrived, we had to have another toast, with words from the boss, saying "welcome to sala luck-chan". sarah was the guest of honor and sat in the seat of honor [though she probably didn't realize it] in the center seat in the back next to my boss on her right [second seat of honor], and me on her left[third seat of honor?]. and the person who organized everything on the corner close to the door so he could order more beer and food. seating is key. we had sashimi and excellent nabe (stewed seafood and tofu in a bowl...?), ton katsu (ton=pig, katsu= katsuletsu - an amusing rendition of the word "cutlet"), and lots of bin-biru (bottled beer). sarah was also privy to the custom of bin-biru pouring. one never pours one's own beer, but instead watches the glasses of other people, specifically, those people who are heirarchically higher than them, making sure they are never empty. and of course, the glasses are tiny japanese style glasses so there is a lot and lot of pouring. and if your cup is already full and someone made the nice (or malicious as the case might be) gesture of refilling your cup, you are obliged to drink some of what's already in your glass so as to not be rude and not accept anything. does that make sense?

the party over, we headed off to karaoke for more fun, drinks, and bad singing. sarah graced us with some classic 80s pop but hit me when i didn't help her sing, and i sang some funny japanese song and the standard john lennon or billy joel song that i never heard before but is 'famous' and has 'always been my favorite' and 'i want to hear it in a native english accent'. you will not believe how many times that happens...i did, however, make the mistake of saying 'you're singing this again?' when my boss sang 'sayonara daisukina hito' again...that was cause for a lot of laughter and a bad look. it's not my fault, it was the beer talking, so it's ok! nothing like beer to let out the honne...

=============================== interesting party the second --the friend party, the first ===============================

the friend party is really no different than a normal party in the states. it involved me asking some of my climbing friends out for a night of awesome yakiniku (korean barbeque type of food) and beer...yum. there was no sending of pictures or anything of the sort, but there was a lot of me telling people about sarah and why she was coming to visit and that "no, she is not my girlfriend" and "yes, she'll be staying at my place" and "no, i'll be sleeping in a sleeping bag."

there are no real seating arrangements in 'friend parties', though one can never get away from hierarchical relationships in total. the young guy usually works to make sure there is always meat on the grill, always beer, more meat, more rice, more whatever ordered, etc, while the old experienced guy yells at us for over cooking our meat: "yakisugi yakisugi! nanikangaetenndayo?!" we had a great time and got pleasantly red-faced and sloshed on the master of the house's home brewed (but illegal) rice whiskey. exquisite. in addition to various unordered things that the master brought out for us (we go there so often he always gives us some kind of service...but i think he must have liked sarah because he went out of his way that night...) we ordered as always: raw liver, raw beef, nankotsu (chicken cartiledge chunks), select cow tongue (not just normal "tan", we had to get the "jou tan", it's completely different), cow stomach (fourth and second, i think), cow intestines, regular cow in different sauce, rib meat, stone grilled bibinbap (korean bowl of rice and vegies...delectible), and our traditional bowl of ultra spicy on-men (hot red noodles in a hot red sauce of six different degrees of spiciness. if you eat choukara, or super spicy in 20 minutes it's free. we only had shoshokara, or tiny spicy).

ah, that was a good night. we spent over 5 hours in in the restaurant and i didn't even notice it. there was no need for a second party as we drank and ate till 1am. we laughed at my friend ishikawa-san who kept saying "whatttt? my chicken? maaiiiy chicken?", not letting up, of course, only because sarah and i were nearly dying laughing for some unknown reason [drunk?]. all things said, a good time was had by all and i still get compliments about how fun that party was. incidentally, sarah, everyone says "yoroshiku!".

================================ interesting party the third --the friend party, the second ================================

and finally, the going away welcome party...? this, i think, was most likely sarah's most enjoyable part of the trip, though it's completely a guess on my part. after work on friday sarah met kenichi (my non-nipple-licking boss...well, at least not mine) and i at the train station and we boarded YAT and headed for tokyo. kenichi grew up in the city and spent most of his youth in places like kichiyouji, shibuya, and shinjuku, some of the young and hip sections of the city. our desitination was a place that kenichi found on gourmet net japan, an interesting tenpura fondue type of place, something none of us had ever really tried. it was basically a fry-your-own-tempura place, and it was very...'fancy'. much fancier than my camoflauge pants and holey sweater [don't say it, mom...].

