A Southern Expatriate: Takoyaki Party!!!

Making Takoyaki

The next morning I woke up all alone in the room I feel asleep

BOOTSSSS

Cowboy Family

in. Apparently they all stayed up for two more hours while I was sleeping, so they closed all the doors and went in the other room and left me all on my lonesome. That morning we went to this restaurant called Cowboy Family, probably the best name I have ever heard of. Right when we walked in the door, I knew I was at home. The hours were posted with some sensible cowboy boots and all the staff were dressed up like cowboys. I always wondered what Asians thought American food was, I guess this is it. There was this old country music blaring, not like Leann Rimes in her glory days, like Vernon Dalhart's The Prisoner's Song old. When I saw the waitresses in the cowboy outfits I HAD to ask to get a picture. They didn't seem to amused, but I don't know when I am coming back to Japan so I don't really care what they thought. What was funny about the restaurant is, you don't have the same server. Whoever is available to serve you, does, and you don't have to tip, which is nice, but a little awkward for me. There is this button you press when you need service and a little bell rings and they all say in unison something like, "We are on our way", or something like that to let you know they are coming to help you. I also knew I was in an American themed restaurant because of the abundance of napkins, it was like heaven, and also the Texas flag on the wall gave me a little hint as well. After we ate, we went to a little shrine close to Riza's house because we had to burn these little charms and things they had in their house. You have to burn them after a certain date so when we got to the the shrine there was already a huge pile of ash where people had thrown things in the fire. Riza gave me some things to throw in, I am sure they were all looking at me thinking, "Who is this stupid white boy that has no idea what he is doing?" but I threw those charms in that fire like I had been doing it my whole life. Then we went back to Riza's apartment to chill for a little while. I had another encounter with a weird Japanese TV show. This show Riza had on a DVD, and she loved to watch it when she was younger. It was just a TV show of a ball going through different mazes made out of house hold objects. I made fun of Riza for watching it, but after about ten minutes, I was hooked and just sat there in silence watching. I took a little nap and

TEXAS

then headed back over to the place where we had the little sleepover the night before. We were having a takoyaki party so we had to prepare. Takoyaki is like a pancake mix kind of, but isn't really sweet, and it has all of these things in it like sausage, green onions, and most importantly, octopus. I decided to eat some of the octopus before we put it in the bater, and let me tell you, unless you already know you love octopus, don't do it. It was rubbery and tentacley, which is not a word but I don't care. Riza's grandparents, who live in the building that we were having the party in, stopped by to say hello, so it was really nice to get to meet them, and her grandmother also bought pizza, which is nice because she probably knew that the American might not like the octopus. When all the people got there, Riza was once again the translator. I would find myself just listening to them all talk in Japanese and laugh when they laughed like I knew what was going on. One of my favorite things to do was to ask them to do an America accent while they were speaking Japanese. It was

Finally, Napkins!

hilarious listening to what they thought an American accent was. It was like listening to an Asian Valley girl speaking Japanese, it was great. One of Riza's friends took a picture of me when I was flipping the takoyaki and she captured a beautiful moment. She was pointing the camera at me and speaking in Japanese and she captured the face that I have been making the majority of the time. It is mainly the, "Are you talking to me?" face. So many times this trip, people have just started to talk to me and I have had no idea what is going on, so they are speaking to me in Japanese and I am talking back in English saying that I have no idea what is going on; the conversations don't really get anything accomplished. I was pretty good at flipping the takoyaki, which impressed all of Riza's friends! You have this little metal stick thing that you pick the takoyaki up with and flip it, it sounds pretty easy, but when you try and do it, it is pretty hard. After we ate the takoyaki, we had some chocolate fondue with strawberries and the takoyaki batter with nothing in it, it was really good. I also uploaded a video of me and Riza singing the song from the

Button you press to get service.

Chicken Ramen commercial. You should really youtube it, it is the cutest thing you will ever see, that seems to be a common theme in Japan. The rest of the night we all just hung out and talked to each other in foreign languages, but somehow we were all able to communicate. I think that it is only fitting that my Japanese word for this post be octopus, so here it is, タコ