New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour.

“Pita pockets” didn’t excite me as a kid. Toted as a kid-friendly food, the charm of stuffing sandwich fillings into a bread with a pocket was lost on me. I rediscovered pita–fresh pita–in university at Middle-Eastern diners and as (store-bought) hummus became more mainstream. In Japan, I sometimes bought stacks of pita from the import store, but after preparing for an international cooking lesson, I discovered pita are really simple to make, and more importantly, make a great bread substitute for proper sandwiches in Japan. Save the trip to the import store for chickpeas–you don’t even need to make hummus to go with it!*

Click HERE for more.

New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

Early May means fresh bamboo shoots are in season again here in Ishikawa, and I received not one but three lovely shoots from my friends and coworkers this year! 2012 is apparently a bumper year for bamboo in the forests and in my kitchen.

Whether you purchased or received fresh bamboo, one large shoot can seem like a lot to cook up. The best English-language resource for cooking bamboo is, in my opinion, Makiko Itoh’s Just Hungry. The reason why I have only one bamboo recipe on this site is because I always use hers! What I do have to offer is how to cook raw bamboo, my master list of bamboo recipes, comments, and my own photos. Enjoy!

Click HERE for more.

New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour.

TexMex/Southwestern/Mexican foods were something I purchased from the grocery or at restaurants in the US, missed sorely in Japan, and was convinced I couldn’t make it myself. If I found salsa in a jar, I couldn’t find chips, so what was the point? Avocados weren’t something I could get my town easily, and forget cilantro or jalapeños. I gave up on my dream of enjoying these foods in Japan, but luckily Cheruko didn’t, and she put together a fantastic fajita spread for an international cooking lesson.

Click HERE for more.

New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

One thing that always amazes me when I return to the US is the sheer amount of choice one has about food. Order a pizza in the US and you can usually choose whole-wheat or white crust (sometimes even gluten-free); thick or thin crust; marinara sauce or white sauce; any combination of toppings. With the sheer amount of kinds of pizzerias in towns like Ann Arbor–everything from national chains to Silvio’s organic pizza–the sky was the limit.

I know most of my posts start with me gushing about Ann Arbor, then complaining about Japan, then resolving into my resolution to make it myself, but going from choosing the tiniest details of my pizza to angrily eyeing the corn-and-mayo pizza on a rare trip to Coco’s actually wasn’t that shocking until I came back to the US on business in the winter.

Click HERE for more.

New Rice Cooker Chronicles submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

One of the biggest challenges–and triumphs– for me during these 2.5 years living in Japan has been creating bread products I could easily purchase back in the US: pitas, tortillas, flatbread, pizza dough. I experimented (usually disastrously) with a few things in year 1, namely pizza dough, which was passable but not fantastic, and tea bread, which refused to cook through no matter how I reduced the recipe or what device in which I baked it.

My first success was whole-wheat soda bread. Pizza dough took two years and five different recipes.  Tortillas and pitas, which I was stupidly convinced couldn’t be made at home until Cheruko of Hokuriku Expat Kitchen decided they could, turned out to be incredibly simple. I, like many Americans, thought bread-making was some sort of epic process, a choice between hours of kneading and rising and punching dough or investing in a breadmaker that would take up precious storage space. It’s really not that bad. I’ll speak more on this later with each recipe’s time-commitment information, but I full work-time, work out, have an active social life and hobbies, and I still have time for bread-making. The rising time, depending on the recipe, is often ideal for cooking the rest of a meal, enjoying a TV show or book, or even an evening trip to the gym for the longer risers.

So, now that you’re less worried about OMG BREAD, let’s get started on building your expat bread factory. First, we need to have a chat about types of flour.

CLICK HERE for more

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

Orange sweet potatoes, ubiquitous in the US, are often nowhere to be found in Ishikawa. Depending on where you are in the prefecture, you can usually locate some in one brief part of late winter in the local-vegetable section of the grocery store with the Noto- and Kaga Yasai (heirloom vegetables from Noto  [northern Ishikawa] and Kaga [central-southern Ishikawa]). This March,  I found some “Kabocha Imo” (“kabocha squash potato,” かぼちゃ芋), a Noto Yasai, at Marue, and I also found a large bag of annôimo (安 納芋) in the basement grocery stores in the department store M’ZA. Orange sweet potatoes are not as cheap as I remember them being back home during my student days, but they’re every bit as delicious.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

Visit JQ's homepage at http://jetaany.org/magazine

As we march into spring, JETAA New York’s JQ magazine continues to provide content with an ever-expanding array of articles, interviews and features (see our recent stories here). We’re now looking for new writers, including recent returnees and JET vets, from all JETAA chapters worldwide for posting stories via our host at the global JET alumni resource site JETwit.com. (Scribes are also encouraged to join the JET Alumni Writers group on LinkedIn.)

Below are story ideas grouped by JET participants and alumni (JET World) and those more on Japanese culture (Japan World). If you’re a JET or JETWit contributor from anywhere in the world, we welcome your interest or additional story ideas! Contact JQ’s editor Justin Tedaldi (magazine [at] jetaany [dot] org) to sign up for stories, and click here to see the story ideas online.

Click “Read More” below for our spring 2012 ideas pitch package.

***JET WORLD***

 JETS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

The official JETAANY Facebook page has been firing on all cylinders, serving as an additional alumni news outlet and upcoming event bulletin board. Talk to the people in charge for a profile on the impact of JET chapters, social media style!

BOOK REVIEW: ‘PACIFIC COSMOPOLITANS’

Decades before Americans cheered on Ichiro Suzuki, Japanese baseball fans swooned over Babe Ruth. And a century prior to the craze for anime and manga, American art collectors hoarded Japanese woodblock prints. Few relationships can match the depth, or importance, of the cultural ties between America and Japan over the past two hundred years. In Pacific Cosmopolitans, JET alum/Director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Michael Auslin tells this absorbing history in full for the first time. http://goo.gl/yl4Ns

‘THE RICE COOLER CHRONICLES’ SERIES

We are running a new series on JETwit about solo cooking experiences while on JET (read previous entries here). Did you discover a new favorite comfort food in Japan, learn to cook a mouthwatering meal that you still serve today or accidentally buy something really weird only to discover (and reluctantly) eat it in your mansion? We want to hear about it!

‘SPRING IN JAPAN’ ANECDOTES WANTED!

Our quarterly anecdote topic is spring in Japan from JET alumni around the world! If you have a strange, delightful (or both—we all do) short story to share about harus past in Japan, we’d love to publish it. Whether you won a hanami karaoke contest or just got hilariously drunk visiting a World Heritage Site, we want to know!

‘JET GOT ME A JOB’ SERIES

We’ve heard from several JETs recently who have found jobs in their home countries working for Japanese companies, organizations or related fields in education. If the JET experience was a big help in netting that job, we encourage you to write about it.

JET ALUM LAUNCHES CROSS-CULTURAL CONSULTING SERVICES SITE

Jennifer Jakubowski (Hokkaido ’95-’97) has also spent several years in Japan outside of the JET Program. Although she have been doing Japanese-American cross-cultural business consulting and training for several years now, she has just officially launched a website advertising these services. Bridges to Japan is based in the NYC metropolitan area, but services clients all over the country. Talk to Jennifer or write about the site for an article.

JET AUTHOR ARI KAPLAN

JET alum author Ari Kaplan (Hyogo-ken, 1993-94), who practiced law for nine years at a big firm before setting out on his own and, among other things, writing The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development which became a big hit in the world of lawyers and especially among law students facing an increasingly uncertain job market and career prospects. For more information about Ari, visit his website at www.arikaplanadvisors.com.  You can also see media coverage of him on WGN-TV Chicago, in the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog and in the Houston Chronicle.

‘JET INSTANT NOODLE’ COMICS

Profile of JET alum artist Shun Endo and his “JET Instant Noodle Comics.” Read samples here.

ISSHONI LONDON – JET ALUM BLOG

London JET alum Vanessa Villalobos writes about Japan-related events, news, review and interviews. This would be a good Q&A piece for any JETs wanting to learn more about how our alumni groups operate overseas. Learn more at:

www.isshonilondon.co.uk

www.facebook.com/pages/Isshoni-London/119415767689

www.twitter.com/IsshoniVanessa

TEAMTEACHERS.COM

An innovative telecommunications site for Team Teaching, founded by a JET. www.teamteachers.com

JETSET – CANADIAN JETS IN JAPAN

Melissa C. runs JETset, a site for Canadian JETs in Japan and a well-known resource center for JET participants. See more for a profile at www.jetsetjapan.com.

***JAPAN WORLD***

JAM FOR JAPAN TOHOKU MUSIC EDUCATION GRANT APPLICATION

Relief International and Musicians Institute are providing Music Education Grants to accredited educational institutions and musicians located in (but not limited to) Japan’s earthquake tsunami affected areas. The purpose of this grant (up to $5,000 per institution) is to provide youth educational music programming assistance and support of recovery efforts to music departments, and to provide new music instruments to schools with an established musical arts curriculum and/or individual music students. The deadline for grants was Feb. 29, but the executive grant research intern is interested in talking with a writer for a feature story on this. www.ri.org/get_involved/event-details.php?ID=5

WE ARE NEW YORK PROJECT

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA)’s We Are New York (WANY) Project is a volunteer-led initiative that offers free English conversation groups to immigrant New Yorkers (which includes Japanese natives) at community sites around New York City’s five boroughs. Trained volunteers then travel to our partnering community organizations (churches, schools, libraries, senior centers, CBO’s, etc.) and help immigrant New Yorkers practice English by leading conversation groups at those sites 2 hours a week for 10 weeks. Speak with the volunteer coordinator for a feature story or volunteer yourself to engage your community in a meaningful way. www.nyc.gov/html/imm/html/home/home.shtml

RESOBOX, JAPANESE ART GALLERY IN QUEENS

Resobox manager Takashi Ikezawa would like to invite a JQ writer to visit his Long Island City gallery and write about it. The gallery offers a wide variety of Japanese art exhibitions (the art of Justin Baldwin was showcased earlier this year), classes in shodo, dance and martial arts, and workshops/events. Private tours are available on weekends by appointment. www.resobox.com

JAPAN FOUNDATION OF NEW YORK OFFERS JAPANESE COURSES!

