A Few Instances of Culture Shock

When I first arrived in Japan, I mentioned in one of my early blog posts that I hadn't really encountered any major culture shock yet. While that still pretty much holds true, I have encountered a few varieties of minor culture shock, which I thought I might as well chronicle here. There's probably more even than what I list here; these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head right this second.

1: Kids are pretty much free range here.

I've probably mentioned this somewhere in a previous blog post, but you see little kindergarteners all alone on the train all the time here. You see little kids in groups of two or three wandering around town together after school gets out. You see little kids taking the bus alone. While I know the community does a good job of taking care of the kiddos as a whole and bad stuff practically never happens here, whenever I see a tiny human walking around all alone, it's a real battle not to go over and ask them where their parents are and if they're okay. I know then I'd be the creepy one, though, so I don't, but it's not easy.

2: Junior high school and high school students have way too much pressure put on them.

The older of my two homestay sisters (I'm pretty sure she's somewhere in between the last year of junior high and the second year of high school; not positive where, though) never, ever has any free time, it feels like. She has school every day Monday through Saturday, and oftentimes doesn't get home till after I've gone to bed due to clubs and daily cram school, too. Plus, whenever she finally gets home, she still has homework to do (and almost all day Sunday, her one day off, is spent doing homework). She seems to be really brave about it and doesn't seem to mind too much (she's practically always smiling whenever I see her and seems passionate about her studies, at least), and I know that once she hits college, her life will be a heckuva lot easier, but I'm still a little frustrated on her behalf in the meantime. At least she doesn't have a baito (part-time job) to worry about or a bunch of household chores to do like some kids around her age, but then again, many kids her age go to the five-day public schools instead of a six-day private school. Her younger sister, who's in grade six now (the last year of elementary school), only has class five days a week (since she's not in junior high yet) and doesn't go to cram school. While she does have soroban and piano lessons every week, at least she's usually home by the time we eat dinner on weeknights. They both say they love school (Aya-chan's (the younger sister's) spring break was a lot longer than Rimi-chan's, and by the time break was over, Aya-chan was complaining that she wanted to go to school again), but it's still a little frustrating to me to see kiddos younger than both of my high-school-aged brothers in one case and younger than my little sister in the other having to constantly put their nose to the grind so hard. I'm proud of them both, Rimi-chan especially, but I really wish the poor things had more time to relax. It's currently Golden Week, and even though neither of them have school, poor Rimi-chan still has a daily school club she has to get up early for every morning. The whole thing is just a tiny bit ridiculous, I feel like.

3: Outside of Hirakatashi, the rare times you see a fellow foreigner, aside from clueless tourists, of course, everyone just kind of... instinctually nods at each other like "yup. You're not from here, either. Sup?"

I've discovered online this is actually referred to as the "Gaijin Nod" by some people. I've only had this result in an actual conversation once; yesterday, actually. I was on the train to Nipponbashi in Osaka (not to be confused with Nihonbashi in Tokyo; they're both written the same in Japanese/kanji but pronounced differently) to watch a bunraku (puppet theatre) play, and I glance up to see that right across from me is a guy who's sticking out like a sore thumb almost as much as I am, aside from the fact that his entire outfit isn't decked out in bright pink.

What can I say; it's a happy color.

We do the Gaijin Nod and smile a bit, and I go back to staring at the floor and waiting for my stop (there's not much outside scenery when you're actually in the subway), but glance up again to see he's walked across the car to talk to me.

"Which country are you from?" he asks in a heavy accent with a bright smile.

"Amerika," I answer out of habit, and then correct myself, "The United States."

He grins even bigger. "Ah, I'm from Liberia."

We had a nice chat about our experiences in Japan while waiting for our stop (we both ended up getting off at Nipponbashi). The second he learned my name was Elizabeth after asking, he excitedly asked if I'm Christian, and told me happily that he is too. When I asked his name, what I heard was Momo, but I'm sure I'm probably spelling it wrong. He told me that he got his masters' here in Japan and that now he's looking for work, but the fact that while his spoken Japanese is fluent, he can't write it, is making it pretty difficult. When I told him I can write all the kana and a couple hundred kanji (I can read around a hundred-ish and can understand almost four hundred thanks to heavy self-study this semester), he said that I must be very smart, which made me laugh a bit. We parted ways at the station and didn't exchange contact information or anything, but it was still a nice conversation. It just really stuck out to me because you almost never are approached by strangers here, which I hadn't fully processed until yesterday.

