Illiterate in Kanji

Every morning I have an adventure I like to call: "The Mystery of the
Rice Ball." It begins as soon as I step out of the hotel and begin my
short walk to the Tokyo bureau. On the way, there are a number of kwik
stops-convenience stores I can dive into for a grab and go breakfast,
just like the Japanese do every morning. The kwik stops in Tokyo are
extraordinary. They bear little resemblance to the nasty Subway-Citgo
stops in the US. The shelves are packed with fresh veggies, fruits,
sushi, rice cakes and loads and loads of brewed green tea. Sparkling
clean and delightfully inviting, the Tokyo kwik stop is a neon joy of
culinary adventure before heading into work.
Morning always accompanies a personal resurgence to fully embrace the
culture and live like a Tokyoite, so I'm always excited about what the
rice ball will hold this morning. My favorite morning kwik stop has a
couple dozen rice balls sitting on three shelves. I call them rice
balls, though perhaps the better description would be rice triangle.
Somehow that doesn't quite have the same ring. Each one contains some
sort of fish, meat, or veggie in the center of the rice and is
delicately wrapped in seaweed. The wrapper is engineered with sheer
genius, carefully designed so there's a thin layer of wax paper that
separates the seaweed from the rice (to avoid any sogginess) yet
easily peels away when you unwrap the breakfast treat. Each rice ball
looks exactly the same, yet each one contains some different sort of
item inside. Hence, the mystery. When you don't read the language at
all, it's really just a crap shoot. Sometimes it's crap, sometimes
it's a shot of goodness.
I started out just buying one, but like so much about Japan, it's too
dang small to suffice as any sort of respectable meal. I now buy four.
Call it bridging the gap between my American needs and my need to
experience Japan. Each of my morning rice balls I pick with wild
abandon, usually by the color of the label. This morning, I picked
blue, pink, yellow, and green.
Blue: Some chicken-mayo mix. Bordering on gross.
Pink: Smoked salmon! Delicious.
Yellow: Corn. Dis-gus-ting! Seriously, who eats corn wrapped with rice
and seaweed?
Green: Seaweed. I found this to be shockingly redundant. Why eat
seaweed with rice and seaweed? It's like that 80's trend where girls
who shopped at the Gap matched their socks exactly to their tops,
separated by denim. I don't get that. Too much redundancy.
As I finished my seaweed on seaweed rice ball, the bureau's office
manager, Junko, asked me which was my favorite. I told her the salmon
one.
"You got good one!" she said. Junko's English is quite stilted so she
sounds a little like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid.
"Don't you always pick the salmon one?" I asked her.
"No, not look always," she said. "Sometimes good surprise. Sometimes good fun!"
I'm all about fun. But I'm also about self-preservation of my taste
buds. I asked Junko to write down "corn" in Kanji (the Japanese
alphabet) so I could avoid that nastiness in the future.
I've found it remarkably easy to be in Japan so far without knowing
any Kanji at all. Much of the subway and important street signs are
written in both Kanji and English. And with the exception of the
occasional corn-rice-ball, there haven't been too many severe
consequences of being illiterate here. But there are occasional
mishaps... paying too much for something, missing an inside joke, and
ordering the wrong item at the restaurant.
Most of the restaurants, thankfully, have pictures accompanying the
menu. It's incredibly helpful, as you might imagine. After my
corn-rice-ball breakfast and a fruitful day at work, I headed out to a
recommended sushi restaurant. I couldn't find it, of course. Since
none of the buildings are marked in numerical order, I have yet to
find any store, restaurant or destination recommended to me by the
bureau employees or my guidebook. So I dove into another sushi
restaurant and settled in for some raw fish.
At the entryway of the restaurant swam giant king crab, those poor
creatures swimming their last moments before becoming steamed dinner.
I paused only for a second and headed to the sushi bar. I opened up
the menu and saw a cornucopia of sushi and sashimi specials. Never
mind that there's no English. Who needs English when you have the
pictures! I pointed at the sashimi special I wanted and watched the
chef cut up my dinner.
When my dinner arrived, it was the picture of culinary delight.
Brightly colored fish lay neatly in rows awaiting my soy sauce and
wasabi dip. But something didn't look quite right. The rather sizable
crab leg looked a little off-color, nothing like the steamed king crab
legs at the all you can eat buffet bar at the Rio in Las Vegas. It was
cracked in the center, the meat a shiny pink poking out. Shiny and
pink. That's the problem.
The crab leg wasn't cooked.
Maybe it's crazy of me to be disturbed by the crab leg when I seem to
have no issue at all chowing down 30 pieces of raw fish. But the crab
leg was long. Huge. Suddenly it was apparent to me that it could have
been attached to one of those giant king crabs at the entryway to the
restaurant mere minutes ago. I could imagine the leg, happily wading
along somewhere in the Pacific, until Miko the fisherman just had to
go and wreck his day. I named it. Called the leg Harry. In fact, the
leg looked a litte hairy uncooked, sitting there, wrecking my
appetite. I wondered if king crab, when ripped apart by the sushi
chef, make a silent scream like lobster before boiling to death. I
poked it. And then decided I couldn't eat it.
"Sumimasen," I called to the waiter. I figured he might take it better
than the sushi chef who was holding an enormous kitchen knife. The
waiter diligently jogged over.
I pointed at the crab leg and gave him a thumbs down. His smile
dropped into an open mouthed look of disappointment.
He went to grab the entire sushi tray and I said, "No."
I pointed at the leg again and gave him the thumbs down and pointed
back at the crab leg.
"Ah, so," he said, understanding dawning across his face.
He grabbed the crab leg plate and jogged off. He returned a few
minutes later. I saw the steam first. It wafted over his head as he
jogged back toward me, a steamy, piping hot crab leg on his tray. As a
way to make amends to his dissatisfied customer, he brought an
enormous crab leg packed with white, cooked meat.
It was delicious.
Illiteracy does have its drawbacks. But it also can bring a lot of
interesting surprises.