Our in-laws recently sent us a box full of fresh bamboo shoot which means I’m now getting to enjoy one of my favorite foods in Japan: rice with bamboo shoot and chicken. (I’m also partial to simply slicing bamboo shoot, boiling it and serving it with mayonnaise.)

One of the interesting things about travel, and about living overseas, is the opportunity to try new and strange foods that, in your normal life, seem very strange but after a while become normal. I first tried bamboo shoot after a couple of my adult students took me out into the woods to bag and kill my own bamboo.

I’ve written before about my relationship with raw fish and about how eating too much of certain foods has ruined them for me. However, every now and then I find something new–to me anyway–that I like more than you would expect. Soon after I moved to Japan, I joined a trip to visit the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route. This required I stay overnight with a friend who offered me a concoction called Vegemite which, I believe, is yeast waste cleaned out of beer fermentation tanks and fed to an unsuspecting public as breakfast food. It turns out, though, that I actually like Vegemite. I even like dunking Pretz sticks in it and eating as a dip.

On the same trip we passed through a souvenir store that was offering free samples of various exotic foodstuffs. I tried something that appeared to be smoked ham, but actually turned out to be smoked horse meat. This grossed out a couple of my travel companions, and they laughed at me about it, but It turns out I actually like smoked horse. Years later I would discover that I also like raw horse. (Don’t judge me; one of the odd delicacies when I lived in Colorado was Rocky Mountain Oysters, so there.)

All of this, in an odd way, overlaps with being married to a foreign person. It’s no exaggeration to say that since I’ve been married I’ve eaten more of certain foods that I’d either never tried or didn’t like. Those include turnips, in various forms, pumpkin, cabbage, spinach, carp and raw eggs. Luckily there are only a couple things in Japan that I’ve found I don’t like, including oshiruko and the sweetened fried eggs served as sushi. I have, however, had a difficult time convincing She Who Must Be Obeyed that certain foods (cauliflower, broccoli and spinach) are meant to be served raw–or perhaps lightly blanched–or in the case of spinach, covered in bacon grease and freshly cooked bacon. She Who Must Be Obeyed finds this idea questionable/gross–although she is interested in the spinach salad–and always cooks my broccoli a little bit too long.

That’s right, in part of my world, raw horse is normal, raw broccoli is not.

Oddly enough, I have some enemies, of sorts, here in Japan. I am apparently hated by three or four people I’ve never shared more than a few words with. Usually, such hate occurs soon after I’ve begun speaking and people suddenly invent friends, even in empty rooms, or feign death.  But not in these cases. (Well, maybe in one case.)

My first enemy is a man I’ve seen four times since we moved to Kawagoe. He’s clean and well fed but always seems to be just short of cash in the train station and wonders if people could help–a common con around the world, by the way. The first time I met him, he grabbed me and started a story of woe and pain and I told him to go away. Two years later, in the same station, he grabbed me from behind again and asked for money. I chased him away again. Two years after that (yes, I really do see him every two years) he grabbed me and as soon as I turned around he recognized me and ran away. Then, just this year, we ran into him in a different station, this time inside the gate. I chased him away from a group of foreigners and told them how he and I were good friends, sort of. (She Who Must Be Obeyed saw him this time, which actually makes me feel as if he may actually exist in the world and not just in my head.)

The second guy is an asshole I’ve run into twice on the train. He’s rail thin, about my age and always wears aviator sunglasses a couple sizes too large for his head. If I sit near him he starts this angry, anti-foreigner whisper that I pretty much have learned to ignore. I haven’t seen him for a few years.

The most interesting case is a man I see almost every work day. He’s heading away from the station about the time I’m heading toward it. Everyone’s suffered that awkward moment where you see someone approaching and you know that eventually you will have to acknowledge their existence, usually with a grunted “w’sup?” or “howzigon?” and a nod. I nodded at him, especially when it became clear we would meet regularly. He apparently got tired of seeing my face, though, and started crossing the street to get away from me as we drew close. (In his defense, I do not know how bad I smell, so he may have good reason to flee.) He’s so desperate to get away that a couple of times he’s nearly been hit by approaching cars as he stepped into the street.

The funny part about this one is I used to pass a woman on the same road who started doing the same thing. She also almost got hit by cars a couple times.

I, of course, helped the situation by laughing at them and shaking my head.

When it comes to electronics and electrical and mechanical products, I’m not what you’d call brand loyal–although I do tend to prefer Canon cameras. Instead, I try to buy something that’s gotten good reviews, is of decent quality and comes at a reasonable price. I then use it and use it and use it until well beyond the “replace by” date.

