During the short training period before I started teaching, it was stressed that school lunches would operate under that one simple rule. "Students are expected to eat everything served for lunch, and you are too," I was told.
And while this saying was maybe supposed to only apply to classroom lunches, I wasn't about to take the risk and not eat every single piece of food and last rice grain in front of me no matter where I was, so long as there was any Japanese person around to see. I didn't know what kind of message I could be sending if I didn't eat everything.
Oh the horrors and culinary atrocities they had seen committed by some American, they would tell their friends after watching me discard a few scraps of food. "Our food is gross and disgusting to him. He must think only American food is worthy of his high and mighty taste buds. Another American with no respect for our values and culture."
Okay, so I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but understand where I'm coming from: I've got to worry about acting my best all the time to try to make a good impression on behalf of all Americans; to make all of you look good and be thought of highly in case you ever visit Japan, and that's no easy task considering you're all giant losers and terrible people. It's a lot of pressure. And trying to smear blush and lipstick on you pigs almost got me killed.
It happened one night at dinner within my first month of being in Japan. I was going to meet my Japanese friend, Nozomi, for only the second time. Here's some facts about Nozomi: One, her name means "hope." Two, she likes American Pop Rock/Punk bands like Fall Out Boy and New Found Glory. And three, she thinks the American accent is really cool. She also spoke much better English than I did Japanese, so it was nice to that we were able to communicate in my mother tongue without any issue.
The original plan was to meet her in Odaiba, the island playground I wrote about in a previous blog, and go to an Onsen (hot spring) themed park. But I also decided to tell some students I miiiight go to their basketball club practice on that same Saturday.
Having half-committed to a basketball club practice, my sense of having to meet all expectations kicked in, and I felt like if I didn't go now after that promise, the students would never trust me again. "Oh he must think our Japanese basketball isn't as important as American basketball," or isn't as important as whatever else they imagine a strange American guy living in Japan who can't speak Japanese does on weekends. After letting them down, they'd decide to shun me and ignore me at school. They'd start tripping me when I walked by their desks and pretend it was just an accident. They'd teach me the wrong way to play their crazy, Japanese games and laugh at me when I followed their fake rules like I was some kind of idiot. They'd make fun of me in Japanese and would all giggle about it, and I wouldn't even understand I was being made fun of (this probably happens anyway). I'd smile and laugh with them like I "got" the joke, making an even bigger ass of myself, all because I didn't just bite my tongue when a student asked if I'd ever come to a Saturday basketball practice.
I also reasoned, they probably don't understand the American habit of kind of making a plan without actually being expected to commit. Okay, that's probably just a Matt habit. If you have to eat anything whether you like it or not in Japan, I figured if you bring up an idea for a plan, you better do it whether you want to or not. So I had to go.
I had been to the basketball club once or twice before after school and it only lasted about an hour and a half, so I let Nozomi know the time I could meet based on this while also hiding the fact that I was choosing this time because I had made this other plan. Instead, I told her the school needed me to help with English stuff (whatever that means).
But as it turns out, Saturday practice runs a bit longer. It was at least 3 and a half hours long.
When the practice finally finished, I messaged Nozomi and apologized, saying I had to stay longer than I expected and asked what she wanted to do at this point: stick to the same plan, cancel altogether, or alter the plan. She decided she still wanted to meet (what can I say, I'm a silvertongued heartthrob), but that we could just meet at a train station in Tokyo and get dinner somewhere nearby.
At this point, I already felt like I kind of owed her big time since I screwed up the timing of our original plan just to play basketball with some 14 year old girls—I taught them how to play "knockout," which they seemed to like, and made a half court shot (on the second try) for them since I can't dunk even though I'm an American—so I definitely didn't want to do anything else that might offend her or be considered rude, and I wanted to be extra mannered and cultured.
Once I met up with Nozomi, I graciously asked her to pick the place to eat, because crap man, I couldn't read anything in Japanese, and I probably couldn't tell a restaurant from a store just by looking at it at that point. She asked what unique Japanese foods I had tried. Ramen, sushi, takoyaki...kind of the usual stuff and nothing that crazy. She asked if I wanted to try 牛タン (Gyuutan), which is ox tongue. I said, "Hell yeah" to act like, "yeah, I'll eat anything whether I like it or hate it" in case that was the kind of thing that would impress her, and we went off to some restaurant where I could get some tongue.
