let's go to eating

4 may 2005

well after working since i got here with only two days off, i'm relaxing at the start of a three day break. hoorah. john has to work tomorrow (sucker) because he hasn:t done any additional training yet, as i have. (my school has a heavier load of kids classes - including chubigo: 2-3 year olds! - so they dropped me in kids training right away.)

a quick note here. . . please excuse any mistakes that i making here. the great irony of being a gaijin english teacher is english grammar is first to be no more. after eight hours every time with student, the right way to making sense is difficult to get.


so, golden week is upon us and the city is as crowded as tokyo. people travel in to fukuoka, the largest city in kyushu, from all over the island to enjoy the dontaku (festival, parade, ya-tai, shopping, etc.). the mood is contagious. we're excited and we don't even know why. 29 april was the first national holiday of the week and 3,4, and 5 may are the next three. (i haven't completely figured out what each individual holiday is, but together they make golden week.) schools and work are closed so even the poor kaichin (salarymen) are on vacation. all the streets are lined with paper latterns and new booths. some are food and others are crafts of all sorts. tomorrow will be my first chance to really explore, so i'll tell more later.

as for weather, we got an unusual humid spell just after i wrote last. guess i jinxed us ^ don't tell the natives. it was two days of skin-crawling, gaijin-stinking, hair-frizzing heat that ended with a heavy rain (at night of course). guess we'll get used to that this summer. in the land of the eternally clean, non stinking nihonjin i might have to start wearing deodorant. you wouldn't recognize me - shaved legs, armpits, make-up, suits and now deodorant! hah.

the food gets more delicious every day. we've befriended tomohara, the owner and cook of an itzakaya (small and informal traditional restaurant) close to home. he speaks a little engrish and has taken an interest in john and i.

on our first visit, we were just out exploring in the evening and wandered into his place. he's in his late forties and he had a fluffy terrycloth headband on circa 1986 and a babyblue tom and jerry tee shirt on. we whipped out our handy phrase book and asked what he would suggest for dinner. of course he smiled politely at our awkwardness with the language and replied, "rra;iggoar soijraoigja, s;goigs, ogjoigjsoiggj. slidgjl. sdigjgj. sldkj slidug. hai?" then he laughed. a phrase book is really only helpful to convey direct needs. "i'll have a coffe, please." or "where is the toilet?" learning, "what would you suggest to eat?" is really a mute point if that's all the language you know.

at any rate, tomohara served us beer, a huge dish of ika (squid) sashimi, house miso soup (everyone's is different), pork and kimchi, three side dishes, and rice. to say that everything was delicious and beautiful would be an insult. it was an exceptional meal. we visited with him over dinner as much as we could and he taught us the words for what we were eating. we learned his name and he gave us his business card.
so, how much, you ask? \2300. that's right. about $23 US! it's almost cheaper to eat out in this city.
so we've been back and tomohara writes out the kanji and katakana/hiragana for everthing we eat. he rushes over and corrects our manners when appropriate and gets to practice his english with us in exchange. it's a good relationship. we've a date with our canadian neighbors to visit him again next week.