JQ is looking to write up a profile with the course coordinator. The Japan Foundation, New York, in cooperation with The Nippon Club, will offer an original Japanese language and culture course, JF Japanese Language Course starting January 2012 as a part of The Nippon Club Culture Courses. These interactive and small classes are for beginner through intermediate learners to enjoy Japanese culture – manga/anime, pop music, origami (paper folding), calligraphy, chopsticks training, and more! This new course is based on the Japan Foundation’s JF Standard, which provides a framework of levels of Japanese language proficiency. Classes begin in January 2012. www.jfny.org/language/index.html

FUKUSHIMA “EIGAO SMILE” WRAPPING PAPER BENEFIT

Profile on EMI Japan Recording artist  Akemi Kakihara and her unique project! “えがお” is Japanese, means “SMILE”, pronounced as “EGAO” These lovely drawings were received as gifts by Fukushima Soma Minato Preschool 3-, 4- and 5-year-old students. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, the fear from the nuclear radiation problem is far beyond imagination. These drawings captured those precious moments and their smiles, and continue to raise awareness and support children in Fukushima and Japan.

Akemi Kakihara’s AK Official Site: www.emimusic.jp/ak/    JP GIRLS NYC: www.facebook.com/JPGirlsNYC

DVD REVIEW: DOCUMENTARY OF J-POP GIRL GROUP AKB48

AKB48 was conceived in 2005. Beginning as a small all-girl singing group based in the Akihabara district of Tokyo – the city’s bustling electronics and anime/pop culture shopping Mecca – AKB48 has grown to 60 members and topped Japan’s Oricon music charts with the two best-selling pop singles in 2010 as well as another two singles ranking in the Top 10. With a complicated balance of competition and friendship among its members, the group’s bond is extremely strong. DOCUMENTARY of AKB48 to be continued traces AKB48’s history with scenes from concerts and rehearsals, member general elections, and fan activities both in Japan and abroad. The film also includes personal interviews with select members that reveal each of the girls’ personal struggles, joys, path to growth, and dreams. http://store.newpeopleworld.com

SACHIYO ITO DANCE COMPANY ARTICLE: 30th ANNIVERSARY PROFILE

Sachiyo Ito and Company is the only dance group in New York City to perform Japanese classical dance, Okinawan dance, and contemporary works based on these traditions. They had their 30th Anniversary Concert near New York’s Lincoln Center in October, taking the audience from medieval Japan to present day through dance and live music. Takers are invited to write about Ito-sensei herself or review an upcoming concert. www.dancejapan.com

KYUSHU BATTENKAI OF NEW YORK

Since last summer, JETAANY has joined forces with the Kyushu Battenkai (an association of Japanese from Kyushu living in New York), and more than 60 participants attended the group’s Fall Gathering last September. As New York is home to many other similar prefecture associations, this team up is a model for future JETAA Chapter-Prefectural Association events. The Battenkai’s president would be happy to get in touch with any JET writer interested in a Q&A or a feature article about the organization and its ties with JETAA.

MOVIE/BOOK/RESTAURANT REVIEWS

We are accepting reviews on any Japanese restaurant that you’d like to spread the word about. (Even better if they’re run by JETs.) JET alum Jamie Graves works at Kajitsu, an East Village restaurant in New York specializing in shojin cuisine, an ancient Japanese culinary practice developed in Zen Buddhist monasteries.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR JAPAN FIX?

In an effort to revive the “Japan Fix” posts, we’d like to share a recent discoveries to help readers find a little piece of Japan close to home.  How do you get your Japan fix wherever you live?

ROBIN SAKAI OF GAIJIN POT

Gaijin Pot is a site that offers jobs, apartments and classifieds in Japan. Run by Robin Sakai, it strives to bring the Japanese and expat community together.

REVIEW OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDY OPTIONS IN THE NY AREA

We would like to add a listing as well as a possible review of Japanese language study options in the New York area. One of these is Hills Learning, founded by Jon Hills, who works with JETs in New York to promote his learning center, which teaches four languages to children and adults. Jon also co-presents monthly Asian networking events. Jon is open to a profile. Learn more at www.hillslearning.com.

CONSULATE GENERAL SCHOOL CARAVAN

This is a decade-plus program run by New York’s Consulate General of Japan that sends consulate staff (American and Japanese) to New York high schools and junior high schools to introduce students to Japanese culture, and JET alums have even served as presenters! The purpose of this article will be to increase awareness of the program so more JETAA members can get involved.

KEIO ACADEMY OF NEW YORK

Based in Purchase, NY, Keio Academy is a school for bilingual and bicultural education established by its Tokyo namesake.  Besides the various activities the school offers, it also seeks to recruit JET alums for potential work opportunities.  We can put you in touch with their business officer, who is happy ro speak with more JETs about the subject.

ASIA SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

In Jan. 2010, NYC’s Asia Society held a concert called “Hogaku,” or Japanese folk instruments played with modern flair. We’ve never profiled Asia Society, so this would be a great time to find out more about how they select their Japanese attractions and exhibitions.

JAPAN INFORMATION CENTER OF NEW YORK

Profile. Take advantage of Japan Information Center to promote Japan! The Japan Information Center (JIC) is the cultural and public affairs section of the Consulate General of Japan in New York. The JIC distributes educational materials, posters and pamphlets on Japan, provides speakers on various aspects of Japan to the schools throughout this region, Provides information on the Japanese Government Scholarships & the JET Program, distributes the e-newsletter Japan Info, and loans videos/DVDs and cultural artifacts.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

I’ve noticed an increased interest by foreign bloggers and media regarding Japan’s (read: Tokyo, Kyoto) street food culture in the last month, and as I was at a large food fair in Kanazawa, I figured it was time to add my comments and photos to the table.

CLICK HERE to read the full post.

2.  Once we have enough here, someone in the JET/JET alum world can make the “Shit JETs Say” video using the below suggestions as source material.

Let’s see if this works.  Gambarimashou!

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

*****

Broccoli Lover Learns to BBQ

Part 2

by Clara Solomon (CIR, Nichinan-cho, Tottori-ken; 1999-2001), the Director of Counseling & Career Development at the Office of Career Services at New York University School of Law. She previously worked for the Japan External Trade Organization, specializing in trade relations between Japan and Latin America.  She lives in Queens with her husband and twin daughters.

Read Part 1 here.

Living in a small farming community has a lot of advantages, I soon learned. For example, I was at the town festival in August shortly after arriving, and casually mentioned to one of my farmer neighbors that I liked sweet corn. I woke up the next day to find about 15 ears of freshly-picked sweet corn on my doorstep. Even when I didn’t particularly like something, I would often find that a kind neighbor, perhaps worried about my over-consumption of broccoli, had left bushels of it at my front door. I guess they’d heard that Americans eat a lot, because they would leave bags stuffed with enough eggplant, cabbage, and carrots to feed a small army. (Why, I often wondered, had I not moved to rural Tuscany, where I could have gotten donations of sun-ripened tomatoes, basil, and fresh bufala mozzarella?).

So, to the cookbooks I turned. I can confidently say that Mark Bittman is a god – did you know that his book lists not one, not two, but nineteen different recipes for eggplant! Before moving to Nichinan-cho, I’d hated eggplant, but with the bounty at my doorstep, I learned to love it – curried, roasted, fried, parmesan-ed. I tried it all until I found my favorite recipes. Another benefit to living in a small town is that there isn’t much else to do, so I had ample time to experiment in my kitchen. Even the TV options were limited, as I really only got about 4 channels reliably, two of which were NHK. (And, yes, I’ll admit it now, there were some home-sick moments in mid-winter, when I rushed home after work to catch the NHK broadcast of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” just to watch something in English).

I cooked. And cooked and cooked and cooked. I became more ambitious, venturing into beef bourguignon (or as close to it as one could get in rural Japan) and triple-layer chocolate cake (also a challenge when your oven is the size of a microwave). Of course, even with an amazing recipe for eggplant Parmesan (with home-made tomato sauce, naturally), one small gaijin girl cannot possibly consume 15 eggplants, 3 cabbages, and a pound of carrots alone, especially not if she hopes to stay “small.” (Small being, in the land of 4’10” women, a relative term.) What to do?

I began inviting people over. I didn’t really know anyone, but there weren’t really that many people under the age of 40 to choose from, so I went ahead and invited all of them. Thus the beginning of the yaki-niku parties.

