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The cafeteria at the school I teach at offers a daily A lunch and a B lunch. A is usually fish and B is meat. They also serve ramen, curry, and udon/soba (I hate both). Last week I went with the B lunchez every day so Ch-Ch-Check it:

MEAT: Breaded pork (?) that is topped with some cold wet shredded daikon.
MEAT PLATE SIDES: raw shredded cabbage and three cold french fries. And 3 pickle slices.
THINGS IN A SMALL BOWL: Two squishy potato(?) things and two “coins” of carrots.
RICE: Yes.
MISO SOUP: Warm
DRINK: O–i Ocha. Green tea from the vending machines at one end of the room.
DELICIOUS POINTS OUT OF FIVE: The pork was ok and the squishy things are alright as well. The cold wet daikon shreds are a little too strong and too cold and too wet. THREE

MEAT: OH GOD SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE THE INSIDES OF A TAUNTAUN.
MEAT PLATE SIDES: Cold slippery onion slices, shredded cabbage.
THINGS IN A SMALL BOWL: Potato salad.
RICE: Yes.
MISO SOUP: Hot.
DRINK: More Oi Ocha.
DELICIOUS POINTS OUT OF FIVE: A good solid THREE point FIVER because the meat was surprisingly better tasting than looking.

MEAT: Hot and round meatloaf (Hamubaagu) with a fried egg on top. Plus Sauce (soosu)!
MEAT PLATE SIDES: Cabbage, part of a small, hard potato. Four green beans.
THINGS IN A SMALL BOWL: Same as Monday no?
RICE: Yes.
MISO SOUP: Good Enough
DRINK: 500ml of sweat that someone added a teaspoon of sugar to. That person then poured the mixture into a bottle and then they slapped on the greatest label ever and let it chill in the vending machine until I bought it because everything else good was sold out.
DELICIOUS POINTS OUT OF FIVE: How about a FOUR? It was good enough !

MEAT: They called it Shabu Shabu but really it was pre-slightly-boiled thinly cut pork with sesame sauce on it. Maybe that is Shabu Shabu but they did not let me boil it myself so it was not.
MEAT PLATE SIDES: Onions, cabbage, Three french fries.
THINGS IN A SMALL BOWL: Some tofu that is like a sponge, and 1 cents of carrot.
RICE: Yes.
MISO SOUP: Yes.
DRINK: Iemon tea that I bought at the AM-PM across the street in the morning. It came with a free tenugui of Japanese design that was made in China.
DELICIOUS POINTS OUT OF FIVE: The sauce made the meat. Like always there was just enough to eat. How about FOUR again because I am getting bored writing this.

MEAT: Breaded chicken cutlet.
MEAT PLATE SIDES: Some Cold spaghetti, cabbage (!) and some bitter peas and corn and carrots.
THINGS IN A SMALL BOWL: Jagaimo! Meat n’ taters in some cold broth. GOOD.
RICE: No I mean YES of course
MISO SOUP: Yes with lots more seaweed than any other day
DRINK: Another bottle of tea bought because of the freebie towell and also because I like it.
DELICIOUS POINTS OUT OF FIVE: Oh Heck–>FIVE because the chicken was pretty good.

SPECIAL MESSAGE

The only thing that would make this shirt even better is if Helvetica was written in Arial!

HAH HAH

AWESOME!

R to L

Right: Food

Left: Drink

Yesterday at the counter at the Kentucky Fried Chicken by my house, I was looking over the menu while waiting for the previous customer to get their food. The KFC menu is (like all other Japanese fast food shops) very colorful and full of photographs of what is served. Unlike other shops, it also has English translations for nearly every bit of Japanese on it. (To be fair, the backside of the McDonald’s menu is in English, and often the clerks will turn it over as you come to place an order.) At the bottom there is the usual fine print, and upon further looking I noticed the following was written:

EXACTLY.
A concise statement on photographic theory brought to you by KFC.

For practice, I will write this post in both Japanese and English. I’m looking at another Saturday night home alone and what else would I be doing?
Two possible answers could be Reading books or Cussing out the computer mariokart players for being so cheap.

Like mentioned a while ago, I decided to take a picture of each of my dinner meals for a week. And I did. So did Justin,except his food pictures make me hungry and jealous. My pictures of my dinners will tug at your hearstrings (the ones tuned to “Pity”, not the “life is beautiful” or “tragic romance” ones) , or they will churn your stomach out of disgust (for me and what I eat).

じゃー皆さんこんばんは。土曜日の夜です。いつものとおりヒトリでアパートにいる。こんど他の人間と話せるのはいつだろうか？もし今日また７−１１へ行ったら多分レジのおねさんとレジ的の会話しますが、そうしなかったら多分明日かな？でも多分ノー。だから月曜日みたいね。毎週と同じ。
しょーーーーがーーーないーー。
とりあえず、専修（違う！）先週 の日曜日から毎晩の晩ご飯の写真を撮った。
”ジョンって、いったいどのような物を食べてるんでしょうか”　とよーく考えてる人は何人いると思うので、ぜひこんな下手の日本語で楽しくて読んで、キモイ食べ物写真をみてください。

Sunday

After some book store looking (and buying) in Kita-senju I went to the local MOS Burger and decided to start the week off all healthy so I got the Fish Sandwich and a salad with a large Tea to drink. MOS stands for Mountain, Ocean, Sun. “Japanese Original Burger” is what the napkins say and “Hamburger is My Life” is printed on posters that are hung in the shops.

Also, I hate tomatoes.

