Feeding Frenzy

Food. My first priority shortly after arriving in Japan was finding places to buy ingredients to recreate the dishes I love from home. Soon, I came to rely on Kaldi and Seijo Ishii  for allspice , Yamaya for Jamaican rum (even though it's just Myers's Rum) and my local Summit Supermarket for everything else in between. 　


Three years into my life here, I've gotten somewhat used to food shopping in Japan, but there are still some things that baffle me when I walk into the store, like:


Bread


The first time I ventured out into a Japanese supermarket in search of bread, I was extremely surprised to find this:

Bread in packets of six and eight slices. I still find myself longing for hard dough bread like what I could buy at National Bakery. However, I'm left to choose between the six-slice pack or the eight-slice pack (or even a three-slice pack at some supermarkets) each of the three times per two weeks I buy bread. I've gotten somewhat used to the available choices, but I still keep wondering whenever I see the three-slice packs, what IS one supposed to do with an odd number of slices?


Bacon


It seems to me that in Japanese supermarkets, with the exception of international supermarkets like National Azabu  and meat wholesalers like Niku No Hanamasa, bacon equals sliced ham. Don't get me wrong - I love ham but I like it in my sandwiches. I'm not a fan of frying it up. Why can't I find anything that fries like real bacon near where I live. A woman on Yahoo! Answers responds to (basically) the same question posted by another ex-pat three years ago:

Do you know how Japanese people cook bacon? I don't think you do. But before I answer how we cook bacon, I want to say that I really don't know how British people cook bacon because I've never visited and lived there. But I do know how Americans cook bacon because I've lived in the states for more than 10 years, and I do cook real bacon here in the states.

Well, many Japanese people who know how Americans cook bacon would say they cook bacon until it's really burnt. So we call the kind of bacon " burnt bacon." 

But for Americans, how we cook bacon is too rare. Well, my husbands's brother ( American) goes to Japan for business and he told me that the way Japanese people cook bacon is too rare. So he didn't want to eat bacon because he thought that he would get sick by eating " raw" bacon. Well, in America, cooking bacon like how the Japanese do is not safe to eat because Americans use " real" bacon. In order to eat real bacon, people need to cook it really well.

But in Japan, we don't really like to cook bacon that way. So we have our bacon that is safe to eat. Our bacon is smoked and heated through because we want to eat rare or medium-rare bacon. So the kind of bacon has been sold in Japan.

Well, actually selling " real" bacon (the bacon that is dangerous to eat as raw ) was prohibited by law. That's why, you couldn't see " real" bacon at any grocery stores in Japan. Well, we are very careful when it comes to food that when we want to eat something that is not safe to eat as raw, we need to do something. So stuff like eggs, bacon are pasteurized usually.

But these days, Japan has introduced unheated bacon which is very very close to " real" bacon. Since we are getting to know more western style food, we've changed the law a bit that some stores started selling unheated bacon. Even though many Japanese people still don't like to cook bacon like how Americans do, some people who like international food want to try to cook...well, " burnt bacon." But still we like to eat raw stuff so the bacon is not probably the exactly same as the bacon sold in the states if raw bacon is made through bacon companies in Japan:

 Chicken


I mentioned before on this blog how big a deal chicken is in Japan during the Christmas season. People pre-order buckets of fried chicken from KFC weeks in advance and whole chickens can be found in supermarkets everywhere. The week after Christmas, though, there are no whole chickens to be found except at a few international supermarkets and meat wholesalers such as the above-mentioned.

Also, there is the fact the boneless chicken as all most Japanese supermarkets seem to be interested in selling, with the exception of chicken wings. You can get wings, livers, hearts, breasts, boneless thighs and even chicken meatballs but no drumsticks! Where are the drumsticks?

Kit Kat


There are many flavours of this popular candy bar here that I'm sure people outside of Japan would have never dreamt of, for example, yuzukosho.  Yuzu is a citrus fruit that is found in East Asia. Yuzukosho is type of seasoning made from yuzu, peppers and salt. The first time I was offered  a Yuzukosho Kit Kat bar, I was a bit skeptical, but I ended up liking it a lot. Other flavours that can be found in Japan include candied sweet potato, apple vinegar (with white chocolate), sweet corn and green tea. You can get a look at more flavours on Nestle Japan's website here.

There are many other things that make me shake my head or raise an eyebrow whenever I go grocery shopping or receive gifts (such as the Yuzukosho Kit Kat bar I got from a student) but I will leave more for another post. Meanwhile, if you're an ex-pat in Japan and you've had any puzzling gastronomical experiences (apart from trying unusual traditional Japanese cuisine, obviously) please leave me a comment. Happy cooking and don't burn the ham, er, bacon.