4: Amerika is actually not the official Japanese name for the US.

I learned this by accident the other day while flipping through my homestay's daily newspaper (yeah, those are still going extremely strong here; it's one of the "readingest" countries in the world). The official name is actually Beikoku, which means...

Drumroll please...

Rice Country.

Yeah, it made no sense to me at first, either. Turns out that back in the prewar days, America/the US (which was officially then pronounced "Amerika") was written as four kanji (the Chinese-sourced pictographs) that could be read in such a way that sounded like Amerika. One of those kanji was the kanji for rice, which can also be read as "bei." So, they yoinked the one kanji out of the classic name once they started writing "Amerika" in katakana (the syllabic system used mainly for foreign loan words and names), added the kanji for "country," and bam, you have Beikoku.

So I'm technically Beikokujin (Rice Country-ese, literally Rice Country Person). Which made me laugh a bit.

5: Getting eyeglasses is about a billion-point-five times easier here.

I learned this by accident today.

Since my homestay isn't allowed to feed me lunch on weekdays, even over breaks, as part of the homestay agreement with the school, I ended up in downtown Hirakata (since I can get there for free using my bus pass) to grab lunch at the station Lotteria (a Japanese burger joint) and wander around the stores there (there's a massive book shop I like to spend time in, even though the English section is very small and I'm not fluent enough to really read any of the native material, sadly). One of the shops I stepped into after seeing something cute in the window was an eyeglasses place. I was looking at some of the frames (which were all priced really affordably) when a shopkeeper stepped up to me.

"Which ones do you like?" he asked (in Japanese, of course).

I pointed out a pair. "These are cute, aren't they?"

"Oh, yes, very cute."

He had me try them on, and I ended up trying on several pairs. I was thinking to myself, I can't get a pair; I don't know my prescription by heart, or how to properly communicate it in Japanese, and it might take too long for the new pair to arrive so I might be gone by then.

Turns out your average random, tiny Japanese eyeglasses corner store:

A: Has a little machine that they stick your current glasses in, it scans them for like ten seconds, and boom, they have your exact prescription.

B: Can have a new pair of glasses ready for you to pick up in an hour.

C: All this for about $45 for the cheapest (but still really high quality) frames.

$45 for a brand new pair of frames with prescription lenses and a case.

So yeah, I'm currently sitting here in my room wearing a brand new pair of really cute glasses I didn't originally intend to get today, but I'm not complaining. They're adorable, a style I see girls my age around here wearing a lot (in the decently rare cases that you actually see a girl around my age wearing glasses).

Also, when I told the female shopkeeper who rang me up that in the US it takes around three weeks to get a new pair of eyeglasses, she was totally floored. "That's so long!" she exclaimed emphatically in shock more than once.

As I told my friends, I guess Japan is just truly magical in many ways.

One thing I know for sure: I really, really don't want to leave.

And Now We Come to the Part of the Show Where Liz Rants About Food

First: I'm sorry for the few weeks of absence and the lack of Facebook photo updates. As I explained to a friend back home yesterday, the longer I'm over here, the less "new" stuff I see that I haven't shown you guys yet. I'll hopefully do a photo dump of my trips to Miyajima and Tokyo/Yamanashi from spring break at some point, and I have a lot of pictures of cherry blossoms to post now (we're now just at the very end of the peak cherry blossom season). The lack of blog posts is just mostly due to general business now that I'm about halfway through the third quarter of my semester here. But here I am, and as the title probably indicates, this is going to be quite a long post.

Alright. This is going to be a bit different from any of my previous posts, as I'm going to be rating several different kinds of food I've tried during my time here in Japan. And yes, by the end, you're probably going to be very hungry.

You have been fairly warned.

The listing is arbitrary and the order in the list doesn't indicate how much I like/dislike a particular food. (Read: I'm basically ranting about foods as they come to mind.)

