Learn to speak Australian! (very EXPLICIT)

CAUTION: This post has Australians in it, so there is gratuitous use of the word cunt. Sensitive cunts are advised to tune out.   

Our first few hours in Nagoya were spent driving around in a sweltering car listening to our GPS yell Japanese instructions on how to get to Immigration. Somehow, we found the place, and got our residency cards.

Yay! We get to stay. Time to celebrate.  

We arrived at the hotel ravenous and headed out in search of food without showers. Bad idea. We found a restaurant in a basement and were served dumplings by the Chinese chef’s children, who were raised in Japan and spoke English. Energized by the globalism of the experience, we pressed on.

My wife wanted to go shoe shopping, and after 2 days of festival drinking, I was obliged to go with her. She thinks the women’s fashion in Japan is lame except the shoes. “It’s all tan and pastel pink, but the shoes are boss.” Unfortunately she was a half an inch too big for every pair of shoes she found. She doesn’t even have big feet. She’d squeeze into some sweet spiky platforms, stand and pout. Too tight. Eventually Raquel’s stench overwhelmed her and the salt flats growing on my shirt betrayed my misery, so we went back to the hotel.

We showered, napped, and went out to a bar called the Elephant’s Nest after hitting up the arcade next door.

The Elephant’s nest wasn’t very crowded, so we sat a table next to a group of gaijin. We caught them glancing at us, and not knowing how else to make friends, we glanced back. After a few sips of beer they asked us to help settle a bet. They wanted to know where we were from. “America?” We nodded. Their friend lost the bet, but he left before buying the next round. “Where do you think we’re from?” the two remaining gaijin asked, sidling closer.

“England?” I guessed.

“England? Do we sound like a couple of English cunts to you?”

That makes two times we have switched the Aussies and the Brits. They both hate it. We kind of love pissing them off. 

They guessed what part of America we called home by asking what kind of food we liked.

“Cheese steak?”

No.

“Pizza?”

Uh-uh.

“Bar-B-Q?”

Bingo!

“Texas! You cunts are from Texas? We fucking love Texas! You cunts like the Rangers yeah?”

We pretended to care about baseball but the charade quickly fell apart.

“So you’re saying this cunt here’s been to more baseball games than you?”

We nodded, but explained that we were going to the Sumo tournament the next day, so it’s not like we didn’t like sports or anything. They were going too, and that somehow convinced them we were sports aficionados “Oh yeah, what sports do you like? Rugby?” No. “Cricket?” Nope. “You cunts would love cricket!” They showed us videos of glove-less catches while I tried to think of something else to talk about.

The beers set in and we talked of travel tips to our homelands, of kangaroo steak and the beauty of Sydney, of the pros and cons of 6^th street and the Bar-B-Q hierarchy in Austin. They explained the rankings of cunts in Australia (Good and bad cunts are both good, as is sick cunt, in fact cunt is a compliment unless you’re called the dreaded annoying cunt). The conversation only grew heated when it turned to the metric system.

I agreed with them mostly, the metric system is superior in a lot of ways. I mean, who really knows how many feet are in a mile? What’s the relationship between gallons and tablespoons? Why are their two kinds of ounces? But I would not budge on my love of the Fahrenheit scale. Fine, use Celsius for science, but for the weather, Fahrenheit is ideal. Each degree of the Celsius scale covers too much sweat. Fahrenheit is more precise. Why does Celsius use negative temperatures when it regularly gets that cold? Zero degrees in Farenheit means you’ll lose a toe, plain and simple. And why only use numbers up to 45? In Fahrenheit, if its triple digits, you know it’s damn hot or you need to go to the doctor. The Aussies didn’t agree.

“In Celsius it’s hot if it’s over 30.”

“But that’s not really that hot.”

“Yeah but in Celsius 30 degrees is 30% of the temperature of the water boiling on your stove.”
Right because that’s what I compare shorts-weather to: a pot of soup.

“Why bother have days that are negative?”

“Well we got a right smart cunt here don’t we?” One Aussie asked the other.

They tried to talk to us about politics. It’s mandatory to vote in Australia, so it’s probably mandatory to talk about politics, but I deftly changed the subject.

“Whoa is this 1-Direction?”

“This cunt likes 1-Direction! You fucking cunt, you!”

We all laughed and finished our beers and agreed to visit each other’s countries once we got home. We hoped to meet again at the Sumo match, but being sports fans, they had much better seats than us, and we didn't see them again.

“I can’t believe these American cunts are going to’ve seen more Sumo matches than Baseball games.”

 

Yup. That’s me. The American cunt at the Sumo Tournament.