The result is cars that fell apart soon after I sold them and a television, bought used, that we didn’t replace until the tube had failed so badly that the entire picture had become a green strip in the middle of the screen. We used the new TV until Japan switched to terrestrial digital format and we were told it wouldn’t work again. (Turns out, it did work, so we used it for another year until we replaced it with a Sony Bravia.) I used a laptop I purchased in 1997 until the backlight on the monitor died. Then I put an external monitor on it and used it as a desktop for another couple years. After it finally died, I used it as a stand for my new laptop.

The “new” laptop still works–well, it did until Microsoft sabotaged Windows XP and now I’m using it with Linux. I will use it until it doesn’t turn on. Only then will I think about getting rid of it–even thought it has, technically already been replaced.

This is partly the result of an “if it ain’t broke don’t replace it” attitude combined with a philosophy of “if you understand it, don’t buy something that will require lots of faffing about to configure and understand”. That’s all combined with my view of getting my money’s worth out of the purchase. (Yes, I am the guy who has 20 year old t-shirts that are now either pajama tops or house cleaning clothes.)

Even if something is old and broken, I’ll still use it as long as its basic functions will work. Case in point, the cellphone I bought in 2006. It still works as a phone and an alarm clock. Granted, it now has a few, um, cosmetic issues that require some care and duct tape:

It’s just a flesh wound.

A friend of mine would sell his computers every few years in order to recoup some of his money and put it toward a new computer. (However, he’s now become a Mac user which means he no longer has a soul and cannot be trusted.) I understand why he does this; however, I believe using it until stops working accomplishes the same goal. (Money isn’t everything, after all, although it does tend to dominate a lot of things.)

Despite all this, I am now in the market for a smartphone. I have to choose wisely though. That phone will be with me a very, very long time.

I’ve always had a moody relationship with music, meaning when you ask me what kind of music I like, I’ll tell you it depends on what mood I’m in (another post is needed to explain that). When it comes to music players, though, I’m of the smaller is better, smallest is best school.

Back about the time we moved from our trailer to our house in the Golden Meadows subdivision, my father bought what, for the time, was a pretty impressive stereo system–complete with a turntable and a cassette player. Oddly, despite the impressive speakers, one of his favorite records was a master direct-to-disc recording of a thunderstorm that he mostly used to make the unsuspecting think it was raining outside. (I still don’t get that, by the way. It’s like selling plasma TVs by showing fields of flowers–who the hell cares about fields of flowers enough to watch them on TV?)

Despite the impressiveness of the stereo, I quickly found that I was not a big fan of records or cassettes. By this I mean, although I would eventually buy a few records and quite a few cassettes, I was always bothered by the 80-20 rule of albums: 20% of the songs were good, 80% were crap. This meant I wore out cassettes playing and rewinding the same songs over and over. I’m also pretty sure I remember jamming the buttons on the stereo a couple times. Then there was the need to constantly flip the record and/or LP to hear the other side.

A large stereo also meant that I was subject to the whims of my parents’ taste in music and their shocking lack of interest in mine.

When I got my first Sony Walkman, I was immediately smitten by the portability of it. I liked the ability to carry it around and to block out the radio dead zone in Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas when we traveled to Salina. There was still the 80-20 problem, though, and was pretty heavy in the pocket.

I had a few boomboxes along the way, too, but I didn’t enjoy just turning on music and going about my daily tasks (or doing my best to avoid going about my daily tasks). Even a 90 minute mix tape required more attention than I liked giving music, especially if I wasn’t in the mood for some of the songs.

Eventually, I moved on to smaller and smaller players and even, for a brief time after I got to Japan, got a Sony Discman that was just barely larger than the size of a disc. Unfortunately, it was also too heavy and it had a more expensive version of the 80-20 rule. I eventually gave it away.

My favorite player, for a while, was the Sony MD Walkman. For lots of complicated reasons, mini-discs never caught on in the USA but I enjoyed it. The player I had could have been hidden in a pack of cigarettes and I couldn’t feel it in my pocket when I was carrying it in a jacket. Unfortunately, the MD Walkman died and Sony was like “Well, we could fix it, but buying a new one and an ounce of gold would be cheaper”.

Being me, I went without any kind of portable music for a while. During that time the digital music player revolution happened and after a brief stint with an iRiver, I finally splurged for  second generation iPod touch. This, finally, met all my insane needs for music:

1–I could buy the 20% and ignore the 80%.
2–The player was light and easy to carry.
3–It was easy to swap out music as my moods changed.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve bought more music since I got the iPod than I did in all the years before. However, even now, I’m moody about music and I spend most of my time listening to podcasts.

