Author Archives: DELively

A Culture Day With Lots of Spice

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My first November in Nou-machi, I was drafted into cooking gumbo for an entire town.

This happened because every Thursday night I taught a community class made up of adults from various walks of life. I told them that I liked to cook and, at times, was pretty good at it. I’d even worked in a pizza restaurant for a while.

Because of this I was recruited into showing them how to make a version of Paul Prudhomme’s Gumbo Hazel. I do not remember why I chose gumbo, but I think it’s because Nou-machi is part fishing village and has excellent seafood which I thought would make excellent gumbo. Also gumbo is close enough to curry I thought they’d understand it and like it.

This led to shopping and evening cooking and everyone in the adult English class speaking Japanese instead of English. I somehow managed to pull it off, and the class was impressed enough by the gumbo that it got around to some people in the city office and I was invited to cook for the annual culture festival in early November.

That was more nerve wracking as I had to translate the recipe into Japanese and into larger portions so I could prepare the food. Once again it was a hit and I ran out of gumbo and gave away all copies of the recipe. Even old ladies were giving me a thumb’s up over the gumbo.

My only complaint was that I didn’t get a chance to try any of the other food being offered at the festival because I was too busy serving.

Over the course of the next few years I taught the adult class to make a better spaghetti sauce, peach cobbler, chili, pizza and chocolate chip cookies. Not all of the meals went perfectly, but they were all reasonably tasty. Most of the time it was fun, although I was annoyed that my adult English class always spoke Japanese and not English during the cooking lessons, even after She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed joined the class.

During my time in Nou-machi, and for a couple years after, I heard from people that they were still making gumbo. If I leave no other mark on Japan, I taught them that much.

Now I need to teach them how to make Andouille sausage. (Once I learn how.)

Waiting For Goodness Knows What

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I’ve mentioned before that although I dabble in fiction, plays are the only things I can sit still for when they’re done live. However, I’ve rarely been blown away by a play to the point I was left speechless. That happened, oddly, in Albania.

First some background. During my undergraduate and Master’s Degree days I was smitten by the works of Samuel Beckett. He’s an Irishman who wrote in French, translated his work back into English (changing it along the way) and apparently used to drive Andre the Giant to school. His works are generally very bleak and darkly comic and feature old men who talk a lot (i.e. me) and are slowly running out of things to say (again, me).

After I got to Albania, the work that most reminded me of Albania (after William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming“) was the play Waiting For Godot. It’s the story of two old bums who are waiting for someone named Godot. They don’t know what he’ll do when he arrives, they don’t know if they’re waiting in the right place, and they don’t even know if he’s already been there and left. All they do is wait and pass the time by talking about random things and complaining about their various physical ailments (which, by colossal coincidence, is pretty much what happens when a group of Peace Corps volunteers get together).

Albania, when I got there, was like that. Things had fallen apart. Everything was broken. Everyone was waiting for this thing called “democracy”. They weren’t sure what it was and they weren’t sure what it was going to do when it got there. They just knew they were supposed to wait for it. They’d been told it was a big deal.

Then, during my second year, a local theater put on a production of Waiting for Godot in Albanian. Because I had an odd connection to the Open Society Fund for Albania (Soros), I managed to score a ticket in the second row. I ended up sitting next to a fellow expat I didn’t get along with very well (well, he didn’t like me much anyway), but the ticket was free so I didn’t care.

Waiting for Godot has only five characters who actually appear and Godot who is only talked about. The set is usually bare except for a dying tree. The Albanian set had a tree made out of pipes and was uncomfortably bright as they never turned down the auditorium lights.

Although it was in Albanian, I knew the play well enough to follow along. At one point, the main bums Vladimir and Estragon are joined by the pompous Pozzo and his slave, victim, friend Lucky. As part of Pozzo’s attempt to impress the other two, Lucky is encouraged to “think” and gives a long monologue that is 90% gibberish (but still more interesting than most State of the Union speeches). The actor who played lucky killed it. He actually got a show stopping ovation in the middle of the play. (I think I was standing, too.)

At the end of the play, the audience couldn’t stop applauding and the guy I didn’t get along with and I were suddenly temporary pals (mostly because all we could say was “wow”). The cast just stood around simultaneously looking uncomfortable and soaking in the applause as if they didn’t know what they were supposed to do next.

