day 8 / in which we meet sweet bean paste

the gaggle of korean ladies arose early to head out for their day visit to an onsen. let’s talk about this for a quick sec: an onsen is a hot spring public bath (a sento is a non-hot spring public bath). unlike the hot springs i’ve visited in mexico, onsens are indulged in IN THE NUDE. so, like, a big hot bathtub with OTHER PEOPLE IN IT. who are ALSO NAKED. couple things: 1) i really only take baths when i’m sick or achy as i’m not even keen on stewing in MY OWN filth…much less stewing in MULTIPLE PEOPLE’S filth. (side note: in fairness, you do have to take a shower before you get in the public bath. but still.) 2) i can’t wrap my head around how a country so RENOWNED for its modesty is so free with nudity. mexicans have a WAY looser culture, and public nudity, including at the hot springs, is NOT what’s hot in the streets. i’m team mexico on this. no naked bathing for the kid.

so…the korean ladies get up with an inappropriate amount of self-centered fanfare for a shared accommodation. they are loud, and they turn on the room light, despite the presence of guests who are not in their party and who maybe DIDN’T have to be up so early. my non-korean housemate, katherine, later remarked that she felt like she was in a reality show set in a korean house. “real world: seoul” with foreigners. what happens when people stop being polite.

there was one english-speaking korean lady in this bunch. she gave her english language name as “bebe” and told me that the seven of them in her holidaying group had been friends since kindergarten. a pleasant surprise for me has been that a lot of the women to come and go through this hostel have been either older women or age peers to me. so i felt a way when bebe declared me “older sister” to the group in korean. they were ’73 babies–age peers! but whatever makes you feel good about yourself, i guess.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

any-hoo, so i get up in the morning, amidst the chaos–blow dryers and breakfasting and such–and microwave my breakfast, which is a chicken curry-filled fried bun that i’m excited about. on my way to sit down, bebe holds open before me a cellophane container, offering to me one of the green blobs inside it, which i am NOT excited about. my first reaction is that, because this is green, i’m probably not interested. it’s surely the worst possible color for a clearly non-vegetable item. i’m guessing it is a matcha flavored (green tea) something-or-another, which is not a direction in which i choose to steer my sweet tooth. i attempt some kind of a polite “oh, no–you don’t have to do that” response, which bebe immediately deflects. i gaze at the contents of the container and give my best i’m-intrigued-tell-me-more expression, asking “what are they?” she tells me they are rice balls. adding: “sweet.” and then, “please,” with a nudge of the open container toward me. i’m trapped.

“okay, thank you,” i concede. i pick one up. it’s sofffffft. not in a cake-or-cinnamon-bun kind of way. this is soft in an internal organ kind of way. like i’ve just picked up a small, cooled kidney. it’s not quite 3″ across, has a little weight to it, and is just barely dusted in what i assume to be powdered sugar. i place it next to my food and sit down. now, i’m hoping that if i eat my chicken bun slowly, they’ll be leaving before i reach rice ball o’clock. then i can try it and toss it if i don’t like it. but they are truly meandering. i finish my chicken bun. shit. though no one is really looking, i feel like i’m under a spotlight. i take a nibble from the edge of the green blob. it has a gooey, somewhat sticky texture but isn’t gross and seems to be neutral in taste. just sweet. like bebe said. i go ahead and take a real bite, and…oh, fuck…i’ve just crashed head-on into a wall of SWEET BEAN PASTE.

i’ve never, ever had any interest in any sweet that includes the word “bean.” no, mr. mohamed, i do NOT want a bean pie. no, tanaka-san, i do NOT want any sweet bean filling/flavor/dessert. i couldn’t get past the clearly wrong-headed bean texture of this filling inside of a dessert item. so, the accidentally tasted sweet bean paste gets a NO from me. i took a few more nibbles around the edges, as the ladies were still present, but after they left, i tossed it.

because i had been out every day since arriving and because i had learned yesterday about the density of the weekend crowds, i decided to stay put. katherine, who is filipina but lives in the states, was milling about as well. we mutually bemoaned the lack of vegetables in the food in japan. it’s all meat and starch. noodles and broth. rice and egg. pastry and breads. she was going on a jaunt to the vegetable stand and invited me to join. while the produce here in tokyo is very good, i can’t help but wonder at the size of some of it. carrots span six inches in circumference. celery is two feet long. what is this shit–radioactive? back at the house, katherine cooked philippine sour soup (a clear soup of mushrooms, lemon, tomato, spinach, and okra served over rice) to share. i was nervous about this, especially after the morning’s offering, but it turned out to be lovely.

^ mystery vegetables ^

 

i vegged out (<<see what i did there) for rest of the day. turns out netflix works just fine in japan, though hulu and hbo are a no-go. it was relaxing in a way that watching netflix in the states is not. because i don’t have the things i need to actually work, i can’t actually work. so i really can just chill here without feeling guilty that i should be doing instead–including any cleaning or errand-type tasks. ergo, staying in proved to be just as lovely as going out. yaaay, tokyo!