We spent the day at a nearby park watching our youngest do dangerous things on playground equipment that’s probably illegal in most parts of the USA.

One of the things I like about Japan is that a lot of playgrounds and parks still have equipment that require a certain amount of common sense and provide a certain amount of danger. Tall jungle gyms–one park we like to visit has a 12 foot tall rope jungle gym; merry-go-rounds; tall slides; swings with no “seat belts”; and balance beams.

In fact, the only thing I see lacking is a tall Witch’s Hat with no inhibitor like we used to have on the playground of Edison Elementary School in Hayden, Colorado. I remember getting a hand and leg smashed every now and then but nothing horrible. We also had a rickety, splintery wood and pipe merry-go-round that could get up to a fair speed. (A good tether ball set would be nice, too.)

The best part, though, was the swings. We’d get swinging as high as possible and then jump out. (Hey, I said a “certain amount of common sense” was required, not a certain amount of good sense and/or intelligence.) I remember one guy coming off the swing with his feet pointing straight up at the sky. He managed to get them down before he landed.

When we visited Florida several years ago, I was appalled at the squishy safe playground equipment. Even the ground had been rubberized. It all reminded me of the play things you put in a hamster cage.

Today, though, I saw one little girl carrying a handful of dirt to show her parents. I saw a boy trying to hit his brother because his brother had knocked him off the raised discs. I also watched my daughter climb and fall off stuff and have a good time doing it. She tried the climbing wall; the swinging log path; the balance beam; the rope ladder climbs; and a few other potentially dangerous things.

The worst thing that happened, besides dirt, was she got chocolate on her butt. We’re still not sure how, but she’s eight, so it’s pretty much expected.

One of the more interesting and disturbing things about living overseas is seeing the changes when you go back to your home country. There are the usual things: everyone’s aged a bit; trees have grown out; wall colors have changed; and your favorite hangouts have closed. Although those changes can be disconcerting, what really surprised me is the changes in raw fish and communications that occurred while I was away.

Raw Fish:
When I left the USA in 1996, neither I nor practically anyone I knew, had ever tried raw fish (I’d eaten raw oysters at The Boston Sea Party in Denver, but that doesn’t count.) I was intrigued by the idea of eating raw fish and vowed that, sometime during my first year, I would try it. Then, on my first day in Nou-machi, I ate at my colleague’s house and the first dish she offered was a plate of sashimi. I was like “as well now as another time” and attacked the sashimi without mercy. (I subsequently spent a good amount of time learning to pick slippery stuff up with plastic chopsticks.) I liked all the food I was offered, although two of them gave me pause: squid, which is a bit like eating a slippery unsweet gummy bear, and salmon eggs, which I remember using as bait when we went fishing near two-mile bridge Hayden.

Now, raw fish in all its forms is one of my favorite Japanese dishes (raw horse is another, but that’s another post). However, I’m in the land of raw fish and such things aren’t that surprising. What did surprise me was returning to Salina, Kansas in the early aughts and seeing a Japanese restaurant that served sushi. While I was spinning my totem to see if I was dreaming, She Who Must Be Obeyed was going “Hurry up! They’ve rice! They’ve got rice!”

I’m still stunned such a thing would exist in the middle of Kansas, even for a brief time. I’m also a bit surprised that sushi has become as popular as it has nationally. When I left it was in the realm of wealthy jerks and pompous well-to-dos. Now, it seems to be as common as potato chips.

Cellphones:
Speaking of wealthy jerks and pompous well-to-dos, when I left the USA, they were the only ones who had cellphones. When I got to Japan cellphone use was more common, but it still had a small group of users. By 1999 it had exploded in Japan. I remember reading that there were something like 3,000,000 cellphones in use in the USA while Japan had 30,000,000 in use (which meant one in four Japanese had one). In Japan this was driven by shockingly expensive land-line installation prices so I wasn’t surprised. I got my first cellphone when I moved to Tokyo and having one made my job easier.

However, about the time I was in the USA trying to figure out if the sushi restaurant was real, I also noticed that several of my friends had cellphones. (And, for the record, they were not wealthy jerks or pompous well-to-dos, for the most part.) A few years later, even my mother had one and, in 2013, everyone had a smartphone.

Except me.

I’m now in the smartphone market, not out of any desire to be more high tech–and quite frankly, the cult-like devotion some people have toward their smartphones is somewhat disturbing–but because my eight year old clam shell phone is being held together by duct tape.