I somehow managed to acquire a poster of the event which I still own. I wish someone had made a recording of it.

 

 

The Spirit of the Law is Not the Rule

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All the talk of deflated balls and questionable tactics by the New England Patriots has me thinking about Japan and its attitude about rules in games and sports. Those attitudes can be very solid and yet kind of flexible.

In 1951, for example, Nobel Prize in Literature winner Yasunari Kawabata published The Master of Go which is a docu-drama about a famous match between a young Go player and a fading master. The match turns on a move that, while fully legal, is still kind of dirty.

This idea of fully legal yet kind of dirty also effects the sport of Sumo. In Sumo there’s a move called a henka. Basically what happens is at the initial charge, one of the wrestler’s jumps to the side and uses his opponent’s momentum against him. It is considered a desperation move and is very much bad form. Wrestlers are supposed to meet each other, in this case literally, head on. Wrestlers who do a henka are supposedly reprimanded and get a black mark in their permanent records. On the other hand, a win is a win and if it takes a henka to get a winning record then that’s a small black mark compared to being demoted because of a losing record.

Smaller wrestlers use the move a lot and it’s been argued that a henka only works if your opponent is charging out of control. In fact, I once saw a large sumo wrestler catch a smaller wrestler in mid-henka and slap him down with one arm. The smaller guy was notorious for doing the move which meant it had lost its element of surprise. I’ve also heard that on at least one occasion two wrestlers did a henka at the same time and end up facing each other from a different direction.

Perhaps the most notorious case of legal but kind of dirty involves Japanese baseball. In 1964 Sadaharu Oh set the Japan home run record of 55 home runs in a single season. After that, on three different occasions foreigners tied the record with enough games left to break the record. In each case they came up against teams coached by Sadaharu Oh himself and were intentionally walked from their first at bats. Randy Bass was so frustrated he started holding his bat backward. In 2001 I remember “Tuffy” Rhodes swinging at pitches a full meter outside the strike zone while the catcher grinned at it all. The next year Alex Cabrarera tied the record and although Oh claims he told his pitchers to throw strikes, not a single strike was thrown.

There was a some controversy about these but those of us who’ve been here too long knew that the record would never be broken as long as Oh was still managing. The record was finally broken in 2013, five years after Oh retired, by Curaçaon Wladimir Balentien who would end up with 60 home runs.

All this tends to sour people on sports. Like the master of Go, we are so disheartened by legal but dirty moves, it hurts our enjoyment of the game. At least if it’s our team that loses to them.

Editorials and Litigious Leisure

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I was once almost sued because of something I wrote. The crappy part is I didn’t learn about it until the case was dropped which means I can’t claim I was a persecuted writer.

Several hundred years ago when I was at Kansas State, for reasons I don’t remember (money) I applied to be a columnist for the Kansas State Collegian and, surprisingly, was accepted.

By luck I landed the prime spot on Monday. This allowed me to pay attention to events during the week and then write about it on Friday for publication on Monday.

Being a columnist was kind of odd. We were simultaneously part of and outside the news staff. We were more like specialists who dragged ourselves in once a week to write on whatever topic struck our fancy and then fled before the police could arrive. (Something like that.)

Being a columnist also had two odd effects on my life. First, people I didn’t know would say “Hey, Dwayne” and start talking to me as if they knew me (as my mental Rolodex flipped cards and tried to match a name to the face). People also felt it was okay to casually snipe at one of my columns if they didn’t like the cut of my political jib.

The other odd effect was the lawsuit. Sort of. Every now and then I couldn’t come up with a single coherent topic and I would instead resort to random aphorisms, observations and questions. For example, I’d write something like “Do athletes actually graduate from the University of Oklahoma or are they just transferred to maximum security?” and then move on to a new topic.

In once such column I went after an easy target, the Department of Leisure Studies. I wrote something like “What is Leisure Studies? What do Leisure Studies’ majors study? Do they get more credit for going to class or for staying home?” It was an obvious joke and I probably could have thought of something better, but I wrote it and forgot about it.