Tokyo is a more vertical city compared to the major American cities from my experience. What I mean by that, is that in America, anything above the first floor in a large building is typically just going to be floors and floors of office space. Thousands of square feet of lifeless husks in identical cubicles—save for pictures of the families they never get to spend enough time with or trinkets that remind them of the happier things in life they no longer have time for—punching meaningless words and numbers into documents or spreadsheets to ensure good customer rapport or logistical efficiency without ever having to speak a word to another human being. Having whatever kind of joie de vivre they might have sucked out of them and turning to them into the sitting dead. NPCs from a video game set on an infinite loop. Everyday the same dream.
What I'm saying is, in America, you rarely have to go up any floors to get to a shop, restaurant, or the like. Not so in Tokyo. In one building you're likely to find Japanese restaurants on the first and fourth floors, an animal cafe on the second, a small bar on the third, a restaurant specializing in Korean food on the fifth, and karaoke on the sixth. Fortunately, you get to all these floors via elevator and not stairs.
So Nozomi and I hopped into an elevator and went up to get to the restaurant that served fresh, hot bovine tongues to customers.
We were seated in the back at a table between Japanese parents with a young toddler and the bathroom. Oh, and at most restaurants with servers in Japan, there's a button on the table you push that notifies a server when you're ready to order or need another drink or something.
I mean, how much more sense does that make than playing that ridiculous game of trying to flag down your specific server at restaurants in America? First, you think, "I'll be polite" and you try to use some kind of newly developed telekinesis like you're Professor X hooking up into Cerebro to send a message to your server to look your way when they're walking around to other tables so you can just make eye contact for a brief second and give a nod to let them know to come over. Your server even passes right by your table, but you can see that the server just took an order and think, "Well, she needs to get the order to the kitchen, and then she'll come back and I can flag her down." But now all of a sudden, you haven't seen your server for 5 minutes. Is she on her break? Can I just ask another server? Now, you start doing the head and neck crane kind of move. Leaning further out from your table to give that physical sign that clearly you're looking for somebody. You make eye contact with another server, but he just stares at you like, "Not my problem, bro." Eventually, after 15 minutes of being ready for the check or having two empty drink glasses on the table, finally you say "screw it" and when the next server passes by, say "Excuse me," in a tone ruder than you want it to sound. Can we pleeeease get the Japanese call buttons on our tables in America so I don't have to go through this all the time when I come back?!
So Nozomi and I eventually buzzed the server over (I believe I got to do the honors of pressing the button), I ordered the gyuutan, and I got ready to put...my tongue...where my mouth is.
After a short wait, it finally came.
The cow tongue didn't look particularly strange or off-putting. It's not like it comes out still looking like some pink, bloated tongue that's just been yanked out of a cow's mouth with combination pliers as the last strand of tongue muscle still connected to the hyoid bone and frenulum finally stretches to its breaking point, *POPS* as its disconnected from the rest of the mouth, and comes shooting out like a rubber band. It really just looked like small, brown, grilled pieces of meat. I mean, if i didn't know what it was before it came out, and you told me it was just some kind of normal meat, I'd believe you. There wasn't really any kind of smell to it, though I kind of have a dead nose that is terrible at smelling things, so who knows. There was a small dish of some kind of sauce (still have no idea what it was, probably a miso sauce) for dipping, and the meal came with soup, rice, and a small salad as well.
But as I was looking at the plate of cooked tongue (was it just one tongue or a couple different tongues?), I realized I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Sure, no matter how bad it was, I would be able to swallow my tongue and stomach at least one piece. But if I hated it, if it was truly horrible, there was no out like in America.
No, "Oh, I'm getting kind of full already from the soup and salad." No, "Actually, I kind of want ice cream now, so I don't want to get full on this food. Let's go after dinner!" And certainly no, "Wow, I wanna save some of this for lunch tomorrow, I'm just gonna get a to-go box for the rest of it" (considering to-go boxes for food left unfinished and that concept in general essentially do NOT exist in Japan). I was going to have to eat it all or face the indignity and shame of not finishing all my food (which I assume is basically like getting the scarlet letter in Japan). Because whether you like it or hate it, you gotta eat it all.
So, I grabbed my chopsticks, said my "Itadakimasu" (a ritual "grace" or "thanks" said before any meal in Japan), and popped a piece of tongue into my mouth. I waited for the smell and flavor to reach my brain and tell me if this was going to be okay. The texture came first: it was solid, not slimy or rubbery, though it was a little bit tougher than beef. A few seconds later, the taste came through. Essentially a meaty taste, though a litte more bland. A little bit closer to pork than beef.
