A Taste of Japan

Late this summer we hosted a Japanese student in our home for one delightful week.  One of the perks of that, we learned, was when Nana was leaving and needed to offload some Japanese items in order to make space in her suitcases for the many purchases she made in America.  I sat on the edge of her bed while she explained a pile of food items to me in her extremely limited English (everything, both item description and recipe preparations, were written in Japanese on the products; I'm still not sure I made the pudding stuff correctly.).  Apparently either she or her mother was afraid that she would starve while she was here and packed accordingly.

With Nana at her graduation from an English class
-- no, John is not sleepwalking

So for a couple of months now, I've had ready-to-go rice, papers of seaweed, a boxed curry, a pudding-like dessert mix, rice pilaf of sorts, and Japanese candy in my pantry.  Plus, after Nana returned to Japan, we received a large box in the mail from her which included Japanese snacks and a little outfit for each of the children.

I wanted to make a Japanese meal, so I looked online for recipes and ended up making "Soboro Don" --Japanese chicken and eggs served over rice. Delicious!

Trying out chopsticks--a hostess gift from Nana

I thought about trying my hand at making sushi to use the seaweed in my pantry, but I don't know what I'm doing and it appears that my seaweed papers are the wrong size for sushi.  Any {delicious} ideas on what to do with seaweed papers that are 2.5"x 7"?  Leave me a comment with your suggestions.

Does he look Oriental??

I think we might have learned our lesson, and for this Japanese meal, we spoke only English.

A few months ago we were having a Chinese meal and got into this thing of speaking "Chinese".  Only no sane Chinese person would have recognized anything we said.  For example, one of us needed a napkin, held up a soiled hand, and said something like, "A wing foo chi?"  And the person closest to the napkins handed one over.  We had grand fun "talking in Chinese" until the meal ended.

And then Nana came.

There she sat, sweetly and politely like any well-bred Japanese girl would.
My son was eyeing her.
Apparently his wheels were turning and before I could say "wing foo" he was speaking to her in our variation of "Chinese"!

For some odd reason, Nana didn't seem to understand a thing he said.
Maybe his accent was poor?
Or maybe she only spoke Japanese?

Nana looked questioningly in my direction, silently asking for help in understanding what he said.
I managed to change the conversation; John subtly gave Tyler one of those wonderful parental "looks" which stopped him from practicing his Chinese any further, and a potentially embarrassing situation was diverted.

Okay.  So maybe we would do well to save our "Chinese" until the children are older and less apt to try it out on someone who looks like they might be from the Orient.