Observations of an American Dropped Into Japan (Part 9)

After arriving back at Adam & Megan's Apartment from the Hiroshima trip, we spent a few days relaxing, with just a few day trips seeing the local sites, and visiting the area restaurants and just generally "hanging out". There were a lot of things to see and do, but frankly, I just needed a rest, so small day trips worked just fine for me. Extremely hot temperatures and Multiple Sclerosis don't mix very well, creating extreme fatigue and potential exacerbations...You have to watch how you say that one in public! An MS exacerbation is a relapsing episode, which can cause various unpleasant things to happen, such as paralysis, confusion, blindness, or any other thing that you can think of that involves the human nervous system...yeah. You get the picture. Not fun, and maybe temporary, maybe not. Fortunately there was air conditioning most everywhere we went, unless we were outside, which of course we were at Hiroshima and Miyajima a great deal of the time. So we kind of layed low for a few days.

Let's talk about Cicadas. Often referred to as the seven year locust. Folks in the midwest are familiar with those rascals. They are an insect about the length of your thumb, and shaped like a large housefly. Growing up in Ohio, I had heard them for years. They make a loud chirping type of sound, remiscent of what you might expect to hear in a jungle environment, but I had never seen a living one. As a child, I always found the shells that they would leave attached to trees as they would moult when they had grown wings to fly, but only after I got to Japan, had I ever laid eyes on a living one. They are kind of ugly, shaped like a large cylindrical fly with bulging red eyes, Ugh, They were everywhere in Japan. One evening I was posting pictures from Adam and Megan's computer, and one started its call from their rear deck. Adam opened the door and it stopped. Closed the door. It started. Opened the door. It stopped. This went on for a few minutes, when finally he couldn't take it anymore. Out he went with a broom, and unable to see this annoying creature, he swung the broom around wildly. He turned to come in. It started. Argh! A second round of swinging the broom, then slamming the sliding glass door. The chirping became wildly erratic with the slamming of the door, like the Cicada was in the throes of death. I looked up, eyebrows raised..."you killed it!". Silence.  Adam looked at me. "I don't know". He opened the door, using a flashlight to look around, but saw nothing. I continued to post the pictures and turned in for the night.

Adam and Megan have a cute little black dog named Charlie. Charlie is a girl dog, which is only a little puzzling when you would say "come here boy" or "good boy...." and then feel foolish for calling her a boy. Anyway, Charlie always liked to go out on the rear deck, get some air and sometimes bark. We looked out the door the morning following the Cicada incident, and saw that darn Cicada from the night before, lying on it's back. Dead. I guess Adam did kill it. We watched as we let Charlie out to see if she would notice the dead bug. Yup. Bingo. Went right to it to sniff it to see what that big black thing was. It jumped up and scared Charlie to death! It was still alive! Charlie sped into the house as the Cicada collapsed on its back, finally dead. Charlie stared out the glass door at the Cicada for a good five minutes. "Want to go back outside, Charlie?" No dice. There was no way in heck she was going back out there. A few more minutes went by, and absolutely no movement from the bug. Okay, Charlie felt brave enough now to go back outside, but she stayed away from the dead Cicada... For a while... Then she slowly approached it again and nudged it with her nose.Yahhhhhh! It jumped up again, but finally flew away. That wouldn't be the last time that we would see a Cicada lying on the ground, occasionally on their backs. We just stayed away from them in case they would decide to jump up and startle us.

Food. Interesting thing about Japanese Cuisine that I didn't know (heck what about Japan did I know?) was that they love Curry. They have a chain of restaurants that is very popular called "Coco's Curry House". People who have lived there for any length of time love it so much, that when they come back to the States, they are trying to figure out how to duplicate Coco's Curry, leading some of them to wonder what they might put in their Curry that makes them crave it so. There is even a Facebook page dedicated to Coco's Curry House...and yes, I have become a "fan" of it since I returned as well. Also, I never realized how often the Japanese use eggs with their rice. I have started using the meat, eggs, rice, curry combination since returning myself. The only thing that I didn't care for is when they would include seaweed near the bottom of the menu item. Many people love it. I just am not one of those people, so I would eat until I would get to that, and eat around it.

I was fortunate enough to be blessed with a son who loves to cook. He is exceptional. He wins the Barbecue cookoffs, Chili Cookoffs, etc, at I believe every Airforce Base that he has been stationed at, and he has been in the service for eleven years. His apartment is home to many plaques and trophys as evidence of his culinary skills. I was getting really spoiled while staying at their apartment.

One day, we figured we would go to town and look around. I didn't really know exactly where we were, but  it turns out we were in Tachikawa. Right out of the Chuo Line train station, there was a large pedestrian bridge overlooking the town. On the face of one building in front of us was a large "Diamond Vision" type monitor, and to the right was a tall McDonald's restaurant and a Pachinko Hall across from it. On the left was an older looking part of the town with shops that you would expect to see in a more traditional, less modern part of Japan intermingled with the occasional 7-11, and Starbucks. We came down off the pedestrian bridge and wandered around the old section, it was somewhat crowded but filled with interesting shops containing really cool items that are probably typical in Japan, but unique for the States. Interesting lamps, and such. Then it began to rain. It figures. Out in the rain in the middle of town and no umbrella. I did notice that outside these shops, they had containers for their customers to leave their umbrellas in while they shopped. If someone was in the shop with their umbrella, they were respectfully escorted to the bucket outside the store to deposit it until they were done shopping. They couldn't bring them into the shop. I wondered how people didn't lose their umbrellas to stangers in this way, but apparently that just doesn't happen or else they aren't concerned if it does. 

After being rained on for a while (the shops were really small, so you didn't want to just hang out like you might at the Mall), we decided to stop at the McDonald's on the corner to sit for a while and dry off. It was a skinny little McDonald's with no tables, only a counter to order at. How weird. I noticed that they had a 100 Yen menu: the Japanese equivalent of the dollar menu, but in the exchange rates of that time it was like the buck and a quarter menu for us. Then I discovered that they had a stairwell to the side. Adam ordered our meal (I tried the Teriyaki McBurger), and Megan, Abigail and I proceeded up the narrow stairwell. Second floor, still no place to sit. Apparently the first floor is for ordering your food, if you want coffee you order that on the second floor. Mercifully there were tables on the third floor. Our meal was somewhat typical, but the buns seemed a bit softer than back home, and the Teriyaki McBurger was okay but messy. After lunch, we decided that it was time to head home and out of the rain.