it's really late and i'm really tired, but i'm too full to sleep so i might as well blog..
a bunch of us went to this fish-themed izakaya restaurant for dinner today, and urgh. it was a great experience - more on that in the upcoming part 2 - and it was fun seeing everyone again, but sometimes it does get me how people can get so surprised (sometimes even aghast) that their culture and the things they're used to isnt the only culture around.
like today, i was telling The Brit about this brief discussion in class regarding how this student found the way couples "talk intimately" - that is, 撒娇 and/or talk in that 暧昧 manner - on the trains annoying, and i mentioned how it's gross to have people making out in front of you on the escalator - especially when it's a down-riding one and the couple is on the step in front of you, making their faces almost exactly at your eye level - and he was like "What?" in disbelief, and went on for a bit about how you should be happy for them cos they're happy and that it's not gross at all.
how do you explain to angmohs who're used to public displays of affection that you just dont do it here? well, of course there are people who do it - and i do think that many people would find that kind of behaviour disturbing and shamless, sort of - but then there are also many who dont approve. how do you make them understand that in certain societies, things that happen between lovers is more or less a private affair that goes on behind closed doors, or at least some place where you dont have a human audience to your actions?
and also today at that fish restaurant.. ok. imagine this super fresh, until very recently still very much alive, perfectly done salt-grilled fish that came FREE to your table because the people at next to you got the fish but had to leave and so decided to give it to you instead as a present. couldnt be better right? and the fish was SO fresh, and tasted like.. well. the fish had nice crispy fins and tail like deep fried garoupa and soft, fresh, tasty meat like steamed sea bass at wedding dinners. it was THAT good.
a fish like that, you have to make the most out of it right? and the skin was grilled to perfection, and was especially delicious due to the salt and slight smoky flavour. but these angmohs were quite absolutely amazed - and not entirely in a good way - that instead of fighting with them for the meat, i settled for the bones at the side of the fish and the area just beneath the head and around the gills and stomach because those are, in my opinion, quite definitely the best parts of a fish.
they were totally amazed that i could eat that! and when i said that actually the head can be eaten too, i think their brains probably just burst with the idea of that then. and the fact that i was totally serious - "I'm serious! you can really eat the head!"; "Yes i know you're serious, and that's the thing!" - made it even harder for their minds to accept that fact.
it's just crazy! the way this is so totally new and entirely foreign to them is just crazy.. and sometimes i just dont get it! like, i know you do things differently in your country, but do you have to be really so surprised that some people in some other cultures might perhaps do things in another way?
i guess it's goes both ways too, because hey, 22 and a half years of eating all the meat and skin off the bones of a fish and fighting with relatives at wedding dinners to get the best bony bits of steamed sea bass conditions you to look at a beautiful, whole fish on your table and clean the meat off the bones without a second thought. like, that's what you do with a fish! you eat everything that can be eaten, so that at the end what you get it a nice, meat and skinless pile of bones on your plate. that's what you call eating a fish! and never in my entire life have i received so much attention - in fact, i've never received any attention - eating a fish till today. it was SO WEIRD. and the thing was that the fish reminded me of how long it's been since i've eaten fish like that.. you know, the way it's nicely done with melt in the mouth flesh, and the flavour of the fish somehow, in some very vague way, reminded me of home, and the bones on my plate made me think of the sea bass at my cousin's wedding dinner that i'll be missing cos i'm here. i wasnt quite sad or anything, but i was just reminded of home and the way things are in singapore.
but yeah. somehow it got a little on my nerves. all that fuss about fish! and their absolute inability to comprehend how anyone might eat the sides of a fish and the bony areas. i mean, what do they do then with those parts of a fish? throw it away? there's still tonnes of meat and skin there! it's almost like throwing away a whole pile of food if you leave those bits out!
if you ask me, i bet the reason for that is because "fish" to these angmohs probably mean "slices of meat in supermarkets", so they perhaps have never seen a whole fish in their entire lives and therefore dont quite know what you can do with the rest of a fish.
