where cider meets condensed milk: Pimpin' All Over the Ken with my Big/Little Sis

where cider meets condensed milk

Friday, October 13, 2006

Pimpin' All Over the Ken with my Big/Little Sis

When my sister Annabelle emailed my keitai and asked if I had room for her on my tatami, I thought she was joking. One week later, she strolled up to the Okayama Starbucks where we'd met dozens of times before, and we kicked off a fun week of sister time. She's now on a 3-month stay in India, so Japan was a (mostly) free semi-surprise stopover en route from home. She lived in Kagawa-ken for 2 years, also teaching English, and we travelled a lot during my first year. Often people will lie to your face and claim a family resemblance when they meet one of your kin, but this does not happen with us. No one believes we're related, given that she is short, fashionable, and usually somewhat blondish, and I am not. She is being a jerk and holding all all our photos hostage right now, but suffice to say, it was a great week.

She saw the 2 best things in my town while I was at work (the bakery and the caged "wild" boars across from my little trailer village), she came to our community English class, and we onsened like we had OCD. Snacks and sweets were high on the agenda.

Li'l Bub with li'l box of autumn mochi. Thanxxx DaniGal83. U R 2 Cool 2B 4GotN!

Danielle and I are practicing kaitenzushi seduction, in case the hot chef returns. Other food-related ventures revolved around too many onigiri to count, more lattes than we should count, Black Thunder, fancy sushi nearly marred by gag-reflex-inducing sea urchin, Joyfull, and more onigiri. I tried to share the joy of green tea mushipan ("pan" from the Portugese for "bread", "mushi" is the kanji for "containing crack") but Abelle was unconvinced of its glory.

I took Abelle along to elementary lessons one day, and the kids nearly died with exhiliration. For whatever reason, I'm called by both names at that school, which means that it took the kids about 5 minutes of chanting in the hallway before they could remember all the syllables required to collect us for class. (Something like, "Shitsureishimaaaaaasu! Racheruarensensei ANDO A-na-be-ruu-arensensei...ichinen kyoshitsu ni kite kudasai!") Kawaii overload! We headed out on a Friday night for our standard Okayama haunts (Starbucks, HMV, Loft, Bagel&Bagel) and a loud izakaya where I nearly had a salaryman somersault off his bench into my lap while leaning over from his platform. I asked him in Japanese what he was looking for, he turns his head and shouts upside-down, "My shoes!!" His buddy grabbed him just as gravity threatened to catapult him my direction.

Hanging out in the same place and riding the Marine Liner train and gossiping about people we both knew from Japan, it was like the last year of my life had never happened. I know it's easy to get nostalgic when you meet up with people from your past, but ever since she graduated from high school, we've hardly spent any time together outside of our shared year in Japan, and now there we were again. Danielle called us "the coolest sisters ever," which I relayed to my parents, and we all had a good laugh. Abelle and I get along really well... now. We used to fight so much in high school that we'd sometimes spend the hour-long commute to school in furious silence and I do seem to remember one incident involving cursing and a remote control flying towards my head. (Don't even try to deny that one!) But, amazing what 5 years living apart and then reuniting in a stressful land across the Pacific can do for a sistership.

We spent the weekend on Shikoku, going to her old town and staying over with her old boss and his family. We biked to the next town over after a fabulous seaside onsen, and I think I may have found the most depressing place in Japan. It's called Nio, and used to be a town but now is a collection of abandoned buildings, visibly littered and half-concrete beaches, broken cars, and frumpy-looking people. The main attraction is a famed Tako-Ban shop, which is takoyaki (octopus balls) except made like a pancake and it takes almost an hour to get one order. There's one old woman cooking, her even-older mother rattling the coins in the register, and a whole slew of bored, dusty people waiting for said takoban. Any fool can do takoyaki, but takoban is a WHOLE NEW CONCEPT and the woman is thus an "innovator." (Verdict: Tastes like takoyaki, except in a pancake. The secret ingredient is love... and dust.)

We spent Sunday at the son's sports day before heading back home. This feisty little girl is a neighbor, and the kids were teasing her and messing with her hair. She pointed to her fringe and shouted "I cut it myself! I cut it myself!" and we all started cracking up. I should sure hope that was trimmed by an impulsive 3-year-old, or else that family needs a new hairstylist.

Here's what I learned at Sports Day:
If you're male, and you're foreigner, and you're a total dork, and you come to Japan... you may be cooler in some people's eyes, but dorkiness does translate. Also, children can be so cruel. As background for this revelation, Annabelle's former ALT friend in the town was replaced by a guy we'll call "Stephen." The kids showed us the intro article in the school newsletter and proclaimed him to be strange. He's playing an accordion in his photo and fits Abelle's and my model of Hot Property. Arriving at sports day, we spot the Big S fidgeting and looking bored and awkward during the opening ceremony. It comes time for Rajio Taisho, which is a morning calesthenetics routine once practiced all over the country but now falling from favor in modern workplaces and schools. It's probably linked to the military, but is slow, easy, and you can follow everyone around you. Stephen-sensei was half-purposefully doing all the moves late or in the wrong direction, which he thought was funny, but he just looked like he was lacking the brain cells to copy what the 300 people in front of him were doing. Basically, he was doing The Elaine in the midst of a coordinated drill team, and it was painful. The elementary kids all around us were in hysterics and were copying him. The boy next to me looked up from his video game, shook his head, and said to his friend "Stephen-sensei really isn't cool," and there was agreement. The kids mocked his moves for the next several hours.

I never get to blend in and see what locals think of other foreigners-- it was like being a monkey in people's clothing at the zoo. Fascinating. Think people are laughing with you? They might be. Or they might be laughing at you. Paranoid much? Yeah, you probably should be.

posted by Raychaa @ 10:01 PM

6 comments:

At 12:26 AM, Anonymous said…

yeah, yeah, yeah. the pics are coming when i can get the point across to someone over here that i need to burn a cd. i just got out of the hill station. can you guess how many days i went without washing my hair???? 6. yep six. disgusting, no?
--the bib/little sister
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