Abuse

It has taken me a week to decide whether I should talk about this or not, but as it has been a week and it is still bothering me, here goes.

David and I went to the shelter last weekend to volunteer and gather some supplies for a fundraiser we will be doing later in Iwaki, while we were there, I spotted a man kicking his dog. At first I simply assumed that it was my eyes playing tricks on me, as it had already been a long weekend, and who in their right mind would abuse an animal across the street from a shelter? But that's when it happened... this man threw his dog as hard as he could into the ground, in front of his 2 small children.

Without even thinking I just ran over and began shouting at him, I do not know a lot of Japanese so it was mostly English with a bit of me calling him a monster. I scooped up the small poodle to check it for injuries while the man shouted obscenities in Japanese at me and told his children not to worry as I was just a moronic foreigner.
David and a Japanese volunteer came over to talk with him, but he spent his entire time denying it and saying that I had tried to steal his dog and attacked him, our Japanese volunteer even apologized to him for my actions, while I just sobbed.

We were told later that while it was sad, we could do nothing to stop this man since there were no visible wounds on the animal and since I had "attacked" him. In Japan, the foreigner always looses against the native.
 I spent much of the rest of my time that day closed up with some of ours animals, crying.

During the nearly 3 years that I worked with the SPCA back in the US, I saw lots of animals come through that had been badly abused, some had terrible physical scars, others only had mental ones, but all of them had been noticeably effected. I just kept thinking of my time with those cowering animals and how much it had pained me to know they had been hurt by some heartless bastard, and how utterly wrong it was that this man got to walk away with an animal that he will most likely abuse for the rest of its life, or until he gets sick of it and throws it away, like so many other animals in this nation. This incident especially struck me, because while I have worked with abused animals for a long time, I had actually somehow never seen it happen first hand, so seeing someone do it so calmly, and right across the street from our shelter no less, shook me to the core.


Anyways, it still replays through my head over and over again, and I find myself praying for that poor small dog. Now, enough sadness, here is a picture of Chachamaru, who was found over a year into the disaster, covered in parasites, very underweight, with dislocated legs, and a big smile. Animals like him are what keep us going.

Fun fact: We personally spend around $200/month in travel costs to volunteer and rescue.

Local Cusine

This past week during school lunches, I had the grand chance to try two very quintessentially Japanese foods, natto and niboshi.

For those of you who are not accustomed to Japanese food, natto is fermented soybeans that are commonly placed on top of rice, and it looks (and feels) like beans covered in spider webs, it also has a very strong odor, akin to a very potent cheese, like, and –to me- tasted like soggy peanuts doused in way too much salt. To make things more interesting, this meal was had in the teachers’ lounge, so all of them were very eager to see what I thought of natto, and when I made a disgusted face and said “it’s… interesting,” everyone giggled and mocked me for the rest of the meal. The experience was made much worse though, because the smell made me want to vomit and while opening the container, I had accidentally got some on my fingers, so every single time I took a bite of anything, I got a strong whiff of the smell again and had to fight back gags.

Directly after our meal, the principal explained that all Japanese people love natto because it is so healthy. Liar. I have already had multiple teachers at this school state natto is vile and Debu told me nearly all of the teachers at his old schools thought it was disgusting, that being said, Debu likes it! He has in fact been told by some Japanese people that that makes him “more Japanese then most Japanese people,” because most of them can barely stomach it, but eat it because it is considered ‘un-Japanese’ and ‘immature’ to not do so.

yumm

The next delicacy, niboshi, is essentially dried whole sardines, and when I say whole, I mean even their tiny shrunken eyes and teeny crunchy bones….

The first thing to hit me when the lunch lady brought in the bowls of food, were the fishies' eyes staring blankly at me, and their mouths gaping wide, as if trying to get just one more breath. The second thing to hit me occurred when the clear cellophane wrap was removed from the bowl and the smell was released into the room, thankfully it was paired with sweetened peanuts, so the smell was not too terrible, but it did still remind me of a market’s fish section near the end of the day, when everything isn’t quite smelling it's freshest anymore.

So came the first bite of this meal, with all the staff once again looking at me and giggling, as if we were playing the “what can we get this foreigner to eat?” game… the first one was not too bad, very crunchy, and rather spiky from all the teeny scales, but the peanuts covered the fishiness to a tolerable extent. But then, bite two, the peanuts did nothing! All of the teachers giggled and asked “you like?” to which I gestured a “so-so,” because I didn’t want to open my mouth and risk spitting out the tiny fishes that did not seem to want to be devoured. Somehow, I managed to eat all of them, even with their tiny eyes staring at me and their teeny mouths screaming “Why?!” but it was not an easy task, and one that is going to be even harder when I begin eating with the students, because I will then have to smile no matter what is on the plate and simply say “healthy” and eat it up.

Don't look into their eyes

The best part of these two experiences, were that both times I asked a few of the teachers “do you like?” and no one said yes, just “…it healthy,” as if that were a good enough reason to consume such items.

So, needless to say, these two dishes are not really for me, but don’t let that discourage any of you from trying them out.

Both of these can be purchased at most Asian super markets back in the USA and, who knows, you may actually like them.