Thoughts and Candy

 I had lunch today with Hanga.  She is Hungarian, but has been in Japan for 13 years.  She is a textile artist.  We talked 3d printing, crafts, and diversity/inclusion practices.  While I was waiting for her, I was standing under a tree just kind of watching the students.  Now that they are on campus it feels alive.  They all get to be young adults, and even though I cannot understand the conversations as they happen, I can understand the emotional intent.  The laugh of the person who is stressed out but happy to see a friend is universal.  Still, sometimes I wish I could understand the words.

When it comes down to it, though, a good part of this experience is me being an outsider.  Back home I nearly always belong.  If I'm with a group here, they all work very hard to keep me involved and allow me to be part of the group.  By forcing myself to be isolated in a crowd now and again I am reminded how difficult life might be for some.  That's good for me to know.

Separately, last night as I was sitting down to do nothing at all, the doorbell rang.  It was two students who were heading to dinner and wanted to know if I would join them.  They were the ones who came to the apartment the day we did the indigo dyeing.  We walked to a yakitori bar across the street.  It's right next to a walk-up sushi restaurant and a little ways down from the ramen shop I went to with the other group.  I think there's a contingent of students trying to figure out if I really will eat anything.  We had fried octopus (which was very good) and assorted chicken.  This was chicken thigh with leek and onion, then livers (4 or so), hearts (4 again), gizzards (again 4), and skins (4 pieces each a little larger than a US quarter).  On skewer and each roasted and covered in a teriyaki like sauce.  They asked me if I liked the chicken.

Yes.  I like those chicken parts, even though some may call it trash meat.  I let the students know there are Americans who will try fried octopus before they would try chicken livers.  Even though you can more easily get livers in the US than you can fresh octopus to fry.

I learned the Japanese word for "leek" is "negi" (ねぎ）and for "onion" it is "tamanegi" (玉ねぎ).  Tamanegi translates to "round leek."  The students had fun reading the English menu and then trying to figure out what it actually meant.  This was a challenge even though the name of each item was Latin characters for the Japanese sounds.  For example, we would see the word "Kanzo" and they would struggle to sound it out.  Then they would try it in different ways.  Finally they would search on the Japanese menu to find it and say "Ahh!"  Even though someone who learned Japanese from English would say 肝臓 is pronounced "Kanzo" with a long o.  

One that really stumped them was "mt. yam."  I was asked what em-tee yam meant.  Even after understanding it is an abbreviation for "mount" meaning "mountain" (though not usually used that way) they struggled to know what was going on.  So much so that even when they looked right at the kanji, they couldn't put it together.  I think things were so far gone with the translation, it was hard.  In their mind it was "mountain potato" not "yam."

In any case, here is a picture Malachi liked seeing a few weeks back.

My next office candy purchase will be from here.  I'll get an assortment of the ￥10-20 options.  One of my students from Osaka, who is a little homesick I think, suggested a particular type.  I want to make sure I have some to share the next time they stop by.