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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Wednesday Morning: Last Night's Dinner continued

Good morning! We all woke up late today and now we're holed up watching the election, so I thought I'd finish writing about dinner from last night.

Ok. So... I knew they were sardines by the smell. They smelled the way the penguin exhibit smells at the New England aquarium. Because that's what penguins eat. They were whole, heads, tails, fins and all. I ate them and smiled bravely.

They came with meatballs, and next came a small pizza with tiny shrimp, a salad with shredded vegetables, and a dish with ramen and fish and vegetables. Then a plate of much bigger fish. They also still had heads and tails and skin. The chief grabbed a hold of the fish and tore a piece of skin off it and ate it. Then Ken showed me how he took a whole bone out and ate the skin off it.

Li told us it was called "hoe-kay," but I can't find it online. Meanwhile, I do not eat fish at home. I like shellfish, like crab and lobster. Whenever my Mom made fish for my Dad I would get a grilled cheese.

And here I was... eating skin off bones of a fish. And then picking out the meat from the fish in the center of the table with my chopsticks, dipping them in lemon, and mixing with Japanese radish and eating it. Not loving it, but not hating it either.

There was so much laughter in the conversations. Every time something was funny or surprising everyone would yell "Oooooh!" And every time someone did something well, like if one of our friends pronounced and English word, or when John finally ate one of the little fish, everyone would cheer "Aaaaay!" (Like the Fonz.)

We flirted with Di and Tstu. Tstu took my phrase book and asked me if he could kiss me. We laughed and I said yes, and that stopped him in his tracks. So he asked if I'd go back to his place and I took the phrase book back and said no, I was here with my girlfriend and grabbed Steph, which cracked the entire room up. We spent a good 10 minutes going back and forth with the sex and romance pages.

We talked about our favorite movies, books, directors, actors, American and Japanese. Ringu came up, and Steph did an impression which scared all of our hosts. Oh, and Scott, I got a recommendation from Kazu of another movie we need to see. It's Ju-on. He wrote it down for me. We talked about comic books, manga and also the American ones and I missed Teffer so badly. Jung reminds his friends of Hiro from "Heroes," and so he did a Hiro impression. Tstu wants to be Jack Bauer, and he kept doing "24," impressions.

While we were discussing horror movies, Steph began to tell everyone about Gorefest. They were intrigued. I put on my creepy dead girl face and started to say, "ha ha? ha ha?" Which means "Mother? Mother?" And they freaked out! Then I got everyone to do their best zombie impressions and I got them all on video.

Die and Bocho told us about their experience at the Chicago Improv Festival last year. And then Di told us about his international travels as a magician! His nickname is "den-chu," which is some kind of pole here, because he is so skinny. On the way home someone pointed one out to us in the street and Die laughed.

Their cell phones are much cheaper than ours and way better. You can use your phone to swipe for the subway here, or pay for dinner in restaurants or buy things at the store. They all have televisions on them, and we started to watch some news stories on Obama at the table. All our friends are very excited about the American election, and were relieved that we are all Obama supporters.

Honestly, the whole night was just so much fun. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It was amazing how well we could all communicate with our Japanese and their English.

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