either way, we went in and ordered some frosty beers in some very nice, seemingly handmade clay glasses. they were some fancy glasses. these very fancy glasses, apparently, are especially made for beer because the inside is rough and it keeps the foam nice and frothy. anyway, there were no special seating arrangements here, either, just fun conversation and good food. we had more sashimi, tons of fried vegetables and some meat, and a bunch of expensive, full fisherman squid. these little guys are thrown live into a bowl of good sake as soon as they're caught. i'm not for sure if they die or are just preserved in an unconscious drunken stupor, but they are then salted and served raw. this place served them with a raw egg on the top, and they were pretty good. i had two of the six.

sarah was a trooper. she tried everything at least once during her stay here. i was very proud of her. my first time to japan it took me a long time to try new and interesting foods, but now i am thoroughly addicted and eat pretty much anything. but sarah went in openminded and didn't really blink. as she said before (in front of her father no less...): "i'll put anything in my mouth at least once". she did NOT, however, try the zazamushi (little black river bugs) that i had in my room saying that she wasn't hungry...i forgot to make her try them again...i guess i'll just have to bring some home...

anyway, back to the party. we ate and joked for about two hours, laughing hysterically at kenichi's friends from high school whom he hadn't seen in two years. one guy, shinya, was a guy incredibly obsessed with steve jobs (did you know that he owns GAP?!) so had over 10 mac computers and all GAP clothes. he was also rather wealthy and owned three cars, tons of golf clubs, for or five non-mac computers, and many golf club memberships. the other, hideppa, was a short buff karate guy with a high hysteric laugh and a neverending smile. incidentally, sarah had a bit of a crush on this guy (who was married and had two kids), and melted when he decided to give her a back massage at karaoke. haha. he spoke pretty good english because he studyied in the states for a couple years, though he forgot which language he was speaking every now and then and kept on asking sarah questions in japanese and yelling at her for not answering. he would ask things like "do you like this fancy glass, or this one? or do you like both?". anyway, those were some fancy glasses. so fancy, in fact, that hideppa pulled out newspapers from his bag and stealthfully wrapped them up in nice, professional packaging and proceeded to look over his shoulder very inconspicuously and put them into his bag, all unbeknownst to sarah. i, however, found this incredibly hillarious and could not stifle my laughter. "what? what?!" "you'll see later..." little did i know, however, that all together they had all plundered three nice clay fancy glasses, two nice little clay soy sauce dishes, and an unnecessary ashtray. by the time we left karaoke, some sort of massage device that's still in my room and a karaoke poster from the wall were also added to sarah's growing amount of pilfered omiyage. ah...japanese pirates...

ach...more bad eighties songs and drunk pictures of us dancing and singing to bad japanese pop, and we barely caught the last train out of kokubunji home. ah, and another great night was had by all. and hideppa even got a kiss on the cheek from sarah. so did shinya, if i remember correctly. and they both loved it.

***************************** --all's well that ends well-- *****************************

well, the last couple days were spent recovering and involved me NOT planning a trip to the airport correctly, and going out to a yaki-tori (chick-ka-bob) place with two of my climber friends. this wasn't a normal yakitori place, though, it was an "EAT THE CHICKEN, EAT THE WHOLE CHICKEN" type of place. it is famous for a type of soup that has all sorts of chicken except the head and feathers and feet in there. there's a japanese word called horumon, which which took me a long time to realize that it didn't mean "hormone". "horu" is a word that means "to throw out", and "mon" or "mono" means thing. so "horumon" means roughly "trash". this refers to the parts of animals that people traditionally didn't eat, like intestines and pancreas (do chicken have pancrea?). it refered to the food that people ate when they didn't have anything else. now, however, it is viewed as healthy and delicious so people can actually make you pay to eat black and bitter chicken intestines. either way, we went there and i had raw chicken for the first time in my life. "what about salmonella?"..."don't worry, not a problem. japanese chickens don't have salmonella"...

ok, whatever. i ate it anyway. just raw chicken. it wasn't bad but the thought of possibly getting parathyphoid fever made it not taste that great. somehow, however, the fear of mad cow disease didn't affect the deliciousness of the beef a couple nights before...but whatever. this was our last real interesting food adventure and was quickly forgotten the next day when we spent over six hours on YATs trying to get to an airport to catch a plane that already left...ah...good times...

anyway, that's this month's story. there are tons of things i wanted to say, but this is already long so i focused mainly on eating and alcohol. now, however, rest assured that i am now back to my normal diet of one meal a day, lots of noodles, and no alcohol except in lab...

so who's comin to visit next?!

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