A few months later I was in the newsroom writing a column when all of a sudden the editor casually said something along the lines of  “I forgot to tell you Leisure Studies was going to sue you.” I paused for a minute and then I and the devils over my shoulders all went “WHAT?” at the same time. She explained that someone in the department had felt I’d defamed the program and they were going to sue me for slander, libel or being a jerk.

She also said the newspaper legal people explained how the lawsuit was a bad idea and Leisure Studies dropped it.

I was young enough that I thought a law suit would have given me a certain amount of credibility. Almost getting sued wasn’t as impressive, especially as I didn’t know it until it was too late to be impressed.

I had the last laugh though. Leisure Studies would eventually change its name to the Department of Kinesiology, which is much more intimidating. I’ve always taken credit for forcing that change.

This is What We Was When We Was Them

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Around the start of my second year in Albania I got see what I was like when I was still new. It wasn’t pretty.

For reasons I don’t remember, my friend Eddie and I were walking from the bus station past the Hotel Arberia, which was the hotel we stayed at upon our arrival in Tirana and which frequently served as our home-away-from hour Albanian homes. As we walked past, we stumbled across the fresh-faced and still foolishly hopeful faces of the members of Albania 002 unloading their stuff from vans and moving into their rooms. (They’d eventually be assigned host families, but for at least one night, they belonged to the Arberia.)

We immediately introduced ourselves and got a surprising amount of dirty looks. This was probably because 1) we were haggard old vets full of venom and cynicism; 2) they were in denial about what they were about experience; 3) being new, they already knew it all; 4) they were business advising volunteers meaning they really did think they knew it all and Albania was finally getting real help and 5) at least one of us old vets tended to be an asshole (hint, not Eddie).

Our main job that day was to tell them they’d just missed afternoon water and wouldn’t have running water again until around 2-3 a.m.

Later, as Albania 002 settled in, the best of them were a lot of fun to be around, but the worst were always convinced they were the real volunteers and we were just riff-raff that blew in from Italy. My favorite moment involved having drinks with a couple members of 002. One of them was pontificating about how some business volunteer in Russia had complained that although he was an experienced businessman, the Russians had him making copies.

My friend Robert said something to the effect of “What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t he make copies? He’s there to do what the Russians want him to do.” I thought the guy from 002 was going to burst into flames.

In the mean time I was also thinking “They have access to a copier? Cool.”

Now, of course, I understand how lucky we were to have been part of Albania 001. Even though we were the experiment, we got to be the experts without anyone else around to burst our inflated delusionary bubbles. If we’d been Albania 002, we’d have probably been jerks too. Or at least I would have.

Baby Sitting Boys and Pretending

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One of the quirks of the school where I work is that I have to teach students who are about to graduate. If they don’t come to class, though, it doesn’t matter.

At the school all third year high school classes are electives. This is fun for most of the students and almost all of the teachers. The only thing that’s not fun is when students are forced to take classes in subjects where they need to boost their GPA’s.

For example, if students want an automatic recommendation to the affiliated university (without having to take an entrance exam) they have to have a 51% or higher average in all their English classes. If they achieve that in two years (high school is 10th, 11th and 12th grades) they don’t have to take English their final year unless they want to. If they don’t achieve that, they have to take enough English classes to get their scores up.

As a result of this, they tend to gravitate toward easier English classes. As a result of THAT, I usually name my class “Super Mega Hard Impossible English” or “Abandon Hope All Ye Who English Here” (something like that).

Whatever the reason for taking English, by the end of December, they know if they are going to pass are not and teachers who are not passing them are sometimes “encouraged” to offer “second chances”. However, for reasons I still don’t understand, students still have to attend class at least one time in January. The classes have no marks and students are free to skip them, especially if they are taking an exam to enter a different university.

In the past I’ve shown movies but that was always frowned on. This time I gave a “Write a letter to your future self and remind him what your goals are now” writing assignment. Two guys did it. Two others talked most of the time and then wrote a few sentences. One guy didn’t show up until the second hour and wrote very little. Two students never showed up at all.

There’s nothing I can do though, so I just let the students who came to class play. What bothers me the most is why they’re actually coming to school when they don’t have to. That’s either dedication or madness.

 

Beautiful Plus Musical Equals Madness and Insanity

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It started out like a forum post from a men’s magazine; it ended with musicals.