Well, it wasn’t actually the beginning of my infamous barbecues. Not quite yet. You see, although I was fluent in Japanese, I hadn’t yet gained the trust of my co-workers. Most of whom were skeptical about house parties with the broccoli-loving American. At first, only one person accepted my invitations, and I knew enough about life in small town Japan to know that it would be a very bad idea if “he” and I had dinner together alone in my house. The gossip would be never ending. So I kept trying to invite people over with different menu items. One night was beef stew, the next night was tacos, another night was cake and cookies. Not one broccoli dish on offer, and still very few takers.

In the end, my co-workers were swayed by the promise of beef. My veranda truly was a sight to behold. Big enough for a large grill, cooler for drinks, and at least ten chairs, it was a barbecue lover’s dream come true. My coworkers (all of whom knew where I lived, naturally) must have been waiting for me to figure this out, because they jumped at the invitation when I invited them over for yaki niku. Or maybe it was because I was finally inviting them for Japanese-style food, rather than all of that weird American stuff I kept offering. Either way, they showed up for that first party and had a blast, eating, drinking, and telling jokes until well into the night. It was such a joy to have people over, eating food I had prepared, and enjoying themselves, that I resolved then and there to have more yaki niku parties at my house. Like, every week if I could.

Eventually, I gained a reputation as a good hostess, and more people accepted my dinner invitations. I became proficient in Japanese drinking games, and they became fluent in singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” My Japanese neighbors and co-workers grew comfortable with me, even bringing dishes to share, sometimes experimenting with new recipes of their own. I got them to try non-Japanese dishes, while they introduced me to new Japanese ingredients and recipes. We became friends over food, and some of my colleagues became close enough that they would occasionally just show up unannounced at my door on a Friday night with all the fixin’s for a yaki-niku beef bonanza on my veranda (mini-keg included!).

Through our shared meals, we developed a close bond, discussing frustrations and upsets, hopes and dreams. This was the life I had envisioned for myself when I picked up that bunch of broccoli in Paseo on my first day in town. Little did I know that I would need to give up the healthy, responsible food and branch into the art of Japanese barbecue to get me there. While I was busy putting on the façade of a confident, independent, broccoli-eating adult, I learned that all it took was to open myself up to new foods, new ideas, and lots of friends to become who I really wanted to be.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

*****

Broccoli Lover Learns to BBQ

Part 1

by Clara Solomon (CIR, Nichinan-cho, Tottori-ken; 1999-2001), the Director of Counseling & Career Development at the Office of Career Services at New York University School of Law. She previously worked for the Japan External Trade Organization, specializing in trade relations between Japan and Latin America.  She lives in Queens with her husband and twin daughters.

Many of my experiences in Japan are tied up in the experience of food and cooking. Sure, I have my fill of the standard repertoire of “how many weird things will the American try?” My favorite of those is the night I was out at a new inn in my town, one that specialized in fresh, local food, with a “high end rustic” slant. So, I’m out with some co-workers enjoying a truly delicious meal, when they put a plate of glistening, dark red sashimi before me and say “to-rai, to-rai” (try, try). I wasn’t quite sure what this fish was, it was darker red than any tuna I’d ever seen, so dark it was almost purple, or black. There were thick veins of white fatty meat running through each piece – it almost looked like raw beef, though I could tell from the smell and texture that it was fish. “What is this?” I innocently asked, knowing full well that they wouldn’t tell me until I ate it. This game was a favorite of my colleagues, and they again said “to-rai.” So, I tried it. The minute I popped the full piece in my mouth, the entire table burst out with giggles and choruses of “Greeenpeesu! Greenpeesu!” Yes, Greenpeace. Turns out, I was eating endangered whale, the fishing and eating of which Japan has long been at odds with environmental groups like Greenpeace over (not to mention UN conventions, and the opinion of much of the rest of the world, minus Norway and the Inuit). How was it, you ask? Honestly, not that memorable. For one, it was extremely cold, indicating that it had probably been frozen and shipped to my town from somewhere further south (so much for eating local). For two, I think I would have rather had a piece of fatty tuna, whose rich, buttery flavor far outshone this piece of whale.

I could go on for pages regaling you with stories about the strange things I was given to eat, and the strange situations in which I found myself eating them (wild boar on live TV, anyone?). But, when I think back to the essence of my eating, drinking and cooking in Japan, those are only the warm up acts, the comedy routines that politicians put into the beginning of their stump speeches to play to the base and entice the crowds to stick around for the meat and potatoes (not that I had a lot of meat and potatoes in Japan…). My story of food in Japan is one of cooking and sharing, and gaining not only friends, but also self confidence in the process. You see, I lived in a small town of about 6,000 people nestled in the mountains of Western Honshu. While the town had a sprinkling of ramen shops, bars, and the above-mentioned high-end inn, my choices for eating out were, in actuality, pretty limited.

Fortunately, I had always enjoyed cooking, and had the foresight to ship myself a copy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, so I was prepared to cook, well, everything. Or, so I thought. But this was, after all, my first time actually living alone and really fending for myself. And boy was I living alone, my JET home institution had graciously arranged for me a 3-bedroom, two-story house, equipped with a fully planted garden and a view of a rice paddy out of my bedroom window. A native of the NYC metro-area, I had never seen a potato plant until someone came in from wandering around my garden at one of my infamous yaki-niku barbecue parties holding a fistful of potatoes that he had apparently pulled up right outside my back door – who knew? We washed and boiled them and had a lovely potato salad with our bbq.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. In the first day that I arrived in my little town in Japan, I hadn’t quite envisioned yaki-niku parties on my veranda. Really, I hadn’t even registered that I had a veranda big enough for a barbecue grill. My supervisor and the local junior high English teacher, Naomi-sensei, met me at the airport, dropped my bags off at my new house, and took me right to the grocery store to buy some food. I was still reeling from the hour-long drive home from the airport, where we went deeper and deeper into the mountains, and further and further from the things I generally took for granted, like street lights.

As we drove into the little valley, and I saw my town nestled along the banks of the Hino River for the first time, I’d love to be able to say that I was instantly smitten, charmed by the small-town feel, the sun glinting off the river, the old ladies chatting in the streets, and the children catching dragonflies in the breeze. In fact, however, I was struggling to hold down a mounting wave of panic. I mean, I was born in Brooklyn for goodness sake. Sure, I’d spent summers on my grandparents’ farm in Maine, and had gone on some camping trips in the back-woods of Minnesota, but those were vacations, not long-term living arrangements.

So I was blinking back tears as I stepped into the grocery store with Naomi-sensei. At least the town had a grocery store, I thought to myself. Naomi-sensei was standing by my side as I perused the aisles of the Paseo for the fist time that day. I’d never had someone watch me shop for groceries before, and I was instantly conscious that I should be buying things that made me look like the responsible adult I was trying to pass myself off to be. Right. Well, responsible people eat vegetables, so I picked up some broccoli. At a loss for where to go from there, I pushed my mini-cart aimlessly around the store, and Naomi-sensei gently guided me towards the rice display. Right, in Japan, we eat rice – good thing I didn’t go for the bread aisle, or I would have never heard the end of it when the junior high English class got to the “Which do you like, rice or bread?” section of the textbook.

I don’t remember much of the rest of that shopping trip, but when I went to try to make myself dinner that night, I discovered that I had bought only four things: milk, eggs, rice, and broccoli. Broccoli omelets were my sole sustenance until I worked up the nerve to go back to Paseo for some reinforcements. By that time, however, I had already earned a reputation as Ms. Broccoli. Even two years later, after I had hosted countless dinner parties, and even taught some cooking classes at the local community center, people would stop my in the street or the store, and say “Ah, Kurara-san, I heard you like broccoli!” (Better than “I heard you like Doritos” or “I heard you like Colt 45,” I suppose, but still a strange thing to be confronted with on a regular basis.)

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Below are story ideas grouped by JET participants and alumni (JET World) and those more on Japanese culture (Japan World). If you’re a JET or JETWit contributor from anywhere in the world, we welcome your interest or additional story ideas! Click “Read More” below to see our story ideas, and contact JQ’s editor Justin Tedaldi (magazine [at] jetaany [dot] org) to sign up.

***JET WORLD***

  BOOK REVIEW: SHIRO: WIT, WISDOM AND RECIPES FROM A SUSHI PIONEER

A stunning new book from Seattle-based (and JET alum founded) Chin Music Press! Shiro Kashiba is the godfather of the Seattle sushi scene, and he was the first to bring the modern sushi bar to the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s. SHIRO, published in time for Shiro’s 45th year in Seattle, is a memoir/cookbook filled with the chef’s musings on the bounty of the Pacific Northwest and how we can preserve it for generations to come. It’s filled with beautiful personal photos, recipes, illustrations and tons of interesting facts about sushi and the Northwest food scene. Perfect for the foodies, Japanophiles or history buffs! For more info, click here.

‘THE RICE COOKER CHRONICLES’ SERIES

We are running a new series on JETwit about solo cooking experiences while on JET (check out “Nattode,” the first piece in the series). Did you discover a new favorite comfort food in Japan, learn to cook a mouthwatering meal that you still serve today or accidentally buy something really weird only to discover (and reluctantly) eat it in your mansion? We want to hear about it!

‘WINTER IN JAPAN’ ANECDOTES WANTED!

This quarterly anecdote topic is winters in Japan from JET alumni around the world! If you have a strange, delightful (or both—we all do) short story to share about your fuyus past in Japan, we’d love to publish it. Participate in Yuki-matsuri? Go for a particularly invigorating onsen dip to beat the cold? Funny story to share about getting a kotatsu or ceramic heater? Let us know!

