On The Other Side Of The World

I’m late- I’m late- for a very important…

So, before I tell y’all about my first few days in Japan, I should probably introduce the couple who have so graciously offered to house me and show me around. I’ve previously referred to them as my godparents, but that is only in the most figurative sense. I am not Catholic nor have I been raised Catholic. I call the Johnsons my godparents simply because that is the quickest, easiest way to get across the scope of their relationship to my family and me. So deal with it.

Stewart Johnson is an American boy, born in Texas and raised in Kansas. Nobuko (Nobie) is Japanese and went to America for college. She met Stewart and my Dad when they attended Ottawa University together - my Mom, the baby of the group, joined the club a little later. And the Johnsons and my parents have been close friends for over thirty years, though Stewart and Nobie have lived in Japan the vast majority of that time.

Well, that’s a brief sketch and I promise, you’ll learn more about them later, but back to my first adventures in Kumamoto –

Having arrived at midnight Friday evening / Saturday morning, I seem to have thankfully escaped all but the slightest sense of jetlag. I woke early on Saturday – as many of you may guess, early for me is about seven o’clock (godforsaken early is about six) - and had a nice morning with Stewart and Nobie drinking tea and catching up. Around ten, Stewart began my introduction to Japan by taking me to three different grocery stores.

The first was similar to Whole Foods or Henhouse as it catered to the upper middle class. And there I was induced by Stewart and a saleslady to try a sample of what looked like a ping-pong ball size of pink sugar. I was in the fish and seafood section, however, so I felt pretty confident that sugar it wasn’t. It indeed had a sugary texture, but tasted very salty with a peppery aftertaste. After I thanked the lady and Stewart and I moved on, he told me that I had sampled smoked, peppered roe of some sort, I think perhaps of mackerel.

And so I commence on my adventure with new foods - this is just the beginning.

As you might have guessed, Japanese grocery stores have a much larger fish and seafood section than the average Kansas grocery. Items like a wide variety of kelp and seaweed and what look like tiny dead minnows are common along with beautiful cuts of yellow-fin tuna and squid. Even items like salmon or halibut look different here. Whole packaged fish is pretty common along with cuts like the collar. In my experience so far, the Japanese tend to leave more bones in their fish at the supermarket, which they use for broth and such in their cooking. In the meats like beef, pork, and chicken however, they are often packaged in thin strips as may be used for shabu-shabu style of cooking. Even larger cuts like filet, cutlet, and roast are much smaller than I am used to.

The next stop we made was at a small village grocer, similar to what I imagine a corner grocer in New York City is like. With a beautiful display of produce just outside the door, inside was a smaller version of the first store with less variety focusing more on the essentials, which with milk and eggs still included a good amount of fish and large bags of rice - they sell rice in five pound bags here while sugar and flour are sold in small half-pound packages. The produce, however, was the star of this production - lots of citrus fruits that I didn’t quite recognize as well as huge apples and oranges. For some reason I thought fruit would be much smaller here than in the United States, not the genetic monsters that we see in an American supermarket, but not so. Some of these fruits are actually bigger and pretty than anything I'd find in the States. I'm not quite sure what to think about that, so I'll probably just ignore it. In fact, I’m actually eating one of these new citrus fruits for breakfast as I write this blog – a cross between an orange and a tangerine. Smaller than a regular orange, but much tastier. I don’t know the name. I’m also really excited to try a lot of the different fruits and vegetables – Japanese eggplant, taro, and lotus root.

And finally, we went to the average local grocery store – think IGA or Piggly Wiggly.

A section of the grocer that all of these stores share that I have yet to discuss is the pickle section. I’m sure most of you immediately think of pickled cucumbers. Y'all really need to work on your imaginations. Japanese will pickle anything and everything from the common things like onions, carrots, and beets to the more unusual like plums and taro root. Actually, I am sure the really unusual pickled items are escaping me right now. I've probably blocked them out. I’m not a big pickle person.

So, Stewart and I picked up couple packaged assortments of sashimi and sushi and went back home to meet Nobie for lunch. I ate several things that I had already had before like tuna and shrimp sashimi and vegetable sushi maki roll. I also tried a few new things like the common and not at all intimidating egg sashimi and the slightly more intimidating inari sushi, which is basically a dumpling of rice covered in tofu paste and fried - with liberal doses of soy sauce, not bad.

After lunch, Nobie went back to work preparing for an interpreting job she has next week on the subject of the Indian stock market. Doesn't that sound fascinating? Stewart and I sat around a talked before catching a train to downtown Kumamoto around five o’clock and walking around the shopping area. I did this again on my own a few days later and will go into more detail then. We also walked nearby to the Kumamoto Castle, which looked very cool all lit up in the nighttime. I took a picture, but it didn’t really come out, so when I go back to really explore the castle, I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures. It really is very cool. Yes, I will Mom. I promise.

As we circled back to the train station, Stewart pointed out several art museums, the civic center where he attends concerts occasionally, and the Kumamoto International Center. Cha-Ching! Though it was around 8:30 in the evening, we went into the lobby of the KIC and Stewart showed me the bulletin boards where jobs and things are posted. I am planning to go back in the next week or so to check it out more and write down some of the job opportunities to inquire after. I also want to check to see if there are any social groups for the gaijin (foreigners) in Kumamoto.

When we finally wandered back home, Nobie laid out for dinner the leftover sashimi and sushi from lunch as well as a nice cabbage salad dressed with kind of an Italian dressing, and as is traditional with almost any Japanese meal - a bowl of rice. This particular bowl of rice was a mixture of red, white, and wild rice as well as some small bits of a kind of potato-like tuber – the Johnson special blend, I was told. It was all delicious.

I had a full day and now with a full belly, I was incredibly tired and soon wished my hosts a good night and hit the sack.

As so my first day in Japan was complete. It only gets better.

-Jenny