i'm committing the same crime of making a cultural judgement, but whatever. i'm up to here and have reached my limit for today. i actually have something i want to say regarding fried fish - and how it's absolutely amazing and i love how you can eat EVERYTHING if the fish is deep fried crisp enough - but that will have to wait till part 2. and if i do forget to talk about fried fish, please do remind me.
i think i should assert my culture more, to be honest. i'm getting all this exposure to american and brit culture especially, and i think it's high time i asserted my cultural heritage more strongly. you know how singaporeans can actually be really rather adaptable overseas cos of the weird mix of east, west and dunno what else in singapore? at least speaking from a singaporean-chinese perspective, we have these chinese practices that have a singaporean twist to them, plus exposure to this global "western" culture.. most singaporean-chinese know full well that chinese people do lots of things that are seen by others as weird (like eating pig innards for example. i talked about it the other day and shocked the angmohs, especially when i started going on about how delicious it is), so we're pretty aware that there are many people out there who dont so all these weird (i frankly think the things that chinese people do are really cool though. many things - like eating skin and flesh clean off a fish - make tonnes of sense to me) stuff, and cos we have all these "western" exposure through the media we kinda know what things are like "over there". so things arent as foreign as they might seem, i feel, cos it's all kinda familiar in a way.
and on the other hand, you have these angmohs that well.. i dont know. the brit for example, being a londoner and having gone to many many different european countries, he has really really broad knowledge about many things in europe and certain aspects of south asian culture, but when it comes to certain asian stuff.. it's like a total complete blank to him. cant blame him really, cos of geographical location, but it's just interesting how the angmohs come to japan and are so totally astounded and taken aback by how different things are, whereas the whole bunch of us who've been on exchange to here and there dont quite have that "oh my god things are so different and foreign here" kind of experience.
i really dont mean to say that we're culturally superior or anything like that though i know it might seem so, but it's just something that has been at the back of my mind for a while and i'm sort of beginning to think about it a bit more. i dont even know why i'm talking about this, since what i wanted to say was that i've pretty much been culturally 'neutral', in the sense that i havent quite exposed my singaporean-chineseness much, and that i probably seem to be something like this vague entity to whom you cant quite pinpoint any cultural stereotypes to. like, you have loud americans or crazy americans - and many of them here are sort of specimens of that - but i'm pretty sure the rest cant quite identify much of me apart from perhaps the asian stereotype of being "boring" (just because i dont happen to like partying, clubbing and drinking that much. dont me started on that topic though, cos that's something else that i have a fairly large bone to pick with and one day when i'm really pissed off i'll talk about it).
and also, with JET being about cultural exchange and so on, if i'm getting all these from the other nationalities around me, i feel i ought to assert my cultural identity more strongly and show these folks that things are different in other countries. i really want to do that. plus all this shock and disbelief that i experience or observe either from things that i do or things that the japanese do which the angmohs find really strange and weird but seem perfectly normal and (east) asian to me is beginning to get on my nerves. also, i think people have to realise that japan isnt equivalent to asia? like foodwise and cooking especially.. i was telling them that how my mum cooks radish is to slice it up and boil it in soup with carrots, and i think that befuddled them cos radish to them means the shredded and chopped up conical mountain of daikon you get as an accompaniment to your tempura sauce or sushi (and i didnt even mention the dried scallops, cuttlefish and ikan bilis that you throw in for flavour!). the brit couldnt even identify radish in the radish salad that we had. you certainly cant blame them for this lack of knowledge simply cos they havent had a chance to be exposed to it, but i think there should definitely be an increase in awareness that asia itself is rather diverse in so many ways..
but aiyah. they should just get a grip and suck it up man. i cant promise that i wont scream the next time someone gets all completely bewildered at me doing something perfectly normal in my culture. i dont make a fuss about the things they do - at least not to their face - and i dont get all aghast, so just get over it already. their way isnt the only way to do things, so deal with it and accept that fact!!!
*grrrrr*
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