The art of Bakeries

Ever since I’ve been in Japan I’ve been having this nagging suspicion that everyone I talk to is merely being really nice in order to trick me into doing something ridiculous in order for them to point and laugh at the stupid foreigner. I think the first thing that set me upon this course of thinking is because all the bakeries I’ve been to are basically designed entirely to trick foreigners into thinking what they’re buying is an ordinary bread roll, when in fact it’s been stuffed with the raw intenstine of a deer or somesuch delicacy. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the bakeries worked out these days though, you’ve just got to have a procedure.

Firstly, I skip anything that looks like it might be bread, pastry, or in fact ever been in the prescence of flour and a oven and go straight for the aisle of stuff that looks like modern art, doughy style. Then I think about what I’m after (let’s say a sausage roll) and choose the thing that look least like what I’d picture sausage roll as looking like. So instead of the rollover with a sausage protruding from one end, I’ll grab the green schwooshy thing that’s oozing white fluid. This method hasn’t failed me yet, because as you’re expecting the worst, when it turns out to actually taste like a sausage roll you’re pleasantly surprised. It’s better than going straight for the roll and finding out that what you though was a sausage was actually raw fish rolled in beancurd and covered in toffee.

Anyway, to actually get to the point. This evening I was coming home and there were a group of kids clustered around my stairwell playing what looked to be a pokemon card game. So I thought I’d do the BFG thing and say hello to the kids. So I crouched down and soon had about five of them trying to talk to me while the other five either poked me or tried to climb on my back. All the kids were chewing these tiny pieces of pink gum, so when I was offered one I was like, “oooh, domo arigato”, wow, they really like me. Then one of the girls showed me her lunchbox filled with both live and dead insects she’d collected. It was quite impressive actually, she was obviously a very dillligent collector, because there were a lot of bugs in that box. In fact, the only other space in the box was taken up by little pink pills of gum. Just like the one she’d just offered me. That I was currently eating.

Brilliant.

So if I don’t write again for a while, it’s because I’m in hospital having my stomach pumped while the doctors point at me and laugh.

Posted in Japan on Tuesday August 19, 2003.