Some Thoughts Over Lunch
Over a plate of mediocre pasta at a mediocre Italian restaurant in mediocre Kanayama in even more mediocre Nagoya, I couldn't help but muse, as my food certainly wasn't holding my interest, over the tiny little details of the seating. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there were these smallish blankets hanging from the backs of chairs and small, rectangular wiker baskets beneath the seats. Normally, I would spin some wild fantasy about space pirates and intergalactic espionage, but instead I decided to break out of my doldrum by asking the waitress what they were for. Her cryptic answer: 女性に (for the ladies).
My mind drifted to pickled ginger--not the pale rose crap they serve in the US with sushi--but the bright red/hot pink variety so commonly served here with Chinese food. the inevitable result of my brain fart:
pickled ginger
normally, I'd just pick it off,
no matter the variety: sliced,
julienned or whatever have you.
I'd hope, in expectation of seeing
it heaped off to the side, the hot
pink hadn't contaminated
my pork fried rice.
I started by degrees to nibble it--
it left an adulterous smear
my girlfriend has yet to forgive or forget:
a trashy girl in Nagoya
one night drank herself silly
to the karaoke tones
of my acculturation.
After reading that over again, I realize that not everyone is familiar with what a trashy Nagoya girl looks like, so I add this in supplement.
posted by Nicholas Theisen @ 10:16 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
despite the visual illustration, i still don't know what a trashy nagoya girl is. worse, it leads to more questions: what makes her trashy? what makes her nagoya? where did you catch her in action? she looks tired and unhappy. what does she do for a living?
have you submitted your prospectus? just started working on mine. hopefully i could go back to aa in january and watch you preside over intellectual pleasure. exactly what i need, that conference.
happy holidays:-)
The ギャル (gal) phenomenon is still alive and well in Nagoya. You can know a ギャル by her typically orange hair, bronzed skin, impossibly high heels, gaudy designer handbags, and six word vocabulary. I consider their very existence a kind of social pollution.
It makes more sense now though not all my questions were answered.
By the way, I would have never guessed the patch of bright red was pickled ginger. My blurred vision told me it was a blossoming spring rose and stroke a happy cord in this gloomy winterland here. It occures to me that delusion is a major engine to turn mediocrity into something sublime. I am sure you experienced this epiphany much earlier than me:-)
Exhibit A: Ginger, flashy.
Exhibit B: Nagoya girl, trashy.
Question: Which has been more thoroughly pickled?
Because Liansu pedantically insists on answers to all of her questions:
the gaudy makeup and obsession with brand name goods
see above
didn't catch, it's a picture from the web
no idea, probably an accountant or hostess
yes
And an answer to Mike's question:
c
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