Joe Darris lives in Japan with his darling wife. Normally he lives in Takayama, but sometimes the schools close down for a week to give the teachers a break, and he gets to travel. If you enjoyed this story, please +1, and share with any Aussies you know. SUBSCRIBE if you want more!

Tune in Thursday to hear about the Sumo match that almost ended our marriage!

Man vs. Fish, Round 2!

“Ayu!” Raquel screamed through the throngs of people. We’d found it, the allegedly delicious river fish served whole, complete with guts, brains and bones. Tucked in between a fried noodles place and an ancient Japanese float, home of the Kami, Japanese Gods of Nature, a woman was grilling fresh ayu. Two Japanese teenagers had ordered one of the eight inch fish, caught in a nearby mossy river, then skewered and salted. The chef held their order over a bed of hot coals and carefully turned the fish back and forth before handing it to the young couple. They looked apprehensive as they sized up their meal.

 

Not wanting to get discouraged, I hastily ordered one of the ayu and a beer to wash it down. (My last experience with the fish was anything but pleasant).  The chef selected an ayu, already crusted in salt, and lowered it over the bed of coals. To my dismay, she grilled the fish for less than a minute before handing it to me. Wait! I wanted to say. That can’t be enough time to fully cook the viscera! But my Japanese skills are laughable, so instead I politely nodded and paid her for the fish.

 
 

I sized up the ayu. Its bony face stared back at me with eyes crusted in salt. Its fins looked like they’d choke me as soon as I tried to swallow one. Unsure of where to start, I bit into the plumpest part of the fish, its belly. Hot guts flowed into my mouth. It was salty and fishy and, actually, not that bad. Am I chewing intestines? I pondered as I masticated the strangely textured organs. Do fish even have intestines?

A note to eaters of ayu: Don’t look into the fish’s abdomen. I did, and immediately regretted it.  At the back of an empty cavity, dotted with brown and green specks of fish guts, the spine and ribs joined together, daring me to eat the bony cage. Sanity returned before I ate the fish’s eyes or brains, and I remembered: people normally eat the sides of the fish, not the guts! I sunk my teeth into the ayu’s tiny flank.

Oishi! It was salty and rich! Reminiscent of salmon perhaps, but different, delicious! The bones added a nice crunchy texture to the tasty meat. Half the fish was gone before I remembered to offer my wife a bite. She nibbled the ayu’s side and smiled. This really was a tasty fish!

I enjoyed every bite of that delicious ayu (the spine and fins were crunchy and especially delicious) until I chomped into the gills. They tasted how I imagine the filter of poorly maintained fish tank would taste, like rotten algae and fish shit. Isn’t that what gills are? They’re oxygen filters. Eating gills is like eating the lungs from a chain-smoking monkey. I gagged at the thought, then chugged beer, desperate to be rid of the vile taste.

 

The nearby Japanese teenagers noticed my disgust and politely giggled to eachother. I wanted to explain, possibly through pantomime, that the fish was delicious, just the gills were nasty, but I didn’t bother. I think everyone likes that feeling of belonging, of being home. That feeling that one only really gets when foreigners get excited or confused or even repulsed by something the locals take for granted. So I said nothing, and let them belong.

Instead I wandered off in search of the Gods and the delicious sights and sounds the mortals of the festival were offering them.

 

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan. If you enjoyed this story, please +1 and share with your friends and family!

 

Japan: Food, Fish, and Grocery Stores

It’s finally time for the topic all of America has been waiting for: Food.

One of biggest differences between America and Japan as the sheer abundance of seafood here. The grocery stores overflow with seafood. There’s tuna, salmon, cod, mackerel, shrimp, and squid. There are clams, scallops, oysters, eels, skewers of sardines, and dozens of others unidentifiable creatures.  There’s ugly fish with their heads still on, beautiful striped fish cut in half, bags of alfalfa sprout sized fry, and every sort of roe. You can buy already cut sashimi, or fully prepared sushi rolls, cheaper and better than all but the classiest joints in Austin.

If do you visit Japan, I’d put the grocery stores high on the list of “must-see” places. There’s two grocery stores we frequent in Takayama. Valor is the safer of the two. Valor is ridiculously clean, well-organized, and almost always empty. The thing I really love about Valor is the music. It’s different than what’s on the radio. It’s some sort of super-shopping-fun-pop. No matter what’s playing, I sachet through the grocery store, cheerfully piling mysterious bottles of condiments into my cart while Super Sonico blasts on the speakers. It’s marvelous.

Valor’s great, but it’s definitely not my favorite grocery store. That title belongs to Asumo.

