I had Shaka Shaka Chicken for the first time yesterday

Just a thought, but I feel as though the title to this post deserves some explanation.

I believe that some of you may be aware of a little restaurant called McDonalds. Although some of you may know it by its nickname. Micky Ds. Well, these restaurants are everywhere. Including Tokyo. Well, I told myself that I would not go there. Its too American, why go to McDonalds when I can just as easily go there when I get back, when I can experience stinky beans covered in raw eggs (I will hopefully get to Natto later). This claim is difficult, since one of my roommates WON"T stop talking about how badly he wants to go there. He claims its for the fries...sure it is...

Anyway, I was holding fast to my desire to avoid McDonalds, until last night (Sunday night). We had just finished a team meeting and were given our weekly food allowance (which is a whopping 14,000 yen a week. I really like food, but last week I only spent 10.000) We had gotten back to Koenji (the meeting was in Mitaka, which is about 5 trainstations away), when Andrew turned to me and said only two words, "Dollar Menu?"

Now, most food places had closed by this time (it was about 10 at night) and I had not eaten really at all today (I figured that if I didn't spend any more money and waited until we recieved our new allowance, I could keep the left over money and recover the costs for the watch I bought) and rice takes about an hour to make. So "Dollar Menu" was very inticing. Especially since it was a true dollar menu, the foods cost only 100 yen (1 yen equals 1 cent) and there is no added tax afterwards. So it says its costs 1oo yen, it actually costs 100 yen. That was when I discovered how different a Japanese dollar menu is.

The Japanese McDonalds has the regular McDonalds fare, such as big macs and fries, but they also have differnt items. Such as the McPork, the McHotdog (which actually looks kind of gross, the hotdog looks disgusting and there seems to be ketchup and egg salad on it), the McBacon and Potato Pie (ok, there was no "Mc" in the last one, but the item is real) Two of these items were on the dollar menu. So, I bought a McPork and a Shaka Shaka Chicken. The McPork I thought was going to be like a McRib. I section of meet covered in Barbeque sauce. I was wrong, the meet tasted like nothing I remember tasting (that is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, now that I think about it, its kinda creepy) and it was covered in teriyaki sauce, and a few flimsy pieces of lettuce. Actually, this discription makes it sounds really gross, but it was actually quite decent.

Then there was a Shaka Shaka chicken. This is an amazing concept that I think should come to America. It is a piece of delicious piece of chicken in a paper bag. This is not what makes the chicken "Shaka Shaka". Alongside the chicken in your choice of sauce. There was garlic, cheese, and another that I forget. I choose cheese. Think of the cheese powder sauce in Kraft macoroni and cheese. Now pour that into the paper bag , close he paper bag and SHAKA SHAKA! Shake up the bag and you got chicken covered in cheese powder. This is how Japanese view American food. Chicken covered in cheese powder. It was actually quite good.

Then, it was my turn to buy breakfast for the apartment. The nearby grocery store was closed, so I went to the 24 hour grocery store near the train station. It was larger, but more expensive than the normal store, but I usually wake up last, so if I did not buy breakfast, I would not have any the following morning.

So, off to the supermarket. I gathered all the things I needed for breakfast: Cereal, bread, milk, apple juice, and orange juice. Right before I got the milk and juices, I realized that I did not have enough room in my arms to carry everything. So I looked for a basket, except all of them are kept outside...so I had to place all my items back so I could get a basket w/o being accused of stealing. So, once I gathered my foods a second time (as well as my favorite item, a liter of CC Lemon). Then, I went to the pastry counter. One of my favorite pastries is this really tasty with break with various things inside of it. These range from peanut butter, chocolate, meat and bean paste. There was only 1 kind of this pasty, and I had no idea which one it was. So I decided to ask a man what was in this pastry. He could not understand what I meant by "in the middle", so I abandoned asking what was IN he pastry and asked what the characters on the package was.

Now, remember last post when I said that you need to approach a Japanese citizen like one would a cat. Here is what happens when you DON'T follow that rule.

He told me what the characters said on the package...in Japanese, which I do not understand. So, I told him that I do not speak Japanese, and the gentlemen ran away. This was not some awkward teen working at a supermarket, it was an adult male, older than me. When I told him that I did not speak Japanese, he turned tail and ran away from me. I felt so awkward. I had no idea what to do, so I just stood there with absolutely no idea what to do.

Eventually, he came back. But this time with a packet of something and handed it to me. However, it was still a mystery what was in this packet, I knew it was mushy. I had limited my quess to either chocolate or bean paste. I asked what was in it, he pointed at the ingrediants, still in Japanese. In hindsight, how the crap did he answer all my questions, but still be so INCREDIBLY unhelpful? I mean, how was he able to understand my questions, but still not be able to answer them?

He then pulled out his phone and translated the ingrediants, which turned out to be bean paste. Which is as gross as it sounds, but its the staple Japanese sweet. So I did not buy it.

That ended activities for Sunday, but I guess I should mention what happened before I went to McDonalds. Sunday began with us all going to church. It was a lot of fun, but I had to dress up, I hate dressing up. I always feel so stupid. But I did it anyway and made it over to the church with the rest of the group. The service was very good, even though the pastor was speaking Japanese, luckily there was a translator. The church seemed to have a strong Hawaiian influence. The word "Alloha" was everywhere, including at the begining of the service. After the service, we had to make our way back to the train, in the rain.

Now, forgive me a small rant. But like I said earier, its the rainy season here in Japan. So it rains alot. EXCEPT whenever I leave the house with an umbrella. If I ever grab an umbrella, it instantly stops raining. Me and Sammy both beleive that we control the weather. We both had the argument that whenever we carry umbrellas, it doesn't rain and it only rains when we forget, one day I left w/o an umbrella and he left with one, so only one of us could be right. I won. It began to rain.

Well, that pretty much describes my Sunday. Today was an interesting day. We went to GaiDai today, talking to students. Me and Matt talked to Minoru. His father is an American and he was interested in meeting again on Monday. We hope to go deeper into sharing our faith upon the next meeting. We later regrouped and this time I teamed up with Tim. We sat and talked to this guy. We small talked for a bit before we told him we were with Student Impact (the Japanese version of Campus Crusade for Christ) an internation Christian circle. He responds that he is Buddhist, and his family does not allow him to interact with Christian groups....so....yeah...that makes eventually sharing our faith VERY DIFFICULT. I asked him about Buddhism, so I could find a point to link in my beliefs. I did not find one, but I continued to ask him about his faith. I don't know if it was a limited understanding of his own faith (an example of "I believe because it sounds peachy" or "I believe because my parents tell me to") or if it was the large language barrier (his english was ok, but it was really hard for him to share finer points like religious faith) but it was really hard to get anything across. So I gave him my contact information and hope that the questions I asked would make him more question his faith and want to ask more questions of me next time. Please pray that our words softened his heart for next time.

See you next time. Shaka Shaka!