It’s Tuesday, lunchtime, and I’m sitting at my desk eating a bento lunch I picked up at 7-11 while walking in to work today. The Japanese convenience stores are great. There’s no way I would walk into a 7-11 in the US for a meal, not unless it was for a roadtrip coffee and doughnut. Today for 700 yen (about $5.80 US) this is what I have for lunch: rice mixed with mushrooms, tofu, and soy sauce; a small piece of salmon; a slice of fried sweet potato; a mushroom; a bit of seaweed; two soybeans; and a relatively decently sized salad. A reasonably healthy meal at a not-bad price. I’m not too sure if I’ll eat all the seaweed, but everything else looks good.
As details from A Hollywood Christmas trickle over to me, I am reminded things I miss about being in Reno. Granted, I am really enjoying being in Japan teaching at Kanda. I mean, where else would I be able to give a workshop on magnetic poetry? (Yes, that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I did do the workshop and it was great for the participants.) Holiday time, I’m finding, is a bit lonely. The mother of my tutee asked me last night while she was driving me to the station if I was going to attend any Christmas parties. I am going to a few: there’s the one for work; the one for another group I’m involved with; the one for students I’m helping to organize…and I’m fortunate enough to be able to spend Christmas day with friends sipping champagne on the beach, but I miss my people.
Admittedly, without my people around Thanksgiving was a bit pathetic (if not funny in retrospect)…me sitting at the kitchen table that was half covered with clutter, eating chicken and not-very-good mashed potatoes, wishing I could have found some stuffing at least, and listening to Black Sabbath (for what is Thanksgiving without Black Sabbath?). However, it was better than doing nothing.
But back to my lunch. I’ve moved on to the salad. It is mostly shredded cabbage with corn. There was a cherry tomato and a small broccoli bit and about a tablespoon of finely shredded carrot. I keep chasing around the same bits of corn with my chopsticks. It might be time to get out the big guns and dig out the spork I have in my desk for such emergencies. To go with my lunch I bought a fruit juice box from the vending machine downstairs. It's called "fruits au lait". I didn't read the box before I bought it and just saw the fruits part (when stuff is in Japanese I try to get by reading as little as possible). The au lait part is what makes the drink weird. It tastes like pez that have been crushed and dissolved in milk. And on further inspection, it's only 10 % juice. Oh well, it's better than the black sesame seed au lait I tried last week.
