Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Yet another entry that gives subtle clues as to my entirely convenience store-sustained existence.

Look at this. This is the most amazing thing ever. It took me a long time to discover these - the conbini onigiri. Onigiri are a traditional kind of Japanese snack that can be packed into a lunchbox or eaten on its own between meals, much in the same way as in the west we would smoke a few cigarettes or eat a bogey. Onigiri are compressed rice triangles (people say ‘rice balls’ but they really aren’t ball shaped at all. Haha! I said balls!) wrapped in nori, thin sheets of dried seaweed.

Traditionally, onigiri is just rice, although there are many variations - ones made with sesame seeds, more green stuff or a single umeboshi pressed into the center like a horrible lurking surprise, a bit like biting into a candy bar and finding a dead baby. Conbini onigiri get slightly more adventurous and have proper fillings, such as tuna, X+mayonnaise or chashu and spring onion.

Anyway, the amazingness has yet to be revealed. It took me a long time before I tried one of these because I always thought that, having stood on the cooler shelf for the better part of the day, the seaweed wrapping would have become soggy through contact with the rice, making for a kind of damp seaweed rice-chunk ball which really didn’t appeal to me seeing as it would probably taste like dolphin shit. However, it is only recently I discovered that the wrapping of these convenience store onigiri is NOTHING SHORT OF GENIUS.

The plastic wrapping comes in two layers, but pulls off as one. The top part protects the outside of the onigiri as would a normal wrapper. The OTHER layer though, is UNDERNEATH the seaweed layer, separating it from the rice and thus preserving the crispness of the seaweed. It truly is a miracle of convenience eating.

It’s stuff like this that helps perpetuate the common myth of Japan being this highly advanced society, until you see that I have to heat my bath water with kerosene, people eat rotten soybeans because ‘”it’s healthy” and that slapping someone on the head or saying something like “uma-ii”* whilst eating raw horse is the highest form of comedy.

In other news, we had our annual Junior High English Recitation Contest last week. This is where students recite English passages and awards are given to those with the best pronunciation, tone, speed etc. It is an opportunity for JETs to really see some tangible results from their efforts at helping with English at school. Most JETs help out with training the students in the weeks before the contest.

At the contest, the student’s voices ranged wildly from robotically monotone, the kind of voice you would use at a eulogy when really hungover - to the other extreme, of alarmingly spasmodic changes in pitch and volume making it sound like they were fighting the urge to break down in tears whilst having stalagmite after stalagmite thrusted up their arses. It’s difficult really, because even when speaking Japanese, the average Junior High student is, tonally, gratingly awful to listen to. Call it a lack of passion or culturally ingrained stoicism, the kids in general speak with a kind of monotony that has a plateau of boredom well above that of Keanu Reeves or a low budget porn star during a dialogue scene.

So the onus falls largely on the JET, who has to coach the students into using their voices and emotion a bit more, all to gain those few extra points in the name of competition.

My 1st grade kids got 3rd place in the competition, which I was extremely pleased with (lets not kid around, I literally wet my pants with joy and thanked baby Jesus as the announcer read out the results) considering the competition was pretty much dominated (as usual) by the larger, city schools in the area. Special mention must go to one of the Japanese judges, a teacher at a local high school here, who spoke English with an amazingly strong London accent. It brought a curious, nostalgic smile to my face when he spoke in English after his Japanese, especially hearing it clash horribly with his super polite keigo:

“..sureba yoi to omoimasu desu keredomo- see wot you need to fink abaat is the pace and you need to stop lookin’ at the ceiling when you is talkin’ and- “

So yeah in summary - my kids frickin’ rock.

• a hilarious’ example of Japanese word play. “uma ii” can be translated in a grammatically loose fashion as “good horse”, and “umai” means “delicious”. Thus saying “uma ii” whilst eating raw horse (a common delicacy around here) is tremendously funny. It is the humour equivalent of calling yum-yums “yummy”, or saying something like “this is crabbingly great!”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2003 at 6:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.