Plastic food

Yesterday I went on a field trip to Guyo-Hachiman with Japanese and exchange students. We did various things, including going to a plastic food factory! Japanese restaurants often display plastic replicas of their menu items in their store windows. These aren't your childhood plastic food toys. This is the real deal. You can see pictures and read about it a little here.

We were given a little demonstation and allowed to make some plastic food ourselves! One of the employees took a spoonful of melted something (probably wax) and slowly dripped it into a tub of hot water. The wax hardened slightly and took on a sort of crumbly shape, and the employee carefully wrapped it around a plastic shrimp. Voila. Tempura shrimp.

We made our own tempura shrimp, and also a head of lettuce and got to take home both!


My completed items, which greatly amused my host family.


There was sort of a display room of plastic food dishes, all looking delicious. I bought some presents too. It was a lot of fun.

A successful experiment

Abstract
Two American exchange students in Japan attempt to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Introduction
My friend and fellow American Nicole asked if I wanted to help her make Thanksgiving dinner for her host family. So on Thursday after class we made our way to the supermarket. Finding the ingredients was almost more challenging than cooking the food. In American grocery stores, the salt is usually located next to the pepper, right? But in Japan it is located next to the sugar, which is several ailes away from the pepper. We even had to resort to getting out the Japanese-English dictionary when trying to discern which one of the many bags of white powder contained flour.

Fig 1.1. Data analysis


Materials Used
Our menu, unfortunately, was restricted by the lack of available Thanksgiving goodies in Japan, including turkeys, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie mix. Neither of us felt up to the task of actually making pumpkin pie out of pumpkins, so we bought pumpkin-flavored pudding. I will really miss my Grandma's pumpkin pies, which were amazing last year. Seriously. They're like the only thing I remember about last year.

This was our modified Thanksgiving dinner menu:

Almond Chicken
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
String beans with almonds and browned butter
Stuffing
Bread rolls
Pumpkin pudding
Apple juice

The stuffing and gravy are thanks to Nicole's father, who sent the mixes from America. Ignore the Reese's Peices on the table. Nicole just wanted to set them out because they look American.

Fig. 1.2. Materials


Methods
Nicole's host family's kitchen was a little tight, and pots and pans were limited. Luckily, Nicole is an engineer and thus set out a very logical plan for cooking. For example, we had no measuring cups, so Nicole grabbed an empty soda can that was 120 milliliters and was able to calculate all the amounts of ingredients from that. Genius.
I made origami turkeys to compensate for the lack of real ones.

Fig. 1.3. Methods



Results
In the end, Nicole and I pulled off a pretty awesome dinner for her host mom and sister, who praised it to no end. Since they're Japanese, I wasn't sure if that meant they actually liked it, but the host sister ate quite a lot of stuffing and gravy. As for me, I haven't felt so happily stuffed since I left the US.

Fig. 1.5. Results



Summary and Recommendations
Please appreciate how amazing these turkeys are.

Fig 1.6. Turkey madness

And now for something completely different

Tomorrow: an attempt at cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Japan, despite Japan's distinct lack of turkeys.

Check back later for further details.

A little random note...this reminds me of when my Japanese Culture professor in the US (who is Japanese), tried to explain to us why the Japanese were against the idea of allowing their country to import rice in the 90's. If I remember correctly, he was trying to tell us that rice has sort of a spiritual symbolism in Japanese culture. Rice grown in the Land of the Rising Sun is something the Japanese take pride in, and no other rice will do, at least according to him. The professor could tell we were having trouble understanding this.
"Imagine if the US was forced to import turkey from other countries," he said. Silence. Finally someone spoke up:
"...and?"
"Turkey!" The professor exclaimed. "Thanksgiving! American holiday! You don't want foreign turkeys on Thanksgiving, do you??"
"We don't really care that much, as long as they taste good."
"What?!"
I'll never forget the professor's look of astonishment. I think he was slightly disappointed in us too.

Differences in educational culture (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

Japanese high schools have a worldwide reputation for being extremely intense and demanding, but Japanese colleges unfortunately have a reputation for being...well, a joke. A lot of college students get part-time jobs just for spending money because they have so much time on their hands.
I have to admit I was kind of looking forward to this.
Alas, the Japanese language professors really don't mess around. For example, we are allowed two absences. Two. Three strikes and you fail the course. And if you're late too many times, that counts as a strike. I'm not in the habit of missing a whole lot of classes in the US, but this really sucks all the flexibility out of my schedule. And it just sucks, period.
Also, there is a Pink Box of Doom where you turn in your homework. The very second the school bell rings, (yes, there is a school bell that rings) the professors close the box. And I mean the very second. Before the school bell has even finished ringing the professor will have sprung up and slammed the pink box shut. Any homework that doesn't make it in the box before then is labeled "late" and points are deducted, even if you came to class well before then. Even if you hand in the homework in five seconds later. When the Pink Box of Doom is shut, it's shut and it's not opening again until tomorrow.
So although I don't have anything against the professors personally, I don't enjoy class very much. I feel like they treat us like little kids.

Hugs

One of the old ladies at church has adopted me. It started one morning after church when she randomly came up to me and gave me a hug.
"Oh my gosh, that's the first hug I've had since I came here two months ago!" I said. And it's true. Hugging is sort of an American thing, I think. I've barely even seen anyone hug anyone since I got there. When girls meet each other, they don't hug, they sort of...touch hands. It's weird.
"Really? Oh you poor thing." She said, and gave me about three more hugs. Now every Sunday she makes sure I don't leave church without a hug. I feel bad that I can't remember her name.
A little boy, about three years old, saw her hugging me and ran up and gave me a hug too. That really surprised me. I said to the old lady,
"Usually Japanese children seem to be afraid of me."
"Oh really?" She said. "Not this one though."
"Yeah, I'm strong and powerful!!" The little boy said, and flexed his arms. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Boy oh boy did I want to scoop him up and take him home with me.