1: Tonkatsu

Tonkatsu is pretty similar to the Iowa dish known as (Pork) Tenderloin. It's tender pork meat dipped in a thick, crunchy breading, deep fried, and covered in a soy-based sauce. It's amazing. Best served with shredded cabbage and white rice, in my opinion (but that's partially because practically everything goes really well with shredded cabbage and white rice). In Yamanashi Prefecture, sister state to Iowa, the tonkatsu is known nationally to be especially famous/good--all because their hogs are descended from the Iowan hogs shipped over during the great Iowa Hog Lift of the 1950s. So yes, America, Iowa really does have the best pork, and we've shared it with Japan, too. Be jealous.

Tonkatsu gets a 10/10 from me. Crunchy, flavorful, reminds me of home.

2: Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is sort of like a potato pancake, but not exactly. It's basically potatoes mixed with eggs and shredded cabbage, cooked as a pancake, oftentimes with several slices of bacon covering one side. It's eaten as hot as you can stand it (as a lot of Japanese food tends to be), with tonkatsu sauce and Japanese mayonnaise (aka Kewpie Mayo) drizzled all over the top. It's incredibly filling--two big ones and you'll feel stuffed. It's so good, though, that you'll crave it constantly. At home, it's often cooked on a little plug-in grill thing.

12/10. I love okonomiyaki. I'd eat it every day if I could.

3: Takoyaki

Takoyaki is often translated as "grilled octopus balls," but I swear it isn't what that makes it sound like. ~yaki actually means a food that is grilled/fried, and tako just means octopus. These things are basically like hushpuppies with a bit of octopus meat (usually from the tentacles) in the center. They're cooked on a special grill with little round molds used to help form the food. Like okonomiyaki, they're served drizzled with Japanese mayo and tonkatsu sauce. These, too, are also super filling. A big serving is around 8 takoyakis, and once you eat that many, again, you'll be stuffed. The octopus meat has a bit of a weird texture to it at first, but takoyaki is super flavorful and really delicious. It's not my absolute favorite food here, but I'd happily eat it once a week or so.

9/10. Not as good as some other foods, but still delicious.

4: Natto

I wanted to like natto. I really did. I was so excited when my homestay dad said he was going to let me try a little. But I was barely able to finish the bite, which is fairly standard among foreigners (and even many Japanese). Natto is a divisive subject even among the Japanese. One camp can't understand why other people don't like it. The other camp still demands to know why it was ever even created in the first place. While I'm okay with letting people enjoy things, I can't really see how anyone could like natto.

Natto is fermented soybeans, often served with mustard to add flavor. In my opinion, it tastes like how I'd imagine battery acid would taste. It makes your mouth feel weird, and has a sharp zing to it, and not in a good way. I don't like it at all, unfortunately. I don't really plan on ever trying it again.

0/10. I'm sorry, natto. I went in expecting to like you. I just can't.

5: Oden

Oden is a one-pot dish made of fish cakes, a bunch of different things I'm fairly sure are made out of eggs, hardboiled eggs, vegetables, eggs stuffed with mochi, and probably some other stuff--I'm not sure--all boiled in a light fish broth. It's basically the Japanese winter comfort food. I'm not a huge fan of it, because in comparison to other Japanese foods, it comes off as a bit flavorless (just in my opinion). Who knows; maybe one day I'll have it again and like it better that time. I don't hate it, for sure. I just don't like it as much as other Japanese foods.

6/10: It's definitely a warming food, and it smells pretty good. Just not as flavorful as other things I've tried.

6: Yakisoba

Yakisoba is fried noodles (similar to Chinese lo mein) cooked with a soy/ginger-based sauce, cabbage, carrots, and peppers, and often served with aonori (powdered seaweed) or shredded ginger sprinkled on top. This stuff is, in my humble opinion, the holy grail of Japanese cooking. It's even better than okonomiyaki, and that's saying something. I wouldn't just eat this every day; I'd eat it every meal. Maybe it's just the carb addict in me loving the pasta, but this stuff is just absolutely superb. It's flavorful, filling, warming, and just all-around a perfect food. I adore it so much. My homestay mom has figured this out and loves offhandedly mentioning to another member of the family that we'll have yakisoba for dinner just so she can watch me light up like Christmas with an excited question of "Yakisoba??"