A Way In Japan

Right now, I'm reading V.S. Naipaul's A Way In The World, and it's got me hooked. In this book (well, up until the point I've gotten to so far) he's talking about his journey as a Caribbean writer. This book resonates a lot with my own experience.

How can I be prolific without being pretentious? How can I be honest and rational without being abrasive? How can I make a career out of writing while living in a country that doesn't speak the language in which I'm writing while supporting myself (that is me, being a poor black girl from a poor Jamaican family with a mountain of student loan debt) on an income being incurred from a job that does not stimulate me intellectually?

I've asked myself these questions many times trying to justify my staying here.

Trying to justify my staying here, largely in part, to maintain my relationship with my boyfriend. Trying to maintain one of the few relationships I've had my entire life that does not require me to be something I'm not.

Trying to put my life together after many years of tragedy and disappointment, including my first Japanese company going bankrupt along with my father's death in one year, in the midst of me trying to save enough money to help my mother own her own home since she was her twenties.

All I can do is live, is my answer to these questions. Trite as it may sound, all I can do is live, love all (except idiots, pro-life/anti-reproductive choice fundamentalists, racial and sexual hate mongers and war mongers, all of whom I find completely intolerable) and do the best I can.

The best I could do was go on a cruise this weekend. Not a Somewhere Beyond The Sea type cruise. It was one night of a summer-long event around Tokyo Bay wherein revelers could choose to go dressed up in yukata.

At times like these, I think to myself, how can I not love this? How can I not love my life, even if it's a farce?

Then, I think that this is life. This is my life: the stress, the history, the drama and the beauty. Then I allow myself to look at pictures like this:

And I think to myself, when I was taking this picture, I had thought about the boat ride home, that is, home - in Tokyo. Maybe, I'm on of these people who can say:"Jamaica is my country but --- is my hometown."

But for all intents and purposes, Kingston is still my number 1 hometown, especially when I think about music like this:

Digital Scraps (in no particular order)

Here are some of the things my friends and I have been looking at on the Internet over the past week:

1.

Who wants a pair? I know that women often try to select pants that attract attention to their buns, but I don't think this is the way to go about it.

2. This story from The Guardian interrupted my exuberance over the performance of our athletics team in Berlin:

Student Debra Morolong chalks defiantly on a school blackboard. "Caster always is a winner," she writes. "I am very proud about Caster cause is my best friend. Caster is the champion in 2010."

The classroom has cheap wooden desks lining a bare concrete floor. Paint is peeling off the graffiti-strewn walls beneath a corrugated tin roof. Caster Semenya was just another pupil in this impoverished corner of South Africa until her body propelled her to international glory – and very public humiliation.

Semenya, 18, stormed to victory last week in the women's 800 metres at the world athletics championships in Berlin. But her rags-to-riches journey had been called into question even before the starting gun. The athlete's muscular build, deep voice, facial hair and suddenly improved performances led to a frenzy of speculation that the fastest woman in the world over two laps is, in fact, a man.

Read the rest of the story here.

3. This has been circulating for a while. All I will say is that I hope he's not taking himself too seriously. Further comments might land me in court.

4. This bit on CNN about the 12 most annoying Faceboook updaters includes characters such as The Sympathy-Baiter, The Maddening Obscurist and The Self-Promoter. Check it out here.

5. Melanie Walker rides the Berlin 2009 mascot after winning the women's 400m hurdles gold medal. Classic.

6. So, Barney Frank is at a town hall meeting about health care reform when a woman gets up and asks, "Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?" A proper dressing down ensues. Absolutely great.

7. Why Do Jamaicans Run So Fast? Before I first clicked on this link, I whispered a little prayer saying, "Please, please don't let it be another foreign made documentary set on the beach with half naked Jamaican children running around and void of interviews with people who are actually articulate." Alas, you can't always get what you want.

8. Well, not a this week thing, but I seriously cannot stand these relationship articles, especially the ones with the lists. 10 Ways To Keep Your Girlfriend From Nagging or Five Tips To Keep Him From Straying. The self-satisfied tone with which these writers ooze this garbage is nauseating. Here's an example of some recent barf-worthy shit.

9. I'll dedicate the final two spots to both of our 100m world champions. Unbelievable run from both Usain Bolt and Shelly Ann Fraser. Here they are again, in case you've been on Mars for the past week.

10.

Odds and Eggs

One thing I've been wondering since moving to Japan: Why is it that my refrigerator's egg holder has room for fourteen eggs when cartons of eggs hold up to ten?

