yes, you may

To celebrate the end of the semester, one of my schools had a office get-together on Friday night at a restaurant. We do this kind of thing every few months and it's always been at a Japanese place or the occasional neighboring cuisine, like Chinese or Korean. This time, however, we went to an Indian restaurant and that apparently changed everything. I know this sounds like another food post, but really, it's about my coworkers' behavior more than anything else.

I knew things were a bit off when I arrived and saw that all the women were wearing little press-on sparkly things on their foreheads in some kind of attempt to look Indian. No one had attempted to dress up for our previous meals (I saw no one in a hanbok when we ate yakiniku) and I was at a loss to guess why. I started to piece it together when I looked at the expression on people's faces as they gazed at the menu (often with their mouths agape) and when I kept hearing the question "Have you eaten Indian food before?*" Eventually, I figured it out: despite its proliferation, Indian food is actually exotic to the average Japanese person.

*Not to digress, but I must point out the choice of words here. Japanese people love to ask foreigners if they can eat Japanese food, a question that makes no sense when that foreigner has been living in Japan and eating school lunches for nearly two years. I fielded a variant of that question that same day in fact. Yet with other cuisines, it's always "have you eaten this" or "do you like this" which is just small talk. What's with the double standard?

This is something I find very surprising. Curry is absolutely integrated into the Japanese diet at this point. It's so common that it shows up in our school lunches at least once a month. Whether it's due to Japanese short-sightedness or simple ignorance, it would seem that few Japanese people actually consider curry's foreign origin. They just know what "curry" is and rarely consider what's in it; the way these people looked at the list of available dishes, you'd think that they were looking at an advanced chemistry textbook.

As for me, I love Indian food and I have been to many different Indian restaurants in and around Osaka in the past few years. I had not been to this particular one, of course, but the menu was pretty standard so I was not surprised by anything I saw (I was disappointed they had no vindaloo though). As a result, I found myself in a rare leadership position where people were looking to me for advice. Even though the menu and the waiter explained everything in Japanese more clearly than I ever could, it was up to me to recommend dishes and drinks for all. For example, no one applied that green spicy sauce to their food until after I did it, and then suddenly it was all over everyone's plates. I only wish they had followed my lead on the silverware, but instead every single one of them used chopsticks whenever possible. Tell me that isn't strange.

I'm sure you're thinking, "But Dan, don't you work in the sticks? Of course they were intimidated by the exoticism of Indian food!" I may work in the rural fringe of Osaka but I don't live there and neither do a majority of the teachers in Hana Town. Lots of them have traveled abroad and one teacher in particular lived in Holland for four years, so these are not hill people who are easily frightened by modern conveniences or the outside world.

I hope this doesn't come off as me making fun of anyone or expressing my disappointment with how the evening turned out. The food was quite nice, the drinks were free (few things in life are as wonderful as a Kingfisher in one hand and a mango lassi in the other) and it was kind of fun to be in a position of power for once. I'm just surprised at how intimidated they all seemed in the face of a commonplace cuisine like Indian food. I hope they came away from it as satisfied as I did, because I'd love to have more variety in our gatherings. Not just for the sake of variety but for value. Our typical Japanese dining experience runs me over 5500 Yen and I'm usually a bit hungry at the end. On Friday I only spent 4500 and I was stuffed. And at the risk of being selfish, it felt good knowing exactly what I was eating for a change.

The only downside to all this was I was too full and it was too late to go into the city afterwards to try and attend a sayonara party for the departing JETs. I will try to make it to this Friday's pub quiz for one last chance to bid some folks farewell. I can't say I was completely satisfied with my social life this past year but I'm glad I made a greater effort to make myself visible. The baby is going to make it harder to go out this next year but I'm not going to make any excuses. We'll find out soon enough, as the new JETs arrive next week. Bring on the newbies!

Labels: but I love gatherings, food, Indian food, Japan, JET