JET GOT ME A JOB’ SERIES

We’ve heard from several JETs recently who have found jobs in their home countries working for Japanese companies, organizations or related fields in education. If the JET experience was a big help in netting that job, we encourage you to write about it.

JET ALUM LAUNCHES CROSS-CULTURAL CONSULTING SERVICES SITE

Jennifer Jakubowski (Hokkaido ’95-’97) has also spent several years in Japan outside of the JET Program. Although she have been doing Japanese-American cross-cultural business consulting and training for several years now, she has just officially launched a website advertising these services. Bridges to Japan is based in the NYC metropolitan area, but services clients all over the country. Talk to Jennifer or write about the site for an article.

JET AUTHOR ARI KAPLAN

JET alum author Ari Kaplan (Hyogo-ken, 1993-94), who practiced law for nine years at a big firm before setting out on his own and, among other things, writing The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development which became a big hit in the world of lawyers and especially among law students facing an increasingly uncertain job market and career prospects. It turns out Ari, who speaks regularly at legal career events, has a new book coming out soon on the theme of “reinvention” intended not just for lawyers but for all professionals re-thinking their careers in a society where the ground increasingly seems to shift below our feet. For more information about Ari, visit his website at www.arikaplanadvisors.com.  You can also see media coverage of him on WGN-TV Chicago, in the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog and in the Houston Chronicle.

JET ALUMS DEVELOP JAPANESE FLASH APP

Mark Makdad, founder of software company Long Weekend Mobile, has developed with his partner Ross Sharrott the Japanese Flash vocabulary builder app for iPhone, as well as the Rikai Browser for iPad for reading Japanese. Interested in giving these products a spin and writing about them?

‘JET INSTANT NOODLE’ COMICS

Profile of JET alum artist Shun Endo and his “JET Instant Noodle Comics.” Read samples here.

JET ALUM/SAKE EXPERT JOHN GAUNTNER

John Gauntner is a JET alum and noted lecturer on sake who travels the world to speak all about this appealing beverage. He has published a score of books on the topic and spoke at New York’s Japan Society last year. Visit his website www.sake-world.com.

ISSHONI LONDON – JET ALUM BLOG

London JET alum Vanessa Villalobos writes about Japan-related events, news, review and interviews. This would be a good Q&A piece for any JETs wanting to learn more about how our alumni groups operate overseas. Learn more at:

www.isshonilondon.co.uk

www.facebook.com/pages/Isshoni-London/119415767689

www.twitter.com/IsshoniVanessa

TEAMTEACHERS.COM

An innovative telecommunications site for Team Teaching, founded by a JET. www.teamteachers.com

JETSET – CANADIAN JETS IN JAPAN

Melissa C. runs JETset, a site for Canadian JETs in Japan and a well-known resource center for JET participants. See more for a profile at http://www.jetsetjapan.com.

 ***JAPAN WORLD***

JAPAN FOUNDATION OF NEW YORK OFFERS JAPANESE COURSES!

JQ is looking to write up a profile with the course coordinator. The Japan Foundation, New York, in cooperation with The Nippon Club, will offer an original Japanese language and culture course, JF Japanese Language Course starting January 2012 as a part of The Nippon Club Culture Courses. These interactive and small classes are for beginner through intermediate learners to enjoy Japanese culture – manga/anime, pop music, origami (paper folding), calligraphy, chopsticks training, and more! This new course is based on the Japan Foundation’s JF STANDARD FOR JAPANESE LANGUAGE EDUCATION (JF Standard), which provides a framework of levels of Japanese language proficiency. Classes begin in January 2012. www.jfny.org/language/index.html

FUKUSHIMA “EIGAO SMILE” WRAPPING PAPER BENEFIT

Profile on EMI Japan Recording artist  Akemi Kakihara and her unique project! “えがお” is Japanese, means “SMILE”, pronounced as “EGAO” These lovely drawings were received as gifts by Fukushima Soma Minato Preschool 3-, 4- and 5-year-old students. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, the fear from the nuclear radiation problem is far beyond imagination. These drawings captured those precious moments and their smiles, and continue to raise awareness and support children in Fukushima and Japan.

Akemi Kakihara’s AK Official Site: www.emimusic.jp/ak/    JP GIRLS NYC: www.facebook.com/JPGirlsNYC

DVD REVIEW: DOCUMENTARY OF J-POP GIRL GROUP AKB48

AKB48 was conceived in 2005. Beginning as a small all-girl singing group based in the Akihabara district of Tokyo – the city’s bustling electronics and anime/pop culture shopping Mecca – AKB48 has grown to 60 members and topped Japan’s Oricon music charts with the two best-selling pop singles in 2010 as well as another two singles ranking in the Top 10. With a complicated balance of competition and friendship among its members, the group’s bond is extremely strong. DOCUMENTARY of AKB48 to be continued traces AKB48’s history with scenes from concerts and rehearsals, member general elections, and fan activities both in Japan and abroad. The film also includes personal interviews with select members that reveal each of the girls’ personal struggles, joys, path to growth, and dreams. http://store.newpeopleworld.com

SACHIYO ITO DANCE COMPANY ARTICLE: 30^th ANNIVERSARY PROFILE

Sachiyo Ito and Company is the only dance group in New York City to perform Japanese classical dance, Okinawan dance, and contemporary works based on these traditions. They had their 30th Anniversary Concert near New York’s Lincoln Center in October, taking the audience from medieval Japan to present day through dance and live music. Takers are invited to write about Ito-sensei herself or review an upcoming concert. www.dancejapan.com.

KYUSHU BATTENKAI OF NEW YORK

Since last summer, JETAANY has joined forces with the Kyushu Battenkai (an association of Japanese from Kyushu living in New York), and more than 60 participants attended the group’s Fall Gathering last September. As New York is home to many other similar prefecture associations, this team up is a model for future JETAA Chapter-Prefectural Association events. The Battenkai’s president would be happy to get in touch with any JET writer interested in a Q&A or a feature article about the organization and its ties with JETAA.

MOVIE/BOOK/RESTAURANT REVIEWS

A good upcoming film is Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty (co-written by Hayao Miyazaki), coming to theaters Feb. 17. Also, we are accepting reviews on any Japanese restaurant that you’d like to spread the word about. (Even better if they’re run by JETs.) JET alum Jamie Graves works at Kajitsu, an East Village restaurant in New York specializing in shojin cuisine, an ancient Japanese culinary practice developed in Zen Buddhist monasteries.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR JAPAN FIX?

In an effort to revive the “Japan Fix” posts, we’d like to share a recent discoveries to help readers find a little piece of Japan close to home.  How do you get your Japan fix wherever you live?

ROBIN SAKAI OF GAIJIN POT

Gaijin Pot is a site that offers jobs, apartments and classifieds in Japan. Run by Robin Sakai, it strives to bring the Japanese and expat community together.

REVIEW OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDY OPTIONS IN THE NY AREA

We would like to add a listing as well as a possible review of Japanese language study options in the New York area. One of these is Hills Learning, founded by Jon Hills, who works with JETs in New York to promote his learning center, which teaches four languages to children and adults. Jon also co-presents monthly Asian networking events. Jon is open to a profile. Learn more at www.hillslearning.com.

CONSULATE GENERAL SCHOOL CARAVAN

This is a decade-plus program run by New York’s Consulate General of Japan that sends consulate staff (American and Japanese) to New York high schools and junior high schools to introduce students to Japanese culture, and JET alums have even served as presenters! The purpose of this article will be to increase awareness of the program so more JETAA members can get involved.

KEIO ACADEMY OF NEW YORK

Based in Purchase, NY, Keio Academy is a school for bilingual and bicultural education established by its Tokyo namesake.  Besides the various activities the school offers, it also seeks to recruit JET alums for potential work opportunities.  We can put you in touch with their business officer, who is happy ro speak with more JETs about the subject.

ASIA SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

In Jan. 2010, NYC’s Asia Society held a concert called “Hogaku,” or Japanese folk instruments played with modern flair. We’ve never profiled Asia Society, so this would be a great time to find out more about how they select their Japanese attractions and exhibitions.

JAPAN INFORMATION CENTER OF NEW YORK

Profile. Take advantage of Japan Information Center to promote Japan! The Japan Information Center (JIC) is the cultural and public affairs section of the Consulate General of Japan in New York. The JIC distributes educational materials, posters and pamphlets on Japan, provides speakers on various aspects of Japan to the schools throughout this region, Provides information on the Japanese Government Scholarships & the JET Program, distributes the e-newsletter Japan Info, and loans videos/DVDs and cultural artifacts.

Each year in the Spring, CLAIR publishes JET Streams, an annual newsletter for JET alumni. We will be compiling this newsletter again during the next few months. I am e-mailing today to request article submissions from JET alumni. Article topics are usually about such themes as: your life/experiences after JET, memories/reflections of your time as a JET, connections with the Japanese community in your home country, etc. We ask that you please avoid articles advertising your current company or books you have written, etc. as we cannot publish these.

If any JET alumni are interested in writing an article, please notify me by e-mail by January 10 and I will give you more details regarding article length and content.

New submissions always welcome. Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

******

Kaijō!

by Justin Maki (ALT Osaka-fu, 2002-06), a writer and editor currently working at the Sports desk of Kyodo News America in New York City. He also writes about health and exercise science for J-Range Training (www.jrangetraining.com), a Denver-based fitness company whose method of low-impact weight training is under review for a US Patent. Justin’s short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in a handful of small journals. Contact him at makij408@gmail.com. 

