Japan part 4

11/03/2008

The big news of the moment: we finally got internet! It took 2.5 months, but better late than never, as they say...

Recently the English department at school had a welcome lunch for me (only a mere two and a half months after we got here) - and they took me out to an American style restaurant. This, like most things here, wound up being very Japanese!

We drove from the school to a quaint little log-cabin looking house displaying Canadian flag and a sign that says "Country Kitchen". The seating inside was Japanese style (i.e. you take your shoes off at the door, sit on cushions on the floor and eat at very low tables). After we got settled a server brought out our first course: a stew with meat, beans, broccoli, bell pepper, peas, okra, and clams. Next came egg and tomato sandwiches, followed by rice-paper spring rolls and some mystery deep-fried-food (it was good though). Then the server came out with a pizza. This was very exciting for me because pizzas are not super common here and cheese is almost unheard of. It looked like a BBQ chicken pizza (complete with dark BBQ-esque sauce and some white chickenish meat) but when I took a bite I discovered that it wasn't Barbeque sauce at all ... it was squid-ink! And what I thought was chicken was in fact squid as well.

I don't really recommend it.

Next the server brought out pasta with a tomato-cream sauce topped with basil (or so I thought!). Upon closer examination it was actually pasta with a ROE-cream sauce and nori (dried sea-weed) on top! This sounds really strange but it was actually pretty good. Maybe not as good as tomato-cream and basil, but definitely better than squid ink! Then she came out with an American-style tomato-sauce and cheese pizza (yay!), and finally we all had some cheesecake for dessert.

Now, when I say cheesecake I don't mean American cheesecake; I mean a cake that is made with cheese. It's no New-York style, but it is a suitable substitute!

The other big October event was Halloween.

Halloween is not celebrated in Japan.

Some may say that's because Halloween is a purely western tradition, but I say it's really because:
1. there is no fluoride in the water here, so all that candy is more likely to rot the childrens' teeth right out of their skulls, and 2. many people here dress up in a costumey-fashion on a regular basis, so its really no big deal for them! (this phenomena is known as cosplay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay)

However, all this really means is that they miss out on trick-or-treating and all the department stores etc start decorating for Christmas a month earlier (they've already got the xmas music & winter desserts out at our local Starbucks).