It would be such a shame to let my Smithsonian training go to waste so this week I introduced my new tour, "Let's Explore a Japanese Grocery Store!" My hairstylist, Kumi, earned a big tip for helping me weigh the relative merits of the grocery store in the Daiei Mall and the one in the basement of Seiyu Department Store. From now on, though, I'm not going to raise any thorny questions until AFTER Kumi rinses out the color, at least from my eyebrows.
The first tour was for two hospital spouses who arrived in Japan this summer just a few weeks before the Navy moved their sponsor to another country. "I need something called mirin for a recipe I want to try," one of them said as she glanced at a list in her leatherbound organizer. "There are several ways to find what you need in a Japanese grocery store," explained the tour guide. "Allow me to demonstrate my two favorite methods."
- Tour guide positions herself in the center of an aisle, gazes steadily at the fourth shelf, furrows brow, and scratches head. Tour guide expects a nice Japanese lady to ask if she needs help but they all trip over each other to vacate the aisle, murmuring something that sounds a lot like "Why is Morticia Addams staring at the soba noodles?"
- Tour guide approaches a clerk stocking nearby shelves. "Sumimasen, mirin? Mee-ren? Mere-en? My-reen?" The clerk leads tour guide and hospital spouses to another aisle and points out 17 different varieties of mirin which comes in a bottle and looks an awful lot like urine.
Having instilled confidence in her charges, tour guide wanders around the store looking for something to buy because the final module of her tour, the Grand Finale if you will, is "Paying for Your Purchases" which requires a prop or two. What better prop than a box of mushroom-shaped cookies? Back home, without an audience, she takes another look at the cookies she bought.
Hmmm. This box seems a little larger than the ones I usually buy. It IS larger!
Why are these pictures posted sideways? I have no idea. I also don't know why I can't type next to the pictures today. Just touch your left ear to your left shoulder and keep looking. Did you notice that the mushroom caps are both brown and white on the box above?
There sure are a lot of little pictures on the side of the box.
I think I bought a Make Your Own Mushroom-Shaped Cookie Kit! Those look like little vials of white and regular chocolate, a mold, a bag of cookie stems, and a box.
It looks like all I need to do is heat water to 50 degrees Centigrade. How hot is that? How would I know? I'm a Fahrenheit person. But there's a little cloud over the spout so let's assume we're supposed to boil some water. And we need a bowl and crayons. Why do we need crayons?
Elementary, my dear Watson. According to the directions on the back of the box, we need the crayons to color the little box that's inside this box. Sorry, you missed it. I took two line spouses (line means regular Navy as opposed to doctors, dentists, lawyers, chaplains, and supply officers) on a tour Friday afternoon. One has lived in Japan for two years but (a) did not know there is a grocery store under Seiyu and (b) had never heard of mushroom-shaped cookies.
I've never even lived in Japan and _I_ know about mushroom-shaped cookies! What has she been doing for two years?! Does she know about the 100 yen store at least??
ReplyDeleteBTW, have you been to a Lawsons? I am fascinated that there would be a store named Lawsons when they cannot pronounce the word.
gk
Yes, she took charge of the 100 yen store tour. There are several Lawsons withing spitting distance of the base. Someone told me it's a Midwest transplant, maybe Ohio. I don't remember them from growing up in Michigan.
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