“When you go to the kitchen to prepare dinner, be born in the kitchen. When you finish there, die. Then be born at the dining table as you eat your dinner and, when you finish eating, die there. Be born in the garden, and sweep with your broom. When you get into bed at night, die there. And when daylight comes, and you awaken in your bed, be born anew.”

These are the words of Soko Morinaga Roshi, the famous abbot of Daishuin Temple in Kyoto. Ten years after Morinaga-Roshi passed away, in the rainy season of my third year in Japan, I had the opportunity to move into Daishuin with his successor. Nobody was there except me and the monk, a wiry forty-year-old with thick glasses and a firm, toothy grin. I cooked with him, cleaned with him, meditated with him; at every meal I asked him questions and learned what I could, although he often left me puzzled. I was a total newcomer to Zen, more of a guest than a student, and far from fluent in Japanese.

And so my life began, every morning, in darkness. I heard soft footsteps in the hallway, followed by the dreaded “kaijō!” More dead than alive, I scrambled for my belt and ran to splash water on my face and fetch the bucket and rag. I was born in the hondō while lighting incense, and after we chanted sutras, I died. I wiped the temple’s long wooden corridors as the sun came up. Finally, with a sense of relief, I would go to the kitchen to make breakfast for myself and the monk, and be born anew.

At the time, I was commuting to work at a public high school in Osaka, and living in the temple thanks to a substitute English teacher who had been friends with the late Morinaga-Roshi. In order to leave for work on time, I couldn’t afford to spend more than twenty minutes on breakfast — but compared to the strenuous pace of our chores, these twenty minutes were a long and leisurely extravagance. I would set the table with two bowls of rice gruel and two sets of chopsticks, and on a saucer-sized plate for each of us, I would arrange a few grams of seaweed, a pinch of salty miso paste, and a plum so intensely sour that even the monk used to grimace while eating it.

I remember this particular combination of tastes more vividly than almost anything else from four years in Japan. These breakfasts gave me a powerful sensory cue, a link to what Zen practice made me feel: the much-needed shock to my system, the open passageway for intuition rather than the word-bound, cluttered “thoughts” that I had grown so dependent upon. Two months after leaving Kyoto, when the clutter began to overtake me again, I decided to re-create the temple diet as much as possible.

In the interim, I had gone back to Colorado for summer vacation and returned to southern Osaka prefecture to a new job and a new home. The apartment, selected by the rural board of education that now employed me, seemed fortuitously suited to my project. It had a hardwood-floor kitchen — perfect for the peaceful grounding ritual of wiping it down with a rag before dawn — and two completely empty tatami rooms, either of which would be great as a mini-zendō. I bought a huge jar of sour umeboshi, packets of miso paste, and seaweed as part of a simple diet.

But perhaps from the very first day, the project was more sentimental than a sign of any true humility or dedication. My new job involved teaching English in kindergarten and elementary schools, a wonderful experience, but one that required a lot more running, singing, and game-playing than working in a high school, and a full day’s exertion on a third-grader’s lunch of tonjiru soup and white rice. I often came home exhausted and starving. In the last hour that my local supermarket was open, I bought discounted sushi packs and box lunches. I would make quick sandwiches from ham or cheap tempura; I bought ready-made, single-serving containers of potato salad or tofu dishes; and for dessert I had red-bean-filled tea sweets without tea. As long as it didn’t require cooking, I was satisfied. The healthy foods I bought optimistically on the weekend, the udon noodles and broccoli and carrots, rotted in opened packages during the week and eventually had to be thrown away.

In the temple, we were not allowed to waste a single grain of rice. But this, obviously, was not temple life: not only did I never get up in time to wipe the hardwood floor, but I hardly got up in time to eat breakfast at all. Most nights I would set my rice cooker to begin cooking at 5:20 a.m., so that it would be done by 5:55 when I was supposed to get up. But with nobody yelling “kaijo!” in the morning, it could be 6:19, or 6:44, or even 7:02 by the time I got up and ate a quick bowl of rice and/or a slice of white bread before rushing out the door, biking furiously through the shotengai shops, parking illegally at a cram school behind the train station and sprinting through the ticket gate and up the stairs. Leftover rice was often the basis for dinner. Many times I would boil a bag of cheap instant curry to dump over the cold rice, and toss in a large package of tofu. My habit of eating sweets made sour plums unbearable. They too had to be thrown away.

One problem, I thought, was that I simply didn’t have the skills to cook healthy foods that were also satisfying. I enrolled in a bilingual weekly class called “Let’s Enjoy Japanese Home Cooking.” At every session I got hands-on practice making dishes like pork dumplings, grilled salmon with vegetables, various stir-fry meals and dashi-based soups. It was a fun and helpful class, but I still had trouble finding time to cook. My kitchen was not nearly as well-equipped as the class kitchen, and what implements I had were more often than not piled dirty in the sink.

As the winter progressed, my so-called meditation room fell into disuse as well. I had a profound appreciation for the benefits of Zen practice, but I wanted my own sort of practice, not necessarily locked into the culture of Buddhism. Therefore, my mini-zendō was actually a zendō-inspired reading room: by honing my concentration, I would learn to immerse myself completely in works of literature, to focus beyond the words until I could see the characters and situations take shape before my eyes. While sitting on the tatami floor, however, I had the same problem as I’d had while meditating in the zendō. My concentration wandered. My posture slumped. But instead of straightening up and persevering like I would have in the presence of a monk, in my private apartment I would slump further, lie on my back, or prop myself up on an elbow — none of which allowed me to concentrate for very long, and none of which were comfortable while shivering on a December evening. The hardwood floor I’d promised myself to wipe daily, as if wiping the stale, tangled thoughts from my mind, remained covered in teaching materials, dust, books, and dirty laundry.

Looking back, it is not hard to understand why this happened. One of my first questions for the monk had been to describe his idea of happiness. “When I have continued something tedious and difficult for a long time without giving up,” he’d answered. “That’s happiness.” Picking up a saucer-sized plate, he’d said that the top of the plate was tedium, the underside happiness. There was no dividing the two. But perhaps the attempt, this futile struggle to have it my own way, was a necessary stage of learning. Even Morinaga-Roshi describes the resistance in his young heart, the impatience with which he heard but failed to understand the words of his teacher. When Zuigan Roshi took him in at Daishuin, the very first lesson was this: “From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.” Morinaga admits that it took considerable time and effort before he could put the meaning of this statement into practice. Similarly, I was not finding it easy to adopt the monk’s wisdom into my accustomed routine. The temple meals, apparently so simple and powerful, depended upon a much larger context that I couldn’t duplicate on my own.

And when I think of the best meals I had in the year after leaving the temple, I remember all the people who invited me into their homes and tried their best to speak English while generously providing homemade cooking and good saké. I remember my girlfriend making Sunday morning pancakes, and one day — a cool, fragrant day of sakura trees blooming in the rain — we’d made a big leafy salad with kiwi fruit and avocado, with cashews and raisins and orange chunks, with celery, spinach, cherry tomatoes — with the abundance and joy of springtime itself.

But most nights after work I was alone, and nothing went into my dinners but a hasty cash transaction. A thousand yen in the closing grocery store, choices made while trembling with hunger, happy at the weight of the basket against my arm. Cinnamon-raisin bread, some apples, seaweed with sprouts and tofu, a box lunch, a somen noodle tray. This is the way it happens: I rush out of the store and wait impatiently for the elevator to my fifth-floor apartment. There is no need to open my small fridge, because nothing of what I’ve bought will be left over. I go straight to eating the box lunch. It is a multi-compartment tray with take-no-ko rice, grilled salmon, a fried meatball, mashed potatoes, lettuce, seaweed, and a few other things. I do not look at the food very carefully before grabbing it with disposable wooden chopsticks and rushing it to my mouth. When I am finished with the tray, all I know is that I want more. I eat two apples quickly and dig into a packet of fried tofu. To make it more like dessert, I squeeze a layer of honey over the top of the firm, black-spotted surface. It cuts yet holds together as neatly as moist cake, and is just as delicious. Finally I take a long drink from a lukewarm bottle of tea that has been sitting in the apartment for several days.

I take a deep breath, the first one in quite a while. I am full, but far from born anew. A heap of empty plastic trays, dishes with neither tedium on one side nor happiness on the other, clutter the sink. “From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash” — and yet here I was in the rainy season of my fourth year in Japan, a year after my stay in Daishuin, reminding myself to get more trash bags.

Terry writes:  ”It’s open to ANYONE that believes that they can create a song (lyrical or instrumental) that exudes the spirit of the Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival (or any cherry blossom festival).  This is an awesome opportunity and I would love for a JET alum to win this!! Let’s hope we get some entries on the JET or JET community side!”

GRAND PRIZE: $3,000 + A spread in the premiere Nashville Arts Magazine (February 2012) + Opportunity to have the song performed at the annual Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival (March 24, 2012)

Deadline: January 15, 2012

For questions or inquiries, please contact  615-383-0278 or songs@nashvillearts.com.

New submissions always welcome.  Just e-mail it to Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

******

“My Rice Ball World”

by Meredith Hodges-Boos (ALT, Ehime-ken, 2003-2005).  Please visit http://meredithhodgesboos.blog.com/ for more essays on her time in Japan and current literary projects.

I dragged my tired body into the entryway and found just enough energy to pry off my shoes.  The door rattled on the track as I slumped into the main room of the house my husband and I shared as Assistant Language Teachers.  “I’m home,”  I muttered to Greg and I blinked into the bright light of the room.  The glare and blare of the used Playstation we’d bought at Hard Off lit up the tatami in a rainbow of colors.

