Eating a Japanese bento is like that opening scene in The Naked Gun with OJ Simpson.  You’re just trying to do a simple thing like spy on some mobsters, then something shitty happens, and it just leads to one shitty thing after another until your hands are burned on the damn stove and you fall in the lake with a bear trap eating your ankles.

Like the damn bento.  You try the fried chicken, but end up gagging on some heavy cartilage action.  So you try to choke it down with some rice, which leaves a really dry sticky sensation in your mouth, so you try some of that pink shit next to the rice.  But holy crap, it’s the most rancidly intense flavor you’ve ever experienced.  So you much down the cabbage strands to flush it out, but it’s not working…which leaves the potpourri of whatever it is that’s next to the cabbage bits, so you try that but it’s like eating soggy fish entrails with eyeballs and gills bunched in.  After all this shit you feel like your stomach’s had the contents of your sink strainer emptied into it, so you make the call to just pack it in and toss the shit out. 

Which of course only leads to comments from the other teachers like, ”Oh…you did not eat all the rice?”  And these people wonder why I choose to walk down to Lawson’s every day and buy the processed shit.

Me: “So, how was the test?”

Student: “Yes.”

Me: “No, no…how was the test?”

Student: “Ahhh!  Testo.  Yes.”

Me: “…”

This is a student in the advanced class.  Truly the product of 6 years of English education.

After being in Japan for nine months now, there is one thing I’ve learned for sure.

Wheaties really is the Breakfast of Champions.   There is no substitute.

The great part about Japan is that the inane social system they have set up here forbids them from challenging your assertions and have to accept all your lies at face value.

Me: “Oh yes, it seems I forgot to stamp my hanko for last Friday. I’ll do it now.”

(Sucking through his teeth) JTE: “Ah yes, but, Kyoto-sensei does not, ah, remember you on Friday…”

Me: “Hmm…well he must be mistaken. I was definitely here…perhaps he didn’t see me because I might have been upstairs.”

(More teeth sucking)… (then he leaves)

I just had a thought…maybe Americans are fat because the food actually tastes good.  I was tossing my bento out when one of the teachers looked at it and asked why I wasn’t eating the rest of the rice.

Why indeed.  Rice is the shit they would have given prisoners in the Middle Ages instead of bread and water, if only they had known about it.  That’s all there is to say about the edibility of rice.

I didn’t think much on it at the time, but a while back someone asked me why there were so many of the textured yellow plastic strips on sidewalks and corners and subway stations all over the place here.  For all the poor handicapped people around, I thought.

 But thinking more critically now, if that’s the case…where did all the elevators go?  Did they use up all the material on the sidewalks?

Also, my conversation partner were playing the “if you had $250, 000, what would you do with it?” game, and her answer was:

“I’d buy a Volvo.”

I’m gonna let that comment speak for itself.

I just ran across my old Samsung cell that I had in the US…man it seems tiny now.  Like tiny as in ludicrously small, something that’s made the fun of in bad Austin Powers movies.  I’ve really grown accustomed to the refrigerator, I guess.

An unanticipated benefit of winter here is never having to worry about accidentally leaving a drink out.  The beer is still ice cold the next morning.

Me: Yeah, my house is freezing.  I’m starting to have to dress in full sweats before I go to bed.

Horry:  Well don’t dress up too much!

Me: Yeah?

Horry: If you wear too much to bed, you won’t be able to dress up to go outside.

 Uhh…what?