Tuesday - Week 4
14 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
November 9
Tuesday Week Four
Tomorrow will bring individualized study at locations related to our respective careers; today was a typical day of interesting local companies. We met up at a new hotel. Craig has a young, single 30’s something host brother and it seems like the perfect match. Everyone else is happy too, but Jerry finds communication maybe a challenge. All in all, we happily went on our way to a confectionary and saw a truly fascinating world of large scale producing and baking of many cookies and sweets. We had to take off all jewelry, put on space suits, hair nets, were vacuumed like dogs being groomed and passed through high powered air tubes before we stepped off onto sticky mats and washed thoroughly. Inside , it was pretty incredible. The smells were good, and each part of the process had a particular function to the uniformity and taste of the process. No pictures were allowed (as I’m sure Infinite Zoom wouldn’t have survived the prep wash to get in). Eventually, I was able to eat a ChocoBat right off the line! Oh- a chocolate baseball bat, not my nemesis of the flying sort. There were crab-shaped breads, though I don’t know why they were shaped like crabs, and sesame crackers that have long shelf lives and are for disaster/emergency kits, or camping… I actually liked them best!
Lunch was a huge Rotary meeting. A little confusing today about the introductions and presentations but we nailed it! Jillian translated for Jerry and it went really smoothly I thought. Lunch was a fancy American style seafood medley… Well, at least there were only forks and knives on the table, no hashi chopsticks.
The afternoon was spent at a military airplane museum and base. There were flight simulators, a simulation movie on a dome screen and real jets taking off and a hangar full of various old and new military jets and planes. I couldn’t read the Japanese explaining everything. It really made me think of my boyfriend, who could have walked through there and explained near everything to me, what guns did what, what planes were special for what reason… A little pang of missing home, but it won’t be long now!
At home, my host parents took me to their house to wait for Ayako to get back from 711. They tried to help me look up special musical instruments for my mom. Finally we left for ‘Japanese high tech dinner’ – SUSHI!! We had a private table with a touch screen monitor. We could order anything by touching the picture on the screen, telling it how many, and spicy wasabi or no wasabi. Plates with microchips would come zooming onto our table from some unknown sushi maker elsewhere in the restaurant. I ate way too much! Salmon, tuna belly, raw scallop, salmon eggs, flat fish, sea urchin, ark shell (?), river eel and surprise – things that are small in the States, came out huge! like miso soup and tamago egg omelet – stuffed with rice inside. So I filled up quick. We chatted over tea and full bellies and I taught them some American slang and had fun explaining. They taught me too: proverbs like ‘Don’t adjust your hat under the pear tree’ (because it might look like you’re stealing) which I translated as maybe, ‘there is a time and a place for everything’ – uh, maybe… That’s a tough one!
