American English

Not until I moved to Japan did I realize that non-American English speakers use different language. I do not mean accents, but the vocabulary of especially British English can be much different. Thankfully, because of American movies and TV, most Britons and Australians will translate their words into American for me--not usually necessary anymore I am proud to say. Since I have no close American friends in Japan, I have had to conform to non-American English.

Off the top of my head: they say trousers instead of pants; Pants means underwear; Capsicum means green pepper; Aubergine means eggplant; Prawns are shrimp.

Indeed, I have learned more English in Japan than I have Japanese. Since words and language have always been my pique, I am reading Bill Bryson's Made in America. He has heavily researched why Americans speak such a different language to that of the British. There are several reasons, but it is not my intention to summarize the book in this blog. He also includes interesting tidbits about American history often starkly contrary to what we are taught in school. Much of what we have learned: Paul Revere riding on his horse announcing "The British are coming!" "Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny" and more never actually existed at the time they are said to have occurred, but instead were written by over-zealous historians one hundred years after the American Revolution.

I do want to share some funny names and sayings that existed in America:

Some Puritans in the seventeeth century gave their children atrocious names such as Flie-Fornication, Adulterina, Job-Raked-Out-Of-The-Ashes, Praise-God and Fear-Not.

Among Pilgrims (who arrived in America before the Puritans and are not part of the same religious sect) eccentric names included Fight-The-Good-Fight-of-Faith Wilson, Be-Courteous Cole, Kill-Sin Premble among others.

Some cities in California were once named Murderer's Gulch, Chicken Thief Flat, Git-Up-And-Git, Hell-Out-For-Noon and my favorite.....Puke and Shitbritches Creek.

Boogie woogie was a slang term for syphilis!

And, in the mid-19th century when Irish immigrants were prevalent espeically in New York and the MidWest, their rough bar behaviour rendered slang terms like "Irish Clubhouse" for a police station, "Irish confetti" for a brick and "Irish beauty" for a woman that had two black eyes.

Read Made in America by Bill Bryson if you like obscure history that enriches conversation at a cocktail party or dinner table.

Whale!!

I just finished my school lunch: A delicious array of rice balls, one filled with minute white fish with the eyes still intact and flecks of spinach. The other rice ball had pink pickeled radish and sweet beans called anko (the only food in Japan I can't stand). The rice balls (called unegiri) are eaten inside seaweed paper--literally--the texture is like eating paper. The rice was so dry that soup was served on the side with tofu and loads of veggies so that diners don't get rice lodged in their throats.

On the side was...Dah, dah, dah, dummm.......WHALE!!!

And it was really good! It must have been smoked leftover bits since they were tiny brown balls with a smokey flavor. Ironically, the teachers were talking about Green Peace as they were chomping down their delectable whale balls. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they were laughing. I'll leave the interpretation up to you.

Now I can add whale to my gastric repetoire along with jellyfish, raw squid and octopus, raw horse, blowfish, pig blood (black pudding), chicken brain and loads of other nameless, extremely chewy things I've tried in Asia having not been able to read the menu.

I'm Back!

So much for diligently writing a daily blog! I was on holiday from work for nearly a month in which I did almost nothing except cook, eat of course, and watch movies with Glyn and Trev.

Glyn made the best meal that I want to tell everyone in the cyber world about. Fireworks went off in my mouth!

He lightly fried the outside of two chicken breasts. Then made a sauce out of ume-shu (Japanese plum sake), cream, garlic and mushrooms and cooked the chicken in the sauce. The sugar in the ume-shu carmalized making the cream sauce thick and flavorful, coating the chicken in sweet delectable ecstasy. He accompanied the chicken with roasted potatoes and carrots with garlic and pepper. You have to try this dish!

And then this morning I made an axcellent, healthy breakfast with left-overs in the fridge: Potato, basil, tomato, garlic pancakes. It was easy: Flour, water, one egg, chooped garlic, chopped tomatoes, chopped potatoes that had already been cooked, and fresh basil. I made them like pancakes in a frying pan. Then poached an egg and placed it on top of each pancake. Ta-da!

Enjoy!

Trippin'

Anyone who knows me slightly well has seen me trip, run into a wall or hurt myself with nothing but thin air and my own body parts. Want some embarrassing evidence? Here are a couple of my literally hundreds of stories that won't shame my parents:

Exhibit A: When I was about twelve my mom was chasing me around the house playing tag (I inherited my love for wrestling and playing games as an adult meant for small children that don't break bones when they fall). I tripped on the area rug in the living room, diving straight into a stucco column. I remember seeing tar black and pretty sparkles similar to what Nicole Kidman must see when she opens her limo door at a movie opening. When I gained consciousness a few seconds later my mom was screaming. She says that my forehead was concaved, then it popped back out. Today, I have a dent in my forehead you can especially see when I am frustrated or sad.

Exhibit B: About the same year as Exhibit A, I dove into the pool that I swam in every day since I was in the swim team--star swimmer ironically. I still remember my inspiration for this dumb move: I wanted to dive into the nine foot pool gracefully like the Olympic divers. So, I dove straight down. STRAIGHT DOWN. With my eyes closed. Thank goodness I knew how to dive because I did curve up where I approximated the pool floor was. I underestimated the depth, however, and scraped my face on the bottom of the pool. For a month that summer, a red stripe traced from my forehead down my nose to the bottom of my chin, dividing my face symmetrically. I looked like a red and white Budweiser race car.