“Hey, welcome back.”  He nodded over his shoulder then proceeded to pound the opposing character on the screen.

He’d been home for three hours…the same amount of time it took me to get back from my farthest high school. I tried very hard to not hold it against him.  It wasn’t his fault I had eight schools or that I hadn’t eaten anything other than a piece of toast at four that morning.  The busy schedule of the day hadn’t given me time to eat anything else.  I didn’t want to break taboo of eating on the bus yet again.

But that was okay.  Everything was fine now because I had a sweet, delectable, frosted cherry Pop-Tart waiting with my name on it.  I’d spent the long bus ride home imagining the taste of the overly sweet jam on my tongue, the gentle crack of the sugared sprinkles against my teeth, and the homey smell of the soft cakey back.  My stomach growling hard enough to cramp, I headed for the kitchen.

Pop-Tarts were one of the few comforts I had from home.  Mom didn’t like paying $12 to ship a box of $1.50 snacks to me.  Although I did get a lot of care packages, the Pop-Tarts were a rare treat.  People back in Tennessee didn’t seem to understand that I desperately needed other foods that didn’t contain something raw, fishy or some sort of innards.  Pop-Tarts were safe, they were sweet and they were something I’d eaten since I was in grade school.

Yawning and still blinking, I grabbed the blue and pink box and reached inside, the stress of the day sloughing off my shoulders as my fingers sought out the shiny wrapper.  The box was strangely light.  My fingers hit the bottom.

Inside I found nothing.

It was empty.

There were no Pop-Tarts in the box.

I glanced into the other room.  Next to my husband’s rear was a shiny wrapper with the words “Pop-Tart, do not microwave in package” written on the front.  I twitched.  Other than the crumbs on the tatami, the pouch was empty.

In the three months we’d been married, we’d avoided the fabled first real husband versus wife fight.  Three months was a good amount of time, my mind whispered, no shame there.  Yeah, three months was a very satisfactory span, I nodded my head.

Then I yelled, “You ate my Pop-Tarts!”

Greg cringed and turned to me with that guilty grin of his, “Oh, was that the last one?  Sorry about that.”  He turned back to the game.

I threw the empty box at his head.

Again, this may have seemed extreme, but remember, there are no Pop-Tarts in Japan.  And it would take over two weeks to get more.  And it had taken me three hours to get home.  And I was hungry.  And my husband had eaten the very last one!  And he’d left the empty box as evidence!

So I did what any newly wed woman would do after a one sided fight, I left.  I went out the door, slipped on my worn out tennis shoes and grabbed my bike.  Greg would follow me eventually.  But for now I was still hungry and I wanted time to be alone.  The wind cut bitterly across my cheeks as I pedaled out onto the main street.  Passing the small shops that lined our road, I swerved around the kids walking home and the old women on their mopeds.  I kept my head down so I wouldn’t have to explain why I was crying.  It didn’t matter much though; blonde hair flying at you on a bike in rural Japan was tantamount to a buffalo driving a clown car.  So I waved half-heartedly to the people who shouted hello and nodded to those who bowed their good evenings.

Honestly, I didn’t know where I was going.  A restaurant was out.  The owners all knew me since I couldn’t cook.  And if they saw me this upset then who knows who else would know by the next day at work.  The last thing I needed was for my superiors chastising me for making the town worry over something as silly as a Pop-Tart.  The grocery store was just as bad since the cashiers knew me too.  So I compromised and pedaled towards the setting sun and the safety of the blue and white sign with the milk bottle and English name:  Lawson.

Lawson is a chain of convenience stores found all over Japan.  To someone as gastronomically challenged as myself, the store was like a second home.  They stocked most of our dinners in a week, from fried rice boxes, to dried squid legs and beer snacks, to specialty ice creams.  Greg and I had agreed that even if I had cooked more, it would have been next to impossible in Japan.  Both of us spoke some Japanese, but when it came to reading labels in the grocery, we were hopeless.  Not that I cooked that much to begin with.  Cooking had become something of a phobia for me.  In junior high, I’d been shuffled into the Home Economics class with the other girls.  I’d burnt every dish without fail.  My teacher took pity on me and my less than savory dishes and gave me a chance for extra credit.

At six thirty in the morning, I stumbled into the Home Economics room with its line of angry ovens and glaring pots and pans.  My task was to make sugar cookies, the most simple of all recipes.  It was such a foolproof assignment my teacher let me do it completely by myself.  I found out later she’d been asleep in the staff room.  I did my best.  I mixed and followed the order of ingredients to the letter.  With the oven pre-heated and the cookie sheet greased, I slid my cookies in with the conviction that this time would be different.  This time I’d make something edible at least.  Then the bell rang and I headed to class and left the cookies to bake.

Five hours later as we filed out of the school, the fire alarm echoing in the halls behind us, I remembered said cookies.  Smoke billowed out the window of the Home Economics room like an angry finger, pointing me out.  Sniffling and sobbing, I walked up to the vice principal and said, “I’m so sorry.  Those were my sugar cookies.”

I was transferred to Wood Shop the next day.  A week later I cut off the tip of my ring finger.  The study hall teacher was very worried when I showed up in her class after that.  Luckily, I survived that class without so much as a paper cut.  Anyway, after that cooking was very low on my list of priorities.

The door to Lawson swung open into a warm, overly bright line of foods and drinks.  On the far side of the store some of my students were looking at the naughty comics.  They looked up, blushed and quickly scattered to the fashion, automotive and, ironically, the cooking magazines.  I simply grumbled and headed to the safest food in the store, the onigiri rice balls.

I grabbed the first three I came to, their wrappers crackling in my hand.  Without another thought, I set them down on the check out counter and waited, not daring to look up.  Setting my students straight was one thing, but facing the concern of our usual cashier was another.  “Meru, is this all?”  She asked, her dark hair swinging into view of my lowered gaze.  I muttered something that must have sounded like a polite yes and nodded.  My own blonde hair was a tangled mess from the day and the wind as it slid over my red eyes.  “Okay, 315 yen please.”  She said.  I forked over the money, thankful that I had enough after the bus fare that day.  The coins clattered as I missed dropping them into the cashier’s hand.  They fell to the plastic sheet covering Lawson’s new ad for their late fall products.  Ah, I thought, they’ll have oden again soon.  I should tell Greg…

Biting my lip, I took my receipt and darted for the door.  I didn’t want anyone to see me crying.  Outside the last light of sunset faded away behind the mountains and the ships in the bay lulled in the waves.  The wind had turned cold now that the sun was gone.  I sighed and leaned up against the cigarette machine, clasping the rice balls in my hand.  After three deep breaths I straddled my bike.  Tossing the onigiri into the rusty basket, I tried very hard not to shiver.

“Meru!”  The attendant had followed me.  I ran my fists over my eyes and looked up.  The cashier handed me a small can of hot cocoa.  She knew I didn’t drink coffee and I didn’t even know her name.  “Here.  It’s warm.”  Thank God for the Japanese and their wonderful warm cocoa in a can, who needs hand warmers when you got hot chocolate?  Without another word, she smiled and went back inside.

Dumbfounded and touched, I waved to her as I peddled out of the parking lot.  She bowed.  The cocoa was a warm weight in my pocket.  Still I had no idea where to go.  Across the street was a small shrine.  It seemed as good a place as anywhere so I parked the bike again and went under the tall red gate.  Two stone foxes watched as I shuffled through the fallen leaves.  I headed for the wooden steps of the main building, my supper stuffed in my pockets.  The cold seeped in through my coat as I sat down, chilling my backside and shoulders as I leaned against the stairs.

There’s a scene in one of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated movies, Spirited Away, where the main character eats rice balls after losing her family and getting lost in a strange world.  Huge, round tears drip down her cheeks as she stuffs the onigiri into her mouth between sobs.  I spent the next few minutes eating the first rice ball reenacting that particular scene.

By the second one, I’d calmed down.  The silence of the shine took the edge off of my anger and hurt.  It occurred to me then that this was one of the first meals I’d eaten alone in Japan.  All the others had been with co-workers, or friends, or with Greg.  Even my traveling meals had been secretly scarfed down with people all around me on trains or buses.  Alone now, I took a moment to look at my meager dinner.

Okay, so it wasn’t a Pop-Tart.  But if I’d been in America…would I have been this angry over not getting an onigiri?  Pop-Tarts were all sweet, inside and out.  It reminded me of how it had been in college and home. 

Things had been so easy then.  I had my family around me, including Greg of course, and everything had made sense.  I knew what to expect.  There was a plan, a rhythm so familiar I didn’t even notice it anymore.  It hadn’t taken me days to figure out what a sign on the road meant.  I understood every part of a conversation without having to guess about certain words.  It was the sweet cake-like bread backing, the sugary coating and the sublime delight that was the jam in the center.

Japan was not sugary…not a piece of cake at all.  I glanced down at my onigiri.  There was a gap in the nori seaweed covering where I’d bitten into it.  The taste of it was bitter and crunchy and soggy all at the same time.  It was something I’d never tasted in America.  But it wasn’t bad, just different.  Inside was full of sticky rice.  Each grain was the same size, the same color and had the same taste.  The unity and subtlety of it was suddenly astounding; like the people around me in Japan.  Everyone worked together.  No one wanted to stand out because the group was more important.

