Dinner at Yoneta's

There's nothing like a home cooked meal, even if that home isn't yours.

Since leaving for college, it seldom happens that this home cooked meal is coming from my true home of origin. On a number of occasions, I have been more than delighted with a surrogate home of sorts. Fortunately, wherever I go in this world, there's a wonderful family to meet and take me in, like the little lost puppy I am.

I have been in many a foreign home, treated like royalty and enlightened to new cultures and table customs. Yet, my Japanese dinner taught me that sometimes sharing the same language isn't always needed for a good time.

My old lady friend invited me for a Japanese feast, which pretty much meant appetizer and assorted salad. Thank goodness for the hearty presence of beer. Her husband cooked goya champu, which includes a kind of bitter melon that they harvest at their farm as well as pork and egg. Simple, strange and somewhat tasty.
An aesthetically pleasing plate of sashimi and a fresh (literally) garden salad adorned the cheap plastic table cloth of muted blues and off-white floral patterning. Everything was simple and straightforward.

I imagined complications and a barrage of unknown customs to follow entering a Japanese home. But, my old lady friend only showed off the finest berating of wife-to-drunkard husband. After a few tall cans and a couple trips to the Japanese/English dictionary to look up words like "constipation" and "menopause", old man drunkard decides he wants to play a game with me where he proceeds to watch me use chopsticks to move single, dry grains of rice from one plate to the next in an attempt to correct my finger position on what I sometimes consider a plainly primitive form of silverware.

I was walked back to the train station, laughs and fresh watermelon in tow. Pleasantly surprised at the communication technique, I learned I could make myself at home wherever I go. And I'm pretty pleased with myself for that.