アメリカ人が　”モス　バーガー”を聞くとどんなイメージするのでしょうか？”モス”は　『山、海、日』からきたが、英語で”モス”という言葉がある。”モス”はすごく”Moss”に聞こえる。Moss = コケ。　コケバーガー。。。ベジテーリアンが好きそう。
ところで、トマト大嫌い。

Monday

I can walk 10 minutes to a place and get tuna rolls pretty much anytime I want. Coming from Nebraska I find this amazing, but if you are from San Francisco then it is business as usual.
TRUE STORY I went to San Francisco to meet a friend in 2003. He lived near in Dublin which is near Oakland. At the train station was a cinderblock building that offered Japanese and Chinese food and I got some tuna rolls there. Talking with the 40-something year old Chinese man behind the counter/window I mentioned where I was from and he said “Nebraska? I went to the university there!” and went on to mention some things about the campus that were true to UNL. I believed him.

When I buy sushi at the grocery store or like in Monday’s case, from a specialty take-out sushi shop, the person ringing me up will ask “Can you use chopsticks?” probably more often than they ask “Do you need chopsticks?”.
I say “No”, and not out of complete and total inability to use them OR because I have no idea what those two little poles of wood in her hand are, but because I much prefer to use my fingers.

“Ooogga Booogga ! I’m just a cave-man ! “ is something that I often say in my mind in such situtations.

“Can you eat a Japanese __________ (insert name of a fruit here) ?”
“Ooogaa Booga what this “Apple / Pear / Orange / etc ?”

鉄火巻き。もし待ったら安くかえますね。俺ってかなしくない？
よく日本で寿司を買う時に、 ”お箸いりますか？”より、”お箸使いますか？”のうほうが聞かれるかも。まーねー　
私は別に怒らないけど　”フォーク使える？”　という答えるアメリカ人の友達いる。

Tuesday

Tuesday’s dinner came in two parts. The first was a totally decent bowl of Sapporo Salt Ramen near Matsudo station. The way the camera took that photo makes it look like I ate off of a plate and not from the large and deep bowl that the soup came in. This shop is staffed by the usual Cool Ramen Shop type; young men who dress hip outside of work and have the thick black frame glasses, longish hair, and sweat Cool. Think “Local Hand-made Pizza Parlor worker” kind of folks for a rough American equivalent.

The box with the mushrooms, headless shrimp, and kit-kat is what was served at the semester closing party for my Matsudo City Japanese class. I do not eat shrimp because they make my mouth feel huge and itchy, and also because they are bugs.

札幌ラーメンだ。松戸はいい店たくさんある。
ちらし寿司はおいしかったが海老食べられない。海老すきじゃないです。エビちゃんも好きじゃない！小顔ってタイプじゃないー　ぎゃくに私のあこがれは『広顔』だ。
んーでもそう言ったら女性が怒るかな。。。

Wednesday

HOME COOKING. The Curry comes in micro-waveable plastic pockets, and after two minutes it is hot enough to eat when poured over two pieces of White Bread (1/3rd of a 6-slice loaf). This does not take much longer to eat than it does to make. I’m not saying it is all that great, just that it lies comfortably within a narrow overlap of two important categories: “SOMETHING I CAN MAKE” and “SOMETHING I HAVE THE PATIENCE TO MAKE”.
What you see here is simply (and eloquently) a physical manifestation of a Venn diagram expressing tasteless sustenance.　 I guess Beth summed it up best the next day at school when I showed her this picture.
“You really need a wife.”
I agree, but this entry will not help my already slim odds of finding one, provided that any possible Future Wifes might be reading this.
Also, “Future Wifes” sounds so much weirder than “Future Wives”.

これって『グルメー』と思わないけど作るのは簡単、安いです。昔から聞いてたけど、”一本のタバコ吸ったら人生は二分で短くなる”ということあるみたいです。　この晩ご飯のせいで何十分もなくなるでしょ。

Thursday

With the full intention of spending 2 hours studying at McDonalds, I went to the one near my local Train Station and went with something delicious. FUN FACT: I never had a Big Mac until I came to Japan in 2004.
I ate my “food” (cough cough) and then cracked open my Kanji book. But that is as far as I got because the piped in Muzak is of the worst kind: Really bad R&B, stuff that there can’t possibly be even an internet radio station for. Sometimes a song that Kanye West will use in one of his beats will come on but other than that the music sucks to the point that I just have to pack up and leave.
Who is this “girl” everyone is singing about, and why is she always leaving?
Why won’t she just come back?”

マック。
なんとなくそれより何も言えないな。　なつかしい味するから食べると言いたいんですけれど。北松戸のマックは１２月レニュアルしたんので、本当にきれいになった。明るくて、ナイスな席もたくさんあるからそこでよく勉強しに行く。
ですがー
音楽は耳が痛くなるほどださくて、１０分ごろしかガマンできない。北松戸のモスの音楽は大丈夫けど店は暗い。

Friday

Fear not, as Mexican food in Japan is not served with 2/3rds of your entree already eaten. It was just not until finishing my second enchilada that I realized I forgot to photograph this bounty of tasty nourishment. Keeping it quite real at El Torito in Shinjuku. Plus they have free chips and salsa. For those of you not in Japan, Mexican food is a treat here- I am within walking distance of 2 very good Indian owned Curry Restaurants, and 20 minutes within probably 8 dozen more, but Mexican is much harder to come by.
That said, I don’t think I could live somewhere in the states that lacked a good Indian restaurant.

Saturday

Today I came back and developed an easy 24 rolls of film over a few hours. Soon after I was hungry and wouldn’t you know it, I had some bread, a banana, and a pack of microwaveable curry.
Can visually admitting what I eat be an act of contrition?
If so, the point would then be to not Sin again. However I still have one more curry packet left.

If Cuisine were religion, I would forever be knee-deep in purgatory.

”またかよ？！”　と思ってるでしょう。
私もね、これを作ったらまったく同じ言葉言うよ。