My landlady is Ms. Kasai. She’s about four foot six, probably in her late seventies, and she’s really incredibly sweet. I needed to pay her some sort of city fee (or maybe she just wanted to fool me into giving her money for beer, I’m not sure), but when I give her the money she asks if I’ve had lunch.
Truthfully at this point in time my fridge is pretty bare. I’ve got some orange juice, some weird tasting milk, bread, eggs, and some sort of noodle soup mix that I’ve been eating for the past three days. They don’t have stuff for anything that I recognize here. There’s no cereal or sandwich stuff or really anything I can easily recognize other than produce. I’m sure my stomach was rumbling.
She invites me in and puts down a plate of food and a cup of coffee in front of me and proceeds to be the most patient person on earth as I stammer off lots of really broken Japanese. I don’t really understand most of what she says, but she speaks really slowly and simply enough for me to catch most of what she says.
After a bit of chatting (and me not knowing proper Japanese etiquette), I’m sure I rudely and hastily excused myself. Too soon.
Cut to a few hours later. I’m taking a bit of a nap on my couch as Family Guy plays on my computer, pretty much thinking about skipping dinner since I don’t want to eat the same noodle soup three nights in a row.
Suddenly there’s a knock at my door. It’s Kasai-san with a receipt from earlier. She asks if I know how to use my rice cooker, I say I have no idea, and I invite her in to help me.
The next thing I know we’re sitting on the floor of my kitchen trying desperately to figure out which of the six buttons you have to hit in order to turn the thing on, and then we’re making rice. I show her some pictures and my Japanese flash cards (which she thought were the coolest things in the entire world apparently) and then suddenly we’re making Onigiri, these tasty rice balls and now I have dinner *and* know how to make rice in my rice cooker.
This is who the giving war began.
Japanese are all about giving things.
"Hey! Thanks for giving me directions! Take this chocolate bar!"
or maybe "Oh man, that lunch you made for me sure was tasty, here, take this bottle of wine I don't have room in my house for!"
or also "That sure was a great class you gave today, here, take this Porsche!" At least I'm hoping that one happens to me sometime.
Anyhow, after Kasai-san helped me make rice balls, I thought I was being clever by making her pancakes topped with bananas and sugar one day for lunch. Like, "A ha! Take this! I'll make you delicious pan cakes and then we're even!"
....that was, until I left that day with a grocery bag full of food. I had been one-upped, and my plan had been ruined. So now I have to come up with something else to give her. I'm thinking ice cream, since it's so awfully hot these days.
3 comments:
that is an awesome story! maybe make her some insanely American food.
It's like a feud! But... friendlier?
This reminds me of my time in China. I had no idea what people were saying (my Chinese is horrible, although it was slightly better then) and etiquette? Forget about it. I once drank my weight in tea in less than 24 hours because I could not figure out that not drinking the tea isn't impolite. My hands were shaking from the caffeine, which made for an interesting dinner. Ah, culture.
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