During my second year in Albania I had a chance to attend a Peace Corps conference in Slovakia. This involved pretty much the entirety of Peace Corps Albania 001 and 002 flying to Budapest and then scattering to the winds for a few days and eventually assembling at a ski resort somewhere in Slovakia.

I ended up traveling with two friends, let’s call them the Beautiful Miss A and the Beautiful Miss B (although their names are similar they were not related). From Budapest we caught a train to Prague. This involved all of us sharing a berth that consisted of two benches and just the three of us.

My brain started processing impure thoughts and possibilities and ways to get past all the baggage involved in order to act on the impure thoughts and possibilities. (I’m a Peace Corps volunteer currently serving in a developing country. I never thought these stories were real until one developed in a foreign country. Etcetera.) Unfortunately, there was way too much baggage involved: One of them was the right woman; the other was the wrong woman. Instead, we processed through the usual small talk and periodic fits of silence.

Somehow musicals got brought up. This triggered an impromptu karaoke session involving the Beautiful Miss A and the Beautiful Miss B who have apparently memorized the lyrics of every musical ever made and they proved it by singing most of them.

I was entertained at first because both of them were good singers, but eventually the male brain rejects musicals, even when sung by beautiful women. Somewhere during the second act of A Chorus Line I huffed/sighed and earned a “Well, why don’t you sing something you like?” To which I responded “Because I’d rather slit my own throat.” (something like that. Remind me again: why don’t I get invited to parties?). Eventually they ran out of songs and we all got a few hours sleep before our short yet complicated adventures in Prague. (Which are another post.)

Eventually we also made it to the ski resort in Slovakia and the conference.

I don’t remember the purpose of the conference and I don’t remember attending a single seminar. All I remember is cross country skiing with a different friend and almost the entire soundtrack to A Chorus Line.

Steak Glorious Steak and the Glories of Steak

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I’m from Kansas and grew up in Colorado. This means, by default, and perhaps by genetics, my favorite food is dead animal flesh.

My favorite form of dead animal flesh is beef, in all its various forms, from a freshly wounded steer. Cooking is barely required. In fact, when asked how I want my steak cooked I usually say something like “just stab it and bring it to me”. Quite frankly, if a good veterinarian can’t save the animal’s life, my steak is overcooked.

The problem I’ve had when I travel is that very few countries know how to cook steak. The Albanians didn’t; the English just boiled the flavor out of it and put it on sandwiches; the French drowned it in cream sauce; and the Germans, well, I don’t know, I slept through Germany.

The only people who do steak well, oddly, is the Japanese. I’ve even seen a woman from Western Kansas try Japanese beef and then struggle to try to figure out how to tell her father, a cattle rancher, that he’s no longer the best at his job.

The problem with Japan, though, is that for reasons too complicated to go into–short version: an absurd number of steps between rancher and consumer–domestic Japanese beef is more expensive than imported beef. Japan tries to defend its beef by periodically banning US beef and setting odd rules–for example, T-bone steaks are illegal because of fears of BSE. All those bans do, though, is open up the market for Australian beef.

(Note to Aussies: you’re beef is good but since I haven’t tried it in your country, it doesn’t count.  Officially, therefore, Australian steak sucks.)

This means that it’s very rare to find Japanese beef in a restaurant or in the grocery store for less than the price of a new car (more or less). Every now and then local stores run a special and it’s possible to acquire the lower end versions of high end beef at a cheaper prices. I once had Matsusaka Beef steak for only eight dollars or so. (It’s usually 100 dollars a pound.)

Even with a too good to be true price, it was still one of the best steaks I’ve ever eaten.

Tonight we took our oldest to Steak Gusto which, for a family-style chain restaurant has good steak (as long as you don’t go to the one closest to our house) and a very rare all-you-can-eat salad bar that, lately, has been a not-much-for-you-to-eat salad bar.

I cheated a bit, and got a hamburger steak topped with foie gras. (Note: a place like this serving foie gras is a bit like Taco Bell serving Cristal with a Locos Taco and you are allowed to question its authenticity. Faux Gras?) The reason it was cheating is I knew I’d eventually get samples from the steaks ordered by She Who Must Be Obeyed and the girls.

Sure enough, although the girls did an excellent job without much help from me, the steak I didn’t order arrived on my plate. It was all good.