Exhibit C: I'm actually a bit proud of this one. In college, my friends and I went to CiCi's Pizza, a popular pizza place at 3am after the clubs and bars closed in Tallahassee since it was all-you-can-eat pizza and fountain drinks for $3.99. With ten slices of pizza and a cup of coke on my tray, I began walking over to our table after I had filled my drink, not noticing the puddle on the floor in front of the soda fountain. I slipped, heels up, back flat on the floor (mind, I was wearing a short skirt), but somehow I managed to keep my tray, with an open cup of soda and pizza, aloft. I screamed out, "Yeah!" proud that I didn't spill my food all over my chest and stomach. The pizza place cheered for me, though probably more because the guys could see up my skirt.

Exhibit D: Today. I was teaching a class of second graders Christmas vocabulary. Walking backwards down the aisle of desks, my foot stepped inside of a loop formed by a student's bag handle hanging from the side of his desk. I fell back on my butt in front of the entire class. My foot was wrapped so tightly in the fall, that I actually pulled the boys desk with my two feet as I fell. The boy just sat there in his chair while his desk was dragged out by the big, tall foreigner dropping like a Sycamore tree. I started laughing, so all thirty-two students and one Japanese teacher (who luckily I am friends with) laughed hysterically while I rubbed my butt, whining "Itai" (Japanese for "Ow!").

Teacher Dress Code

Fashion is more important in Tokyo than eating or sleeping, which is why everyone is so skinny and snoring on the trains. No matter the age or job, no one leaves home without properly dressing. For girls, this means stockings underneath jeans (often times in the summer as well) so that not even the tops of their feet have a skin flaws or discoloration. Since it is winter, the pink scarves impeccably match the pink iPods (I'm talking about the men). Sea foam green gloves clutch a Starbucks cup steaming to the brim with a green tea latte; Or gingerbread latte if one happens to be wearing brown gloves that day.

Elementary school teachers are allowed to wear casual clothes while at work, however the same decorum applies. Teachers wear full suits, ties, stockings, hair styled for an hour in the morning. They come to work either by being crammed on a train or riding their bikes, then go into the school locker room and change into gym clothes. Granted the workout gear they wear are the matching Adidas and Nike track suit sets. Math, Japanese and Chorus teachers look like PE coaches. At the end of the day, they enter the locker room and reemerge into a formally dressed citizen of the runway.

I don't have enough clothes to wear three different outfits a day, so I just come in normal clothes, teach in normal clothes, then leave in my same clothes. Normally, I feel like a slob because I don't have the hair and make-up done that indicates it took me three hours in the bathroom, which is very attractive here. I need to move somewhere beachy after this.

Sunday

Because I have been trying to save money I have been ridden to my house reading books and watching movies perpetually. Given that, yesterday (Sunday) spontaneously sparked into the most fun I've had in a while. I planned on going to Yoyogi Park (Tokyo's version of Central Park where the famous Harajuku girls stand in costumes) for a picnic before winter freezes over entirely. As I was leaving the house, my friend Yoko called me and offered me three tickets to see a football game (soccer) that day, Tunisia versus Mexico. I've been dying to see a professional game, so I jumped on the three free tickets she offered me.

I met Glyn and Phil in Shibuya where they were watching THE boxing match of the year with Floyd Mayweather. I watched the fight with them-- I was the only American in the entire bar I realized as I was the sole person clapping for Mayweather who was fighting a guy from Manchester, England. After, we went to the fairly uneventful football game, although perfecting the timing of the wave synchronizing flow with the audience was worthy of my concentration. We drank a bottle of champagne, then headed to an izakaya. An izakaya is a restaurant that serves very small plates like tapas that are shared with beer and sake.

Yoko, Phil, Trev, Glyn and I played a brainless drinking game that requires Bruce Lee noises. Laughing hysterically, we caught the attention of our neighboring table. They asked if they could join our game; unheard of for Japanese people. They joined us and we played games and laughed; they taught us cheers to degrade your friends in Japanese. The entire restaurant was staring at us. That's the serendipitous instance that made me fall in love with travelling.

Today, I'm back at work and going home soon to be a poor hermit again. :-)

Earthquake Mullet Helmet

This morning while I was cutting construction paper in preparation for Christmas card making, my vice principal started an earthquake drill for the kids to practice. I walked out into the hallway to see what the drill consisted of in case there is an earthquake someday and I need to take cover. What I saw in the halls was something out of a low-budget sci-fi movie from the 1970s.

Most of the kids had been outside playing, so they were still in their gym uniforms: Tiny shorts not even Brazilian girls would wear in public, knee-high socks and -----helmets made of pillows on their heads!! Yes, the kids were sporting a cloth cap fashioned like old knights' helmets that covered their heads and the back of their necks like a mullet. They had them in different colors: sky blue, pink, yellow, whatever they picked out with their moms at the "Useless Things That Will Absolutely Never Save Your Life" Store.

Just in case you have never seen a photograph of Tokyo, the city is a plethora of high-rise office and apartment buildings (ironically called mansions in Japan). In the event of a real earthquake students all over Tokyo are going to walk outside and stand in the street conflagrated by 50 story-high steel and concrete buildings, confident that their pillowed mullet helmets will cushion the impact of buildings falling on them. I'll be the basket case crouched in a door frame too scared to cry or scream.