Silly question, I know. I just thought I'd ask.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, so here's a hodgepodge of updates:

1. I went to China early last month. It was a great trip. Lots of great, inexpensive food was consumed and many great, interesting sights were seen. Of course, I went to the Great Wall:

And Tiananmen Square:

And many other places. What still left an impression on me though, was the fact that Chinese people would stop and take pictures of me. Really, I'd be standing at an intersection waiting to cross the street and some strange person would just come up, point a camera in my face, click and walk away. This happened several times every day we were there. My boyfriend thought it was funny. I found the whole experience weird and disconcerting. Annoying too. Why can't I just enjoy my vacation like a normal person instead of making some one's Beijing photo album more interesting by being the odd foreigner? That's one thing about living in Asia that I'm really getting sick of: being the odd foreigner.

2. I went to the One Love Festival in Tokyo a few weeks ago and was once again amazed by the number of Jamaicans living here. Each time I go to the festival though, I ponder the role of our embassy in Tokyo. The one and only time I ever went there, I have to admit, I felt so disappointed. The only (Japanese) staff member at the desk was bewildered at the fact that I was interested in knowing where the embassy is, or where I can find Jamaican-owned/related businesses in Japan.

I didn't come here as a JET or through any ALT programme that was recruiting in Jamaica. I came here working for a company that was recruiting in the U.S., and that company had a dearth of Caribbean nationals working for them in the Tokyo area. Needless to say, despite having met many interesting people from all around the world, and having formed many interesting and meaningful friendships, during my first year here I still felt very much alone. I guess I just wish that our embassy would look like it functioned as more than a branch of the Jamaica Tourist Board.

Anyway, the festival was fun. I met some great people, ate some good food (yes, I'm always eating these days) and jammed to some good music.

3. I haven't been writing as much as I'd like. I've seen so much horrible poetry being posted everywhere on the Internet from Blogger to Facebook and as horrified as I am by the terrible writing, I begrudge these writers their courage. I also see the mountain of praise that terrible writing attracts sometimes and I am scared to death that things I've written and received tons of accolades for in the past were actually glorious crap.

In order to remedy all of that, I decided to help a friend start a writing circle. We'll see how that goes. If there are any writers in the Tokyo area reading this, drop me a line if you're interested in joining.

Okay, back to listening to this week's This American Life.

To the next person who mentions Cool Runnings to me

Yes, I am Jamaican.

Yes, I have seen Cool Runnings.

No, I don't like it. In fact, there are few crappy movies that I so fervently despise for their ties to my national identity. Shottas and Rude Boys are close to the top of that list, but I won't get into a discussion about those two films (if you can even call them that) right now. One of the reasons (I suppose the main reason) I hate Cool Runnings so much is not so much the fact that it, like some other popular Hollywood movies, succeeded once again in portraying people from the Caribbean as buffoons. That, I've come to expect from Hollywood films - this idea that we island people only hang out and live "right by di beach, bwoy!"(Half Baked), smoke weed and don't do much else. Cool Runnings has managed to slightly separate itself from the rest by taking a few more ambitious buffoons and placing them in a groundbreaking moment in sporting history.  Inspiring story of these four  with nothing serious going on in their lives, blah blah blah, when in fact, three of the members of the real bobsled team were in the military. The fourth member was a railway engineer.

But, that stuff, the idiotic portrayal of our people as laid-back (read as lazy), not taking life too seriously and not really knowledgeable about the outside world, that's not what really gets to me about this movie. What really annoys me is how ubiquitous it is outside of Jamaica as a frame of reference when talking about Jamaica. I can't count the number of times I've had this conversation since moving to Japan:

Person X (usually a new student): What's your name?

Me: I'm Biankah. And you?

X: My name is ____. Nice to meet you.

Me: Nice to meet you too. Are you from Tokyo/Saitama?

X: Yes/No, etc. Where are you from?

Me: Jamaica.

X: [Did you say] America?

Me: No, no. Jamaica.

X: Where is Jamaica? Africa?

Me: No. It's pretty close to Florida, actually. (I then pull out a world map or atlas.)

X: Ah! Jamaica! I watched the movie Cool Runnings. Do you know [it]?

Me: (wearily) Yes, I've seen it. 

X: I thought it was very interesting.

Me: Really? (I then force a smile, groan inaudibly and mentally put a loaded pistol to my head.)

That's what happens six out of ten times. Since the Beijing Olympics, (thank god), people more often bring up our track and field team in conversation upon hearing where I'm from.  Sadly though, there are still more people who refer to that damned movie, and who honestly believe that it presents a realistic portrayal of life in Jamaica. It makes me sick.

So, to anyone out there who might read this before meeting me in person:

Enough.

Stop.

I hate the movie and I don't want to talk about it again.