 

Not As Complicated Baby

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Since yesterday I talked about the arrival of our oldest, it’s only fair I talk about the arrival of our youngest.

When our youngest was born there were fewer complications and a lot less snow. This is partly because she had the good foresight to be born in the summer which made it easier for me but brought a few other problems.

First, I was working until the middle of the month which meant while She Who Must Be Obeyed was hoping it would be over soon, I was hoping she’d put it off until after exams, pass-backs and final marks. I was, of course, hoping for a healthy and happy child and that She Who Must Be Obeyed would have an easy delivery. However, I didn’t want the paperwork and endless series of phone calls and attempts at Dad-Shaming leaving work before the end of term would have triggered.

Luckily, our youngest was late. (She’s a girl, remember.)

(Before people start throwing things I feel it only fair to point out our oldest arrived on the exact day the doctor predicted which means she’s been on time once in her life.)

I was able to stay at our in-laws until the serious contractions started but this meant a late night drive to the hospital on a road with a reputation for having a lot of accidents. The highlights of the trip, Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed reaching around Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed and shoving hard candy in his mouth scaring the crap out of both him and me. The logic of this act involved the fact that if he’s choking he’s not falling asleep at the wheel (or something like that). The other highlight involved tollbooth attendant carefully quizzing Father of She Who Must Be Obeyed to see if he was fit to drive.

The hospital was the same as where our oldest was born which meant I could stay with She Who Must Be Obeyed for most of the night–the preliminaries lasted seven hours or so–but could not go in the delivery room. (One of this hospital’s rules.) I waited outside the delivery room, though, and was able to rush in once our youngest was born.

The final complication involved the hospital’s refusal to turn on the air conditioning at any time during our stay. It’s not an exaggeration to say our youngest was born in a sauna.

Our youngest screaming "turn on the damned air conditioning!"

At 25 minutes old our youngest screams “turn on the damned air conditioning!”

 

 

Adventures in Baby Waiting

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Just over 14 years ago our oldest arrived and, like all things involving me, there were a few complications.

(Note: Officially our oldest has been told we found her on her grandmother’s doorstep in Nou-Machi. Our youngest has been told she was found under a bridge. Please maintain this official story despite any contradictory information provided in this post.)

The first complication involved She Who Must Be Obeyed moving back to her parent’s house until the delivery. This gave her experienced and competent people nearby but put me on the other side of Japan. My job was basically to keep doing my job and be ready to travel at a moment’s notice. Sort of.

The second complication involved language. When I finally got the call that things were happening, the call was kind of vague. I was told, by She Who Must Be Obeyed, that she  was going to the hospital but that there was no hurry because the contractions were several days apart (or something like that) and I should just wait. Unfortunately, I’d been in Japan long enough to question what I was being told and spent a good part of the next couple hours checking various Japanese/English dictionaries and an NSA code book to see if I’d missed something in the message.

When I finally got the call to move, I encountered the third complication: a crap load of snow (that’s a technical term) that slowed down the train. Somehow I finally arrived at the hospital, although it involved moving through a maze of snow piles.

Once in the hospital, I got to see She Who Must Be Obeyed a few moments and enjoy her loving “damn you for doing this to me” looks and then took up my position in the waiting room outside to get properly nervous. (Long story about why I wasn’t in the delivery room.) Less than an hour later, as I was selecting a proper location to begin pacing, I was informed our oldest had arrived.

I rushed in for the first pictures and was shocked to see that, at her most slimy, deformed and “uncooked”, she actually looked like me. (Fortunately she ended up looking more like She Who Must Be Obeyed.)

Now not only do I have a teenaged daughter, but at age 14, she’s already had a year of practice. She’s taller than She Who Must Be Obeyed and better at math than I was. (I’m better at taking stuff and hiding than she is, though, especially when it’s her stuff and I’ve told her to turn it off and study.)

She’s perfected the eye roll and I challenge anyone with a teenage daughter to an eye-roll contest. (Email pictures of your teen daughter giving her best eye-roll and we’ll see who’s best.)

Despite this we decided to have another one; but that’s another story.

When she was at her most incomplete, she actually kind of looked like me.

Only 20 minutes old and already practicing her skeptical look.