New Year remembrances

January 4, 2009

Ahhh the first column of 2009. A blank piece of paper or blank screen on the computer that I can actually turn into something stupendous or stupid.

New Years Eve was very quiet for me. Scott had to work, Erin, Ping and Ji Eun were at a New Years celebration at Parker Baptist, and Ariel had driven to Columbus to ring in the new year with her Lockheart sisters. So here I sat all by myself enjoying the peace and quiet of my inner sanctum. I turned on the TV just to see when the “ball” would drop in Times Square and listen to Auld Lang Syne.

I started thinking about the many people and events that have happened in my lifetime of 55 years that are complete standouts. Having the Asian exchange students living with us is a constant reminder of when I was their age and my Mom and Dad were host parents of Lee and Hideaki. Lee stayed and became a US citizen. Hideaki went back to Japan and we went to visit him during the Christmas of 1969. That is an event that I will never ever forget.

People constantly ask Ping and Ji Eun about what has been the most difficult or different thing to them while living here. Aside from the language differences they usually both answer the food. And while we have tried to find Asian food for them to eat, as Ji Eun likes to say, it’s so so. I suspect it’s also because its not their Mama’s cooking.

Spending time in a foreign land is hard enough trying to learn their customs and picking up the language and then there are the food differences. When my family was in Japan in 1969 it was cold. I just thought it got cold here. Nope. It gets beyond cold in Japan. We are practically tropical here. I love rice and that wasn’t a big issue. Sleeping on the tatami was not a problem. As a matter of fact I had Scott build me a traditional Japanese bed and it is the best sleep I have had in years.

Opening the refrigerator one morning to discover the pretty white bowl that had tentacles hanging over the sides just about did me in. Mom and I had gone into the kitchen of Hideaki’s mom to cook up some eggs American style. When I opened that little refrigerator to get the eggs and there sat that bowl full of tentacles, well needless to say, I was extremely suspicious of anything and everything I ate after that. If it wasn’t obviously beef, chicken, shrimp, or rice with dried seaweed, it did not pass through my lips!

Another ‘adventure’ in Japan centered on going to the toilet. We joke in the US about worshiping the great white porcelain throne which usually means some one is sick as a dog and barfing up their toes. Well you go to the Asian countries and you are in the traditional homes or a non-western hotel and you will suddenly start longing for that type of idol worship!
The common old everyday toilet with a seat and tank like we are used to is not the norm in the Asian nations. They have squat toilets. Uh huh. You read that correctly. Imagine this. I was 15 years old, in a foreign land for the first time, in a traditional Japanese home and had to go to the bathroom to relieve myself after that long ride from the airport that has a runway that begins right at the literal edge of the Sea of Japan. Our host points me in the direction of the rest room and I went in and there is no toilet that I could see. There was what appeared to be a sink in the floor but no toilet seat. Hmmm. There is a toilet paper holder on the wall with a roll of paper on it right down on near that hole in the floor. Then I noticed the flush handle. I also noticed there is a small sliding frosted glass window at the floor level and at the ceiling level. And they are both slightly open creating a cold windy effect in there.

So I backed out of the room and came face to face with Obaha-san or the grandmother. Obaha-san doesn’t speak a lick of English and the only word in Japanese that I could muster at this painful point is bano or bathroom. She silently points back in that cold little room smiling in that enigmatic Asian way. Then she showed me how to pull the handle and I watched that little sink in the floor and realized in horror that I am going to have to squat and hover over this thing to do my business. Obaha-san closed the door of the water closet and left me in there as she tottered away chuckling to herself probably thinking to herself that crazy Americans don’t know how to use a proper toilet.

It was a bit unsettling to be squatting over a water filled porcelain hole in the floor with a small window right beside my……ummm…. foot. All of a sudden I could hear voices and feet appeared right outside that window. Needless to say, I got out of there in a hurry. Mom had a somewhat similar experience. Several days later on one of our trips out into the countryside of Japan, Mom happened to notice a public bathroom that had the word Alien stenciled on the door. Curiosity got the better of her and to our delight it was a good old American style toilet. After that we were on the constant look out for the word Alien. We were indeed worshiping that great white porcelain throne.

I am sure that Ping and Ji Eun haven’t had that strange adjustment to make but they do have some funny stories to tell when they get home in the spring and most of them will probably be about have something to do with food, squid and my reaction to seeing those tentacles. They learned early on not to bring the squid out of their care packages from their families in my presence. I still have an aversion to anything with tentacles and suction cups! Even to this day 40 years later.