SAKE PIKACHU
June 16th 2009 03:03
The week went by miserably. The longer I lived in the house, the messier I realised it was: underwear hung from everywhere, there were piles and piles of things occupying every free space besides the main entrance, they had no pantry – every bit of food and bottle of sauce and bit of leftover and piece of rubbish was left on the sink. My presents from Australia lay on the floor, unwrapped. I’d have fights with my host mother because I’d always come home late. I’d also have fights with her because neither of us could understand what we were saying. She took me to the groceries once and repeatedly asked me what the hell I wanted and I kept shrugging and saying,
“Nandemoii,” which I thought meant, “Just buy me whatever," and she’d look at me for a few painful minutes with an expression I couldn’t read.
Saturday came and I didn’t want to spend it with my host family, so I walked on over to Natalie’s house. She was eating katsudon with her host mother and another girl from our group, Celine.
“I’m spending the day with you guys!” I yelled at the lot of them, and to my surprise, they immediately agreed.
After taking us to a twelve storey, incredibly packed factory outlet in Osaka, Natalie’s host mother drove us to a sake souvenir factory that she loved to go to. She led us in and showed us all the bottles of sake. She went up to the girl behind the counter, and, after a few mumbles here and there she turned around and grinned at us. She pointed at the girl behind the counter, who was now pouring us unlimited shot glasses of sake to taste test. Ten minutes later we were all completely drunk.
“Party!” Natalie’s host mother yelled before kissing me quickly on the lips.
“That’s not right. That’s not right at all,” Celine slurred.
We then stumbled over to a nearby restaurant that had a largish statue of an ice cream cone in front of it. A lot of restaurants seemed to have a largish statue of an ice cream cone in front of it, and the ice cream would swirl upwards in the same way shit would swirl upwards. That particular restaurant sold everything made out of sake. They had biscuits made out of sake, cookies made out of sake, ice cream made out of sake. We ate the ice cream made out of sake.
“This is, this is the greatest night I’d had in a long time,” I said.
Natalie’s host mother pulled out these sunglasses from her purse. They were strange sunglasses: the white frames were covered with stickers of different coloured Pikachus. She told us to take turns putting the sunglasses on and looking through them, because apparently, when you look through them, you’d see Pikachus all over the place, jumping out of counters, looking through the pavement, attempting to hide behind your sake-laced food.
“It’s best to put them on when you’re driving,” she told us.
Everything slowed down when it came to my turn to try out the sunglasses. It was one of those moments when a noise in the background suddenly dies; a noise that you didn’t know existed until it actually stopped existing, like an air conditioner taking a break or a motor suddenly coming to a halt. My ears popped slightly and I suddenly had a feeling that there could be blood. I didn’t want to show them that things were trembling, something was forming. I looked at the sunglasses for a long while before finally putting them on.
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Comment by Lara M
Love Speaks
Food Slate
a bit too muchfunI had some great Japanese too at the weekend...but nothing compared to having it in Japan, eh.
Stay well...
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
A bit too much is the amount of too much I'm into right now
Hope the meal was great. I certainly need a good bowl of katsudon right now.