I went into Tokyo today to meet with Paul for church. It's a Hawaiian missionary and his Japanese wife. They do the service in both English and Japanese. She translates for him. It's pretty cool. It's a pretty usual kind of song "worship" for an evangelical kind of church. The message was really good. It's simple (especially when he has to stop every sentence for it to be translated, but it's done pretty naturally) but the essence of the message is something to chew on.
I went and met Chris and Yasuko at Akihabara to find a laptop for Dad with an English OS. It was interesting. We really only found the two places with English systems and they were identical in selection an price. I'm sure I could have swung something, but it's a pretty nice machine and a fair price so I wasn't worried about 5 and 10 yenning it, or nickel and diming it.
We went back to their place for some dinner and a night of cards. We had a big ol' pot of nabe which is meat, fish, dumplings, tofu, noodles and veggies all cooked in a broth on the table. And rice. Chris made me eat natto again with my rice. At least it was just a little bit. I can't believe he ate like the rest of the container. It's not a fun texture. I realized after some of my whinings that I may have been instigating a cultural faux-pas. But I think I'm safe. There's something about saying a food is gross that is not a polite thing. But I think that when it's culturally accepted that the food is a little odd, it's almost like a joke to watch people not enjoy it. I take great delight in watching Americans (usually only skinny, not glutinous ones) be totally disgusted with the description of poutine, or my unnatural love of Maple syrup on everything in sight. The Japanese seem to get a good kick out of watching people, particularly gaijin, eat natto. Yasuko even said that they know it's unpleasant, but they still love it. Chris likened it to the Blue Cheese phenomenon. No one would be offended if someone was trying Blue Cheese for the first time and they made a face, or had tried it previously and was quite adamant on not eating it again. Yet, there are people who ADORE the stinky, smelly, moldy cheese. Grandad adored it. He loved to eat it with apple or just plain. He used to laugh at Ryan and I when we would make faces, and then he would snort and shack his head and say something to the effect of "You're missing out on the finer things in life if you don't like Blue Cheese". I realized tonight that I might be offending someone by my distaste for natto, but now I'm really okay with it because it is like a joke, a socially acceptable thing to be disgusted with. I raved about the rest of the food, so I think I'm safe.
They convinced me to stay the night, as Monday is a National Holiday. Not that it's a holiday at the school, it's still open, but it's my usual day off. So I stayed. I've really wrecked my back somehow so we moved to the floor and played some cards. We played one card game that has 12 suits and 4 cards per suit. You make pairs of the cards to get the points. The cards vary in points from 1, 5, 10 and 20. It was cool. I think we were trying to hard cause we were trying to figure out a good strategy, but really it's quite simple and there's no getting around it so it's just a matter of making the pair or not. Then I taught them Hearts. It was fun to play again. I do love that game. Chris kept trying to shoot for the moon. I'm all about sticking it everyone by never getting any points what so ever. While others are all about going for gusto in the hopes of screwing everyone else over. Two very different ways of going at the game and both types of people are so easy to spot in the first few hands of a game.