Asumo is located under a dollar store/ramen place and next to the “Santa Shop,” a second hand store topped with a Santa Claus statue that’s open year round. I don’t get it either. In front of the Asumo is a food stand that fills the parking lot with the delicious smell of dangos. Dangos are balls of sticky rice dough that are skewered, slathered in salty soy sauce and roasted. Dangos cost around 75 cents for a stick of five salty balls, and are an appetizing way to start your grocery experience.

Once inside, Asumo seems like a regular grocery store. The entry way is filled with produce, and shelves of products march off to the right, but it’s so much more than that. Careful hunting reveals cheap quail eggs, fresh noodles, still breathing clams, pickled everything, delicious fried sweet potato paddies as well as more exotic items. We’ve found olives, hotel mayonnais, marinara sauce, strawberry jelly and tiny jars of overpriced peanut butter. They even have tortillas.

The imports are great but as I prowl through the store, I study the careful choices of the Japanese. Clerks regularly brings out fresh boxes of fruits, vegetables, mollusks and fish, and the old Japanese ladies politely crowd around the fresh catch.  If one old lady puts a vegetable in her basket, I’m intrigued, if two old ladies choose the same cut of fish, I’m interested and if three old ladies pick the same organism, I buy it and make The Wifey cook it for dinner.

My most recent Japanese inspired purchase was a kind of never before seen mollusk. I know it was a mollusk only because it was  near the clams, squid, and snails. But what was it? A sea slug? An octopus heart? Perhaps a scallop and an oyster spawned near the shores of Fukushima and this orange piece of meat was the radioactive result. Whatever it was, the old ladies were piling the tiny packages into their carts. I grabbed two packages--proudly declaring them Kaiju testicles--then paraded them under the Wifey’s nose and demanded that she cook them for dinner.

At home, my pitiful attempt at researching the Japanese Kanji on the package revealed nothing. Dejected, I snapped a picture and left for school.

 

“What is this?” I asked, showing them the picture of the Kaiju testicles.

Tareto was the answer. Ah. This, of course, answered nothing. As usual I was doomed by my total lack of Japanese linguistic skills. Deeper probing of what sort of meat tareto was and where it belonged in the animal kingdom proved fruitless. Changing tactics, I asked if it was delicious. They all nodded. Hai, hai. I don’t know if they’ll ever learn English if they refuse to even say yes. I nodded my thanks and continued the lesson, not trusting a word any of them said.

I didn't trust their taste because we'd gone to yakitori place two nights ago had paid handsomely to try delicacies that Americans normally grind up and feed to public school students. Yakitori is just meat and vegetables skewered and grilled, though in Japan meat is a broader term than in America. At first we ate delicious grilled beef and chicken, while we threw back shochu and sake. But as the plates stacked up, and the alcohol dulled my senses, our new friends began to order more “traditionally.” We tried chicken stomach (too chewy) chicken cartilage (crunchy but flavorful) and a bowl of purple slime.

“What is this?” I asked, the purple slime dangling from my chopsticks as the server brought out our next dish, a bowl of soup covered in dried fish flakes. The fish flakes quivered and squirmed as they rehydrated; this wasn’t doing much for my appetite

“Try a bite then take a shot of sake! That’s how to eat these!”

I smiled, readied my sake, and ate the slime. It tasted of soy sauce and a dirty beach, and was very chewy. The pieces were so small all I could really do was swallow it and hope it didn’t get stuck in my teeth. Yes, sake made it taste better, but sake makes everything better.

“So, how do you like fermented baby squid?” they asked me, grinning like idiots.

I prefer my sake straight.

So, though my students seemed to believe that tareto was delicious, it did little to assuage my fears.

I arrived home to discover the Wifey was on strike.

“I’m not cooking those. Do you even know what they are?”

Of course I do! They’re tareto! Delicious tareto!

Unmoved, she forced me to don an apron and cook ‘em up. I know little about cooking anything besides eggs, steak and grilled cheese sandwiches, but in Japan, overcooking anything is grounds for hari-kari. So, thinking of the little old ladies who inspired this meal, I focused all my attention on not overcooking the tareto, and adding enough butter.

I cooked the Kaiju testicles just until they changed color, added lemon, salt, parsley and more butter, then poured it all over soba noodles. I cautiously set a plate in front of the Wifey.

She sniffed it, smiled, and looked to me. I nodded encouragingly and rambled about the succulence and umami and blah blah blah. She lifted a tareto to her mouth, took a bite, and loved it! We devoured them all, leaving nothing for leftovers. Wifey even said I handled them well (whatever that means) but we both agreed, next time she’s cooking the scallops.