One of the questions I probably get asked more often than any other by Japanese people I meet is do I like Japanese food. I can truthfully tell them that I like almost everything. Yes, there are one or two things I haven’t cared for, but even those I am trying to develop a taste for (if you want to know, they are natto and umeboshi). Personally, I think it would be really tough to work and minister in a country where you didn’t like the food. America is a melting pot and the food is no exception. Think about quintessential America food and it’s hard to come up with one that doesn’t have some foreign influence (a burger and fries is the one notable exception). But the Japanese, like many other cultures in the world, have certain foods connected to their culture that they are very attached to. Due to Japan’s geography and influence from other parts of Asia, Japanese cuisine uses many soy and sea products. Because Japan is very modern, you can buy many western foods here, but they are a lot more expensive than eating natively.

Philly cream cheese available at one of our local supermarkets. Notice the price in red (approx. $5).

This past Sunday it was Theresa and my turn to make the lunch for church and so we decided to make an American dish with Japanese ingredients. We called it “Nihon-teki (Japanese Style) Spaghetti Parmesan”. We decided to make Spaghetti (you can only serve rice so often) but didn’t want to spring for American style spaghetti sauce. A few months ago, we had something called hayashi sauce (a tomato-ie beef gravy) that you can buy here in the grocery store. We figured it would make a good substitute. For a salad, we found a recipe that was strips of cucumber and wakame seaweed pickled in a rice vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce mixture. The Japanese eat a lot of seaweed. To them it’s just underwater leafy vegetables. We have found that we have really come to enjoy it. Along with the spaghetti, we made breaded chicken cutlets, which we flavored with the spice packet from ramen noodles (that’s not Japanese style, I just had a lot of them left over from our lunches). The Japanese don’t eat a lot of sweet desserts, but a fruit called Nashi (which look like an apple, but taste more like a pear) is very popular in the fall, so we just sliced and pealed some of those. All in all, it turned out pretty well and seemed to be well received.

(upper left) Our co-workers Chuck and Jan Burwell along with one of our deacons and his wife Makoto & Megumi Ono. Dr. Ono is especially enjoying the meal. (lower right) Hayashi spaghetti w/ chicken katsu(upper left) Japanese Nashi pear (lower right) the Hayashi box - it comes in little bricks that you add water to - along with the cucumber and seaweed salad

Praise the Lord that Colby and Theresa enjoy a wide variety of Japanese foods.  Please pray that God would continue to keep them healthy.

Living in a country when you don’t understand the language yet can be tricky. Eastern countries like Japan are particularly complicated since they use the Chinese pictorial script for writing. Trying to read a sign with kanji (pictorial characters) that I don’t know can be a time consuming process. Because of that, I have become very good at “reading” pictures and making guesses. After a while, your brain gets used to not understanding and just stops paying attention. That can cause problems because sometimes “reading” pictures works fairly well and sometimes it doesn’t.

Back in April, shortly after we arrived in Japan, a new national law went into effect. It mandated that grocery stores start charging people ¥5 (approx 5¢) for each plastic shopping bag as a way of encouraging people to use reusable bags more. So, we bought some reusable bags and have tried to remember to take them with us to the store each time we go. About a month ago, we were at a store close to our apartment, but not the one at which we usually shop. We saw someone in line in front of us who didn’t have a reusable bag take a card with a picture of a bag on it and place it in their shopping basket. When the clerk saw it, he gave them a plastic bag and charged them the ¥5. “Oh,” we thought, “that’s convenient. That way we wouldn’t have to fumble through telling the store clerk that we wanted a bag if we forgot to bring ours along.” Here clerks are very courteous but often trying to go as quickly as possible and so talking to them can be difficult. We had seen cards like that at our normal grocery store and so we tucked the information away for the next time we forgot our bags.

Forward to this past Tuesday. We had gotten our groceries but realized that we left our bags at home. When we got to the register, we grabbed one of the cards with a picture of a bag on it and put it on top of our stuff. Since it had the same picture as the one at the other store, it must have the same purpose, right? We paid for our groceries and as we were walking away, we realized that the cashier hadn’t given us a bag or charged us the ¥5. “Excuse me,” I said as I turned around, “I needed a bag.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” said the clerk. “I didn’t know.”

Didn’t know? Huh? I had put the tag in the shopping basket. “Maybe the tag isn’t for that we think it’s for,” Theresa quipped. So then, I stopped to read it. They were actually characters that I knew and could have read, had I paid attention. They said in big letters, “I brought my own bag.”

Pray for continued patience and perseverance as we learn Japanese. Pray that we would find good opportunities to practice what we are learning, particularly conversation that is on our level of Japanese.