20/10. All hail yakisoba. Try it and never be the same.

7: Calpis (Calpico in US markets, nowhere in Iowa though as far as I know T-T)

Alright. If yakisoba is the holy grail of Japanese food, this stuff is the holy grail of Japanese drinks. There are tons of varieties, so I wanted to post a picture that reflected that, but wasn't really able to find one online. The stuff pictured above is called Calpis Water. It's basically a sweet yogurt-water. Yes, I know that sounds awful to American tastes, and I was really hesitant to try it. Actually, the only reason I did was I accidentally bought a yogurt soda (yogurt with carbonated water, basically) because the can looked cool, and loved it. Honestly, if it wasn't so high in sugar, I would chug Calpis Water several times a day. It's one of the smoothest beverages I've ever had, is perfectly sweet without being too sweet, and is so so so good cold. I'd love to try it as a slushie, though I haven't seen that anywhere yet. Apparently a couple years back, McDonald's Japan had Calpis shakes, which I also wish I could have been here to try.

Similar to natto, Calpis can be quite divisive. I haven't met a single non-Japanese yet who actually likes it. When one of my South Korean classmates discovered I like the stuff, which he had just decided to try, he tried to get me to accept his still-mostly-full bottle. If it hadn't been flu season, I probably would have accepted, but oh well. I also haven't met any Japanese yet who don't like it, so go figure. We'll just keep happily enjoying our nectar of the gods while the foreigners around us shrug and make faces.

As stated, Calpis Water (and by extension, Calpis Soda and the other-flavored varieties, like Orange Calpis, etc), is pretty high in sugar, so it's got a fairly-high calorie count. Luckily for me, there exists a zero-calorie version known as Karada Calpis (Body Calpis). This version isn't quite as sweet, and is heavier on the dairy flavor (because it has a higher dose of the dairy-enzyme-stuff that makes Calpis, well, Calpis, mixed in). It's considered a health drink because studies have shown that drinking one every day for 12 weeks tends to correlate to a measurable amount of body fat loss. I'm not complaining that's one of the side effects; I'm mainly just glad I can drink Calpis every day without feeling guilty at all. I still have the normal version around once a week, though; Karada is good, but the original is even better.

Karada Calpis: 8/10. A lovely, refreshing, delicious beverage.
Calpis Water: 12/10. If it wasn't so relatively high-cal I'd drink it all the time.

Eguchi (Egg Cheeseburger):

This is a McDonald's Japan exclusive, which you can get as a medium meal for ¥500. I usually only go to McDonald's once every other week or so, but this is usually what I get. It's a hard-boiled egg patty on a cheeseburger, which is a delicious combo I can't believe the US has never considered. I wish this was available in the States. It's definitely my favorite McDonald's food here.

That said, the fries at the Mickey D's here put the ones back home to shame. They have a sort of almost meaty flavor to them that surprised me the first couple of times, but now I love it. According to my mom, she seems to think this is because Japanese McDonald's still uses beef tallow to fry their fries, which the US stopped doing a couple decades ago. I'm not certain one way or another if that's the case (Google research has been inconclusive), but they're amazing, that's for sure.

Eguchi gets 9/10. Fries get 9/10 too.

Karaage:

From what I understand, karaage (similar to the word Oosaka, the double A is sort of two syllables slurred together) is a blanket term that refers to several different kinds of fried foods. It can also be understood to just mean deep fried chunks of chicken, which are pictured above. There are also korokke (croquettes; fried potato patty things), poteto (french fries), fried fish, and cheese bite things (I'm not sure of their Japanese names), among other varieties.

Whenever my homestay mom fixes karaage for dinner, I can't help but be a bit excited. Sure, it's not as healthy as other Japanese foods, but when paired with cabbage and rice, I don't feel quite so bad. It's so good by itself, but also good with tonkatsu sauce, or teriyaki sauce and Japanese mayo. You can't go wrong with deep fried foods, after all.

