The Lobster Dance

I had actually been considering changing the name of this “column” to something without the word gaijin in it. The word 外人 (outsider) might be considered a contraction of the term 外国人, foreigner; literally outside-country-person. Among the foreign population of Japan, there are some of us who embrace the term gaijin and some of us who hate it. Today, most Japanese are taught to refer to us as gaikokujin (外国人), or, better yet, the polite term: 外国人の方, literally, a foreigner-person, with the final part being the polite term for a person. This, of course, never stops the drunk middle-aged men outside the Korean yakiniku place from calling me a gaijin, but times are changing. And so, I thought, perhaps I should use a more politically correct term.

From Wikimedia Commons via the USDA.

My line of thinking changed the day I tried to make Mexican food. Although I enjoy the spectrum of Mexican-esque food in the US, from heavily Americanized Mexican fast food (Chipotle, Moe’s) to what might be more authentic Mexican food (a restaurant called Carmen’s deep in southern Colorado), I’ve never actually made it myself.* My chance came when my sempai in the city sent me a recipe for tostadas that a colleague had used for a Mexican cooking class. Naturally, as we live in Japan, this recipe had been translated into Japanese.

All of you regular readers know that I read and speak Japanese at a high level, but reading or translating recipes is one of my specialties. I pride myself on being able to read cookbooks and recipes (and all printed material for which I’m not actually trying to produce a translation) without having to translate them first. (Second-language learners know that the jump from “translate everything” to “just read and occasionally use a dictionary” is the critical jump in that nebulous thing we call fluency).

However, as the Japanese say, 猿も木から落ちる: Even monkeys fall from trees.

This tostada recipe was fairly simple: make tortillas (well, tostadas) by mixing “corn flour” and water, then cooking in a frying pan; then top with seasoned chicken, lettuce, tomato, cheese, avocado, etc. I wasn’t sure if the big grocery store in town or the bigger one in the next town over would have this, but it so happened that I ended up at the import grocery store first. The store had a packet of cornmeal (コーンミール) for a reasonable price. I didn’t have the recipe on me, so I bought that, figuring that if it were not the right starch for my tostadas, I would just make corn bread for the Program Thanksgiving party.

Several weeks later, I revisit this recipe. The recipe calls for トウモロコシ粉, or corn flour. I look at my package. I have コーンミール (cornmeal). Being unexperienced in the ways of tortillas/tostadas, I am confused as to whether this is one of those occasions where the Japanese have two names for something. Powdered sugar, for example is パウダーシュガー (paudaa shugaa), from the English, as well as 粉砂糖 (kona zatou), a more Japanese way of describing the product as “flour sugar.” Therefore, cornmeal and corn flour could be the same! I consult the Internet in Japanese, and discover that apparently many people wonder this and no one seems to have a quick answer. So I add my water to my cornmeal and let it sit, per the instructions.

Did you know that cornmeal and corn flour aren’t the same thing? The cornmeal does not take the water like the flour is supposed to, so I consult English Google. (Why I didn’t do this in the first place is beyond me.) Yeah, not the same thing at all. According to the recipe, I can make the tostadas with flour and egg, but that doesn’t solve the problem at hand—what do I do with my 125 grams of cornmeal sitting in 200 mL of water? It seems like a waste to pitch it. So I consult the Internet again—the Japanese recipes I get are mostly to add a little cornmeal to breads, but the English results give me polenta, which is sort of similar to cream of wheat but with cornmeal. It’s a creamy corn porridge, popular all over the world, but most famous as an Italian food for peasants. Most recipes say that, like cream of wheat, the polenta should be made by pouring the cornmeal in a thin stream into a pot of boiling water, but it’s too late for that. I add another 200 mL of water, throw the whole thing in my frying pan, and heat. Looking at another recipe, I add about 5 grams of butter, a handful of shredded cheese, salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme (1/2 tsp. each), and cut the kernels off of half an ear of corn I had cooked the day before. In 10 minutes, I had creamy, delicious polenta, which I have been eating as a side dish to a chicken breast that I sautéed with bell peppers, black beans, and tomatoes. Gaijin Chef Smash!

Delicious polenta!

To answer the question I raised in the first part of this post, when I write The Gaijin Chef articles, it’s partially to introduce the art of cooking in Japan as a foreigner. Not the art of Japanese cooking, but what it’s like to go from full-sized ovens and cheap and plentiful cheese and hamburger buns (and veggie burgers, oh god…) to being a foreigner the land of oven ranges, bamboo, and no English on food products. The Gaijin Chef is meant to make you laugh a little, because living abroad is so ridiculous sometimes.** But, perhaps most of all, it’s meant to show that even being a bilingual with a fancy Master’s degree and seven years of mostly formal Japanese study and 1.5 of immersion under her belt isn’t safe from linguistic and cultural issues in the kitchen–or anywhere. Living abroad as a bilingual doesn’t mean you will understand everything or that magically all things—especially conversations and readings critical to your health, well being, and visa status—won’t be difficult, unpleasant, and confusing.*** (Like a cornmeal tostada.)

Cooking in a foreign country is scary as hell. The first time I went grocery shopping and had to cook dinner in Japan, I nearly had a panic attack. Food is a basic necessity for living. Take away access to food and grocery aisles labeled in one’s native language and add unfamiliar products, differently arranged grocery stores, new (and tiny) cooking elements, the metric system, and even the most basic element of daily life can be a daunting task–bilingual or not.

So, hats off to all gaijin chefs all over the world. May we all be able to someday say, “I came, I saw, I conquered the culinary world.”

I can’t say I’ve conquered it yet, but I do have polenta as a consolation prize. 諦めないぞ！

Notes

*Unless you count buying frozen tortillas and making “taco meat” with a hearty glug of A1 barbeque sauce when I lived in the suburbs of Ohio, because I sure don’t. Although it is making me drool a bit.

** Once, at the grocery store, I forgot how to say 紅ショウガ. “It’s pink, made from ginger, and comes in a jar,” I told him in Japanese. Apparently, the Japanese think it is red, and, at this store, it comes in a pouch.

***When I got my cell phone and when I helped my non-Japanese-speaking friend get hers, the clerks looked at me as if I were an idiot because I didn’t understand words like contract (一括) and payment plan. It’s specialized vocabulary. Going to the doctor is always a real treat; I want to expand my medical vocabulary so I don’t need to rely on my electronic dictionary, but if the doctor speaks good English and I’m very sick, I don’t mind at all. (Bad English just complicates the problem, though…) Fluency is a tenuous term. When am I not just bilingual but actually fluent? When I can do my taxes without my (non-English-speaking) boss’s help? When I can understand all the legalese of my cell-phone contact? When I can read the economic news in the 朝日新聞　without a dictionary (and without falling asleep)? Can I even do these things in English?