I sniffed again and took another bite.  In the middle of the rice ball was a burst of taste, tuna and mayonnaise.  It wasn’t sweet, but there was something just as good.  It was like the tiny victories of my time in Japan.  It was when a student finally understood, the light in their eyes that lit up.  It was like finding the street we’d been looking for without getting too lost.  It was pushing the stop button on the bus at the right time and having the driver grin.  It was making a home here, far away from everything I knew and thriving.  It wasn’t sweet, it was filling.

“Hey.”  Greg ducked under the gate, holding my coat under his arm.

“Hey.”  I looked up, blinking and smiling a bit.

He sat down beside me and draped my coat over my shoulders.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You mad?”

I shook my head.  “Nah, not anymore.”  I handed him the last onigiri and opened the warm cocoa.  “Here.”  I drank half of it and gave him the can.

“Thanks.”  He ate them in silence beside me his eyes glued to the stone foxes surrounded the waving rice ropes and folded white papers whispering in the wind.  “You ready to get out of here and go home?  This place is spooky.”

I stood up and offered him a hand up.  He took it, relieved.  “Nah, this place is like a rice ball.”

Greg raised an eyebrow but said nothing.  We walked to my bike.  I was kicking back the stand when he finally said, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”  I grinned up at him.  We’d survived our first big fight and I’d handled my first solo meal as well as could be expected.  Across the street I saw the cashier at Lawson peeking out the window.  I held Greg’s hand and made him wave as I did.  She smiled and went back to work.  “I’m fine.  But don’t you dare eat my Pop-Tarts again.”

We walked home to our rice ball world hand in hand.

“Are you a former/current JET with a story to tell a greater audience? Here’s your opportunity! Sushi & Sake is a monthly publication which circulates throughout Southern California. Space in the magazine is reserved each month for an article written by a JET (past or present) about his/her experiences in Japan.

The article should be 450-500 words on any topic you choose. Ideally, it’s best to focus on a particular topic as opposed to doing one big summary of your life in Japan. If you’re interested, email Audrey at pirikara [at] gmail.com  Thanks!”

As the year winds down, JETAA New York’s JQ magazine continues to provide weekly content with an ever-expanding array of articles, interviews and features (for our recent stories, click here). Following our quarterly meeting in Manhattan this week, we’re now looking for new writers from all JETAA chapters worldwide to write and share more material that we can post online to the widest JET readership on the web through our hosts at the global JET alumni resource site JETwit.com.

Below are story ideas grouped by JET participants and alumni (JET World) and those more on Japanese culture (Japan World). If you’re a JET or JETWit contributor from anywhere in the world, we welcome your interest or extra story ideas! Contact JQ’s editor Justin Tedaldi (magazine [at] jetaany [dot] org) to sign up.

***JET WORLD***

JETAANY CAREER FORUM/WELCOME BACK RECEPTION (11/12)

We would like coverage of upcoming events in New York for any writers planning to attend.

JETs ‘RETURN TO TOHOKU’ SERIES

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan Tourism Agency jointly organized an Invitation Program for JET Alums who worked as a JET in Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima or Sendai-shi for 2 or more years to return to Japan as an ambassador. The goal of the program is to help promote the affected areas and do PR work on their behalf. From around the world, 14 JET alums were selected to return to Japan. Of those, eight were US JET alums. Visit the provided link to see their stories if you would be interested in doing a Q&A with one of them. Also, if you or other JETs are planning to return to help out in the wake of the devastation, we’d love to run an article so you can share your thoughts with other JETs around the world. www.jetaausa.com/tohoku-recovery/jet-alums-return-to-tohoku

‘ALONE IN THE KITCHEN WITH A RICE COOKER’ SERIES

We are running a new series on JETwit about solo cooking experiences while on JET (check out “Nattode,” the first piece in the series). Did you discover a new favorite comfort food in Japan, learn to cook a mouthwatering meal that you still serve today or accidentally buy something really weird only to discover (and reluctantly) eat it in your mansion? We want to hear about it!

HOLIDAYS IN JAPAN ANECDOTES WANTED!

This year, we’re bringing back seasonal holiday (from November through New Year’s) anecdotes from JET alumni around the world! If you have a strange, delightful (or both—we all do) short story to share about your holiday seasons past in Japan, we’d love to publish it.

‘JET GOT ME A JOB’ SERIES

We’ve heard from several JETs recently who have found jobs in their home countries working for Japanese companies, organizations or related fields in education. If the JET experience was a big help in netting that job, we encourage you to write about it.

JET ALUM LAUNCHES CROSS-CULTURAL CONSULTING SERVICES SITE

Jennifer Jakubowski (Hokkaido ’95-’97) has also spent several years in Japan outside of the JET Program. Although she have been doing Japanese-American cross-cultural business consulting and training for several years now, she has just officially launched a website advertising these services. Bridges to Japan is based in the NYC metropolitan area, but services clients all over the country. Talk to Jennifer or write about the site for an article.

JET AUTHOR ARI KAPLAN

JET alum author Ari Kaplan (Hyogo-ken, 1993-94), who practiced law for nine years at a big firm before setting out on his own and, among other things, writing The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development which became a big hit in the world of lawyers and especially among law students facing an increasingly uncertain job market and career prospects. It turns out Ari, who speaks regularly at legal career events, has a new book coming out soon on the theme of “reinvention” intended not just for lawyers but for all professionals re-thinking their careers in a society where the ground increasingly seems to shift below our feet. For more information about Ari, visit his website at www.arikaplanadvisors.com.  You can also see media coverage of him on WGN-TV Chicago, in the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog and in the Houston Chronicle.

JET ALUMS DEVELOP JAPANESE FLASH APP

Mark Makdad, founder of software company Long Weekend Mobile, has developed with his partner Ross Sharrott the Japanese Flash vocabulary builder app for iPhone, as well as the Rikai Browser for iPad for reading Japanese. Interested in giving these products a spin and writing about them?

‘JET INSTANT NOODLE’ COMICS

Profile of JET alum artist Shun Endo and his “JET Instant Noodle Comics.” Read samples at http://jetwit.com/wordpress/2010/10/25/instant-noodle-comics-i-wish-facebook-had-the-boss-filter.

JET ALUM/SAKE EXPERT JOHN GAUNTNER

John Gauntner is a JET alum and noted lecturer on sake who travels the world to speak all about this appealing beverage. He has published a score of books on the topic and spoke at Japan Society last May. Visit his website www.sake-world.com.

ISSHONI LONDON – JET ALUM BLOG

London JET alum Vanessa Villalobos writes about Japan-related events, news, review and interviews. This would be a good Q&A piece for any JETs wanting to learn more about how our alumni groups operate overseas. Learn more at:

www.isshonilondon.co.uk

www.facebook.com/pages/Isshoni-London/119415767689

www.twitter.com/IsshoniVanessa

TEAMTEACHERS.COM

An innovative telecommunications site for Team Teaching, founded by a JET. www.teamteachers.com

JETSET – CANADIAN JETS IN JAPAN

Melissa C. runs JETset, a site for Canadian JETs in Japan and a well-known resource center for JET participants. See more for a profile at http://www.jetsetjapan.com.

***JAPAN WORLD***

 10/21-11/11 – SION SONO FILM SERIES AT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN

Chainsaws, serial killers, and mutant hair extensions merge harmoniously with true love, coming of age, and the delicate family dynamics in the bracingly original cinema of Sion Sono. Known for his fiercely independent roots, Sono elegantly crafts together stories of cults, horror, and violence with themes like individual alienation, the desperate desire for love, and the often-brutal reality of life in contemporary society. For a list of upcoming films, visit http://madmuseum.org/series/sion-sono

11/4-11/6 – JAPAN ART MATSURI

One of America’s largest Japanese art & music festivals, the 9th annual Amnet Japan Art Mtsuri (JAM) will be held from Friday, November 4th through Sunday, November 6th at the Theater for the New City in Manhattan’s East Village. Guests include popular taiko troupe COBU, classical sensation Taka Kigawa, and Don’t Give Up, a 2011 Grammy Award-nominated gospel choir produced by Danny Eason, a highly-recognized gospel music director, and Yoko Uchiki, the producer for Gospel Now 2001. http://japanesenetwork.org/en/amnet-jam

11/10-27 – JUN KIM’S NEW PLAY KUTSUKAKE TOKIJIRO PREMIERE

The Flea Theater of New York presents Kurotama Kikaku's production of KUTSUKAKE TOKIJIRO conceived, adapted, and directed by Jun Kim based on the popular 1928 Japanese play by Shin Hasegawa. Performances begin November 10 at The Flea Theater in
Tribeca. KUTSUKAKE TOKIJIRO is a traditional Japanese gangster story that explores the themes of love, obligation and self-sacrifice. Kurotama Kikaku’s version of Kutsukake Tokijiro keeps the essence of traditional Taishu Engeki and fuses it with 21st Century’s J-pop culture. www.kurotamakikaku.com

SACHIYO ITO DANCE COMPANY ARTICLE: 30^th ANNIVERSARY PROFILE

Sachiyo Ito and Company is the only dance group in New York City to perform Japanese classical dance, Okinawan dance, and contemporary works based on these traditions. They recently hosted their 30th Anniversary Concert near New York’s Lincoln Center on October 23, expressing the beauty of Japanese culture, taking the audience from medieval Japan to present day through dance and live music. Takers are invited to write about Sachiyo Ito or review an upcoming concert. www.dancejapan.com

KYUSHU BATTENKAI OF NEW YORK

Since last summer, JETAA NY has joined forces with the Kyushu Battenkai (an association of Japanese from Kyushu living in New York), and more than 60 participants attended the group’s Fall Gathering earlier this month. As New York is home to many other similar prefecture associations, this team up is a model for future JETAA Chapter-Prefectural Association events. The Battenkai’s president would be happy to get in touch with any JET writer interested in a Q&A or a feature article about the organization and its ties with JETAA.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR JAPAN FIX?