10/10. Equally amazing as tonkatsu.

Miso soup:

Miso soup (miso shiru here) is as ubiquitous in the Japanese diet as rice and cabbage. I don't think I've gone a whole day without eating it at least once in all the time since I arrived at my homestay. At its most basic, miso soup is just a broth made from hot water and miso (a soybean product). It's commonly served with seaweed, tofu, green onions, little spongy things I'm not sure what are but are really good, and/or shiitake mushrooms, in basically any combination of the above. I can't even define a specific standard combination, because you really see all kinds at all times.

This stuff is super low-calorie, high-protein (because soybeans), and oh-so-savory. I'm going to miss it as much as Calpis when I go home. It's eaten hot, and you can feel it warming you up right down to your toes from the first sip. Like most Japanese foods, it's eaten with just chopsticks--you sip from your bowl to get the broth. Like many other Japanese foods, it encourages you to use both hands to eat (as is polite; if you have one hand in your lap it's generally assumed you aren't particularly enjoying the food, as I was kindly and very gently informed by my church family here the first time I ate lunch with them after church).

10/10. I'm going to miss miso so much. So filling, so warming, so healthy, so good.

Anko:

Anko is, put simply, just a slightly-sweet red bean paste. It's essentially the most basic Japanese dessert, sometimes eaten as a soup with mochi, sometimes eaten as a filling for mochi, sometimes eaten as a filling in pastries. At first, I wasn't too enthusiastic about it. It didn't really seem like a dessert-y food to me. It's not very sweet, and it was weird for me to think of beans as a sweet/dessert, I guess.

Then I discovered anpan, and my perception totally changed (at least when it comes to anpan; I'm still not a huge fan of anko in general). Anpan is basically a donut, dusted with powdered sugar, and filled with anko. And the stuff is pretty darn good. I can see why the most-recognized character in Japan (Anpanman; last I heard Hello Kitty is in second and Pikachu is in third) is just a superhero with a head made of anpan. Anpan is great.

Anko: 4/10. Just not my favorite thing, and definitely not a dessert from my point of view.
Anpan: 7/10. I wouldn't eat it every day, but it's a delicious occasional treat.

This probably won't be my only post about food. First of all, I'm sure I've forgotten some foods I'll want to go back and rate later. Second of all, food culture here in Japan is so different from in the States--portions are smaller, but more filling, fruits and vegetables taste so amazingly much better here, eggs can safely be eaten raw, you have so many more types of food at the average meal, and yet despite all of this, Japan is one of the healthiest nations in the world. Beyond basic common sense, I haven't been restricting myself or "dieting" during the time I've been here, and yet I've lost around 4.5 kilos since I left the States. I feel like I'm eating more, and more often, than I normally do back home, and yet I feel, look, and am becoming so much healthier. I know part of it is lower salt and sugar levels (Japanese cake tastes so much better than its American sisters; it's not overpoweringly sweet in my opinion like American cake tends to be), and the general low-calorie status of the standard drinks (like water and green tea), but it's still amazing to me how few overweight people you see here, and yet how clearly everyone eats plenty of food without guilt or trepidation. If you ask for weight loss advice here, rather than being told to diet or exercise, you'll probably be advised to drink fermented milk drinks (similar to Calpis, oftentimes, and also really good), take a hotter/longer bath every night, and to drink more green tea. The concept of diets exists, but they're not a super common thing.

All of this makes me wonder, why is it so different here? Why can we all eat so much, including the occasional trip to McDonald's or Lotteria (a Japanese fast food place), and still be at (or be making progress towards, in my case) a healthy weight/BMI? Why do the vegetables and fruits look (and taste) so much better here? (I'm half-convinced this part is because GMOs are banned here--produce hasn't been hybridized to the point it doesn't taste anything like it's supposed to anymore.) How come can I eat bread, and rice, and noodles, and pastries on a daily basis and still be consistently losing weight?

Well, I don't really have answers to these questions, and I probably won't anytime soon. I just know I love the food here, I love the culture around food here, and I love the fact that I can basically eat whatever I want and still be losing weight.

Man, it's gonna be hard to leave next month...