Relief came over me. Even though it wasn't mouth-wateringly good, I knew I'd have no problem finishing it and relatively enjoying it, for what it's worth.
Nozomi was watching me and waiting for my reaction. Once I swallowed the piece, I looked at her, smiled, and sincerely said "It's good. I like it."
The next piece I grabbed was a typical-sized piece, but it had this kind of corpus-callosum thing going on, where another medium-sized chunk was connected to it. A bifurcated tongue. Two pieces in one. I dipped it in some of the sauce (which defnitely made it taste better) and proudly and confidently slipped myself a little double tongue. I figured I had chewed enough to swallow everything, and so I did. But there was a problem.
The piece I tried to swallow was still connected to the other part that was up in my mouth. The "swallowed" piece still tethered, dangling like some stupid adrenaline junkie hanging from a bungee cord in my throat.
My air passage was blocked and my breaths were more shallow, but I didn't panic. I tried to do a "high powered" swallow, as if that's some kind of thing, jutting my shoulders forward and my pulling my head and neck back, like some sort of popping dance technique. I forced all my strength into my neck and throat to suck down the two pieces together, or at least dislodge the piece in my throat from the piece in my mouth, but it wouldn't separate.
I took slow, deep breaths through my nose to make up for the lack of air I was getting, but even that couldn't stop that permanent tickle, that discomfort, like the cough that just won't break and you can't get rid of.
I didn't want to give the impression I had been lying about my approval of ox tongue, or worse, that I found it unbearably disgusting and was now gagging on it, so I tried a few light, gentle, ever-so-quiet, polite cough-slash-throat clear moves that wouldn't send the wrong signal to maybe bring the chewed piece back up into my mouth, where I could chew everything adequately or separate the pieces and swallow them without issue, but with no luck.
I wonder how I might've looked to Nozomi if she noticed what would've appeared to be my very unique eating tendencies. We had been talking about summer music festivals in Japan and bands we liked, but at this point, I just hoped she had enough to talk about and wouldn't throw the conversation my way or ask me a question, fearing that any attempt to speak would give me away as a choking person in serious need of the heimlich at this point.
It's one thing to take a bite of food, not like it, and decide to not finish the rest. But to actually hack it up probably tops the list of rude and uncultured ways to try a different culture's unique food for the first time. Granted, I was in the process of suffocating and not actually disgusted by the food, but what's everybody going to think when they see the foreign guy spitting up ox tongue?
I was getting desparate. I started frantically chewing the piece in my mouth, hoping reducing it to a paste would ease it down with the next swallow. I tried isolating and gnawing at the strand of ligament or whatever it was still hodling that MFer in place. I tried thinking about how this might reflect on Nozomi; how she had trusted this foreigner and brought him to a Japanese restaurant, encouraged him to order ox tongue, thinking he was one of the "good" foreigners with respect for Japanese culture; and how she would be likely be banished from Japanese society after this incident if I couldn't pull it together.
My eyes started watering. My breaths became more wheezy. I went for a few more powerful, less polite coughs. But nothing worked.
I was in a lose-lose situation with only two options: one, I could noisily cough and puke back up a piece of chewed tongue and shame myself, Nozomi, the cook, the entire restaurant staff, and all Americans; or two, do the honorable thing and just choke and die.
I asked myself what the Japanese culture and customs would want me to do, and I knew the answer was die with honor intact. Sure, I'd be dead, but I'd still be appreciated for eating and seemingly enjoying ox tongue. For being a foreigner that honored and respected Japanese cuisine. My death would be a tragic story of an enlightened, sophisticatd, erudite life cut short in its prime. "What other amazing advancements in cultural sensitivity would his life had brought had he not choked on a cow's tongue?" they'd ask. "True world peace? The end of all -isms?" Death might not have been the lesser alternative here.
But it would seem reflexes, instincts, and the biological will to survive would betray me. Instead of crossing over to the other side, I doubled over and choked up the double piece of cow tongue into my napkin. I caught my breath again and apologized to Nozomi for what I imagined must've been a mortifying experience for her.
My attention went back to my lap. I looked at the chewed up pieces of tongue in my napkin and remembered the Japanese saying: "I want to eat it whether I like it or hate it."
Yeah, maybe there are some exceptions.
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