In an effort to revive the “Japan Fix” posts, we’d like to share a recent discoveries to help readers find a little piece of Japan close to home.  How do you get your Japan fix wherever you live?

ROBIN SAKAI OF GAIJIN POT

Gaijin Pot is a site that offers jobs, apartments and classifieds in Japan. Run by Robin Sakai, it strives to bring the Japanese and expat community together.

REVIEW OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDY OPTIONS IN THE NY AREA

JETWit would like to add a listing as well as a possible review of Japanese language study options in the New York area. One of these is Hills Learning, founded by Jon Hills, who works with JETs in New York to promote his learning center, which teaches four languages to children and adults. Jon also co-presents monthly Asian networking events. Jon is open to a profile. Learn more at www.hillslearning.com.

MOVIE/BOOK/RESTAURANT REVIEWS

JETWit is accepting reviews on any Japanese restaurant that you’d like to spread the word about. (Even better if they’re run by JETs.) JET alum Jamie Graves works for Kajitsu, an East Village restaurant in New York specializing in shojin cuisine, an ancient Japanese culinary practice developed in Zen Buddhist monasteries.

CONSULATE GENERAL SCHOOL CARAVAN

This is a decade-plus program run by New York’s Consulate General of Japan that sends consulate staff (American and Japanese) to New York high schools and junior high schools to introduce students to Japanese culture, and JET alums have even served as presenters! The purpose of this article will be to increase awareness of the program so more JETAA members can get involved.

KEIO ACADEMY OF NEW YORK

Based in Purchase, NY, Keio Academy is a school for bilingual and bicultural education established by its Tokyo namesake.  Besides the various activities the school offers, it also seeks to recruit JET alums for potential work opportunities.  We can put you in touch with their business officer, who is happy ro speak with more JETs about the subject.

ASIA SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

In Jan. 2010, NYC’s Asia Society held a concert called “Hogaku,” or Japanese folk instruments played with modern flair. We’ve never profiled Asia Society, so this would be a great time to find out more about how they select their Japanese attractions and exhibitions.

JAPAN INFORMATION CENTER OF NEW YORK

Profile. Take advantage of Japan Information Center to promote Japan!
The Japan Information Center (JIC) is the cultural and public affairs section of the Consulate General of Japan in New York. The JIC distributes educational materials, posters and pamphlets on Japan, provides speakers on various aspects of Japan to the schools throughout this region, Provides information on the Japanese Government Scholarships & the JET Program, distributes the e-newsletter Japan Info, and loans videos/DVDs and cultural artifacts.

The Rice Cooker Chronicles is a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan. The brain-child of JETwit founder  Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94) (and inspired by the book Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant), this series is curated by Leah Zoller (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11), the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. A writer and translator for The Art of Japan: Kanazawa and Discover Kanazawa, she also writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan.

New submissions always welcome.  E-mail Leah at jetwit [at] jetwit.com.

**********

“Nattode”

By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02). Visit his Examiner.com page for related Japanese culture stories.

I’m at a restaurant that bleeds sophistication. Seated across from me is a stunning member of the opposite sex, joining me for the sole purpose of sampling the house’s signature dish, a personal favorite of mine.

Tender music swells in the background. The lighting is perfect, with the glow of candlelight on the table framing my partner’s irresistible charms as a celebrated bon vivant holds court four tables over. Spirits are high, and we’re high on spirits. The mood is ripe.

I snap my fingers to cue the waiter, who gracefully sets two silver trays before us. “Enjoy,” he says dryly. I look him straight in the eye and grin, signaling as I have many times before that I fully intend to.

It’s time. Gloved hands raise the lids, revealing…a small pair of Styrofoam trays with thin sheets of plastic on top. My date is puzzled.

I know what she’s thinking: is that it? Or are they going to, like, light this on fire to cook the actual main course? A demonstration is in order.

Brandishing a pair of chopsticks in my right hand, I gingerly lift the plastic several inches upward with my left, leaving behind a messy string of viscosity that oozes all the way from the plastic, sinking back into the tray. The pungent scent is inescapable, like something you’d encounter accidentally in transit.

I stab what’s inside with the sticks and twist my wrist clockwise several turns. Before the Venus can say a word, I press the smelly, sizable glob through her parted lips.

Languid chewing, then silence. As her cheeks swell, the goo slimes its way down her lips, nestling off her chin. In other words, it looks like she’s suffering from a nasty cold as opposed to enjoying one of my all-time favorite delicacies.

So goes my experiences with natto, a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans that most of its countrymen and women would choose not to consume if their lives depended on it. This is partly due to its reputation as “healthy,” but more about its inimitable appearance.

Naturally, after I returned to the States my parents would remark, “Son, since when did you develop a taste for dog food?”

I was first introduced to natto as a teenager through an anime in which a hapless wife who, preparing a homemade meal for the very first time, mistakenly puts ketchup atop the natto—the Western equivalent to slathering relish over pasta. (In fairness, there are probably some Japanese who would find the ketchup an improvement.)

After years of wondering what this bête noire called natto was like, my curiosity was rewarded within the first week of my arrival in Kobe as a university exchange student. Enjoying breakfast with my host family one morning, I polished off the familiar—cereal, toast, eggs, sausage and salad—but then, something curious was plopped down before me on a bed of rice.

It didn’t look good (and in the ken of Japanese cuisine, this is really saying something), and we’ve already covered the smell, but there was something about its taste that hooked me instantly and hasn’t let go. Even today, I’m challenged to describe what natto tastes like, since it bears no resemblance to raw or cooked soybeans, and doesn’t bear the flavor of anything else that’s edible through fermentation. Back then I likened it to edible paste, or a nutty mucous. If it ain’t broke, indeed.

The fact that I could stomach natto put me in a whole other court of opinion with the average Japanese, vaulting me far beyond the “can you use chopsticks-do you own a gun-do you play sex” crowd. (There’s nothing like being branded a particularly incorrigible henna gaijin simply because you enjoy one of their most identifiable national foods. Imagine if we Americans spread the same double standard to the Double-Double.)

Something else: natto has now become the ultimate litmus test for gauging my compatibility with a potential mate. Forget horoscopes and blood types, natto is the great equalizer. Without exaggeration, my relationships with Those Who Can Try It have lasted far longer than with Those Who Would Prefer Toejam, and this gains added weight for significant others (although even I’ve thought twice about sneaking a kiss after munching some).

This is no coincidence. Like many acquired tastes, natto will not tumble neatly into a communal dining experience. It just can’t be shared. No, it must be savored solitarily, and what better time in young man’s life is there to enjoy something in private, away from prying eyes, than on the JET Programme?

I’ve always wondered if part of my attachment to natto speaks to a deeper part of my psyche. The ultimate underdog food, it assaults nearly every sense of a Japanese. As a foreigner working in a big city but still living far beyond the fringes of the Sticky Rice Society given my unmistakably clashing background and appearance, natto and I bonded in a way that I never could have with my coworkers, or even the Drummania machine (another magnificent obsession).

This was all the more remarkable after learning the Kansai region has far less passion for natto than their eastern neighbors. The irony that one of the most homogeneous societies on earth with a strong reputation for groupism could shun such a dish while leaving the door open for cadres of connoisseurs (both foreign and domestic) to beat the drum in its favor was not lost on me.

I could relate to natto. We both might have been welcomed to Japan, but we each clearly had our own struggles attracting the greater public no matter how good our intentions. After the daily gruel of the jimusho, the balm was dashing straight home to indulge in a fresh tray right out of the fridge. (Another benefit of this miracle food—it can be enjoyed at any meal, cold or room temperature, straight up or with accompaniment.)

A word about that. Legend says that Chairman Frank Sinatra was notoriously precise about the way he took his whiskey. A minimum of ice, and never mixed with water (the rationale being that he wanted a drink, not a bath). I’m the same when it comes to natto: give me the packet of mustard provided and I’m good to go. (Sauce? Pshaw!) I always made an effort to hunt down the no-frills, whole bean variety, and if I was in a particularly adventurous mood I would grate some cheddar cheese on top. You know, to keep things exciting.

Happily, this tradition still continues today. Thanks to an Asian supermarket located tantalizingly close to home, my fridge is never without at least one full package of natto (even in New York, it’s happily inexpensive), and almost every morning I’m faced with the same decision: before or after cereal?

Since returning from JET, I’ve read all about different combinations of natto streets ahead of anything I could have dreamed up on my own. Natto toast, fried natto and natto ice cream are all vittles I hope to try one day, and I’ve even taken the creativity of the old days one step further by whipping up new ways to prepare it for an eager audience of one. Natto omelet, anyone?

My relationship with natto has been one of my greatest takeaways from living in Japan. Like keeping up with the culture itself, it’s provided me with a lifelong fascination, a new shade of tolerance and a respect for the unconventional, and I remain optimistic that I can convert more tyros to its elusive appeal. Looking back, it’s strange to think that even before I could grasp just what exactly it was, I was somehow expecting greatness from natto. What I got instead was transcendence.

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