gojira is hungry

On my first day of teaching, I played a game with some of my classes that is called "Wolf," but I renamed it "Gojira" (Godzilla) to make it a bit more culturally accessible. The game has Gojira (me) "sleeping," while the students call out a question, such as "What's your name?". If I give the key answer ("My name is Gojira!" and not, say, "My name is Pikachu."), I pretend to chase a few lucky students back to their seats. If I catch them, I get a point. If I don't catch them, the students (as a group) get a point.

I'm explaining this to you so you understand who "Gojira" is in the context of this update. Gojira is me. And every day, after chasing around kids, Gojira is very hungry.

I have two burners in my little "kitchen" area, plus a sink, some shelves, and a cabinet the size of a shoebox. This is my space. Still, it's infinitely more cooking room and appliances than I had in Taiwan. I knew I missed cooking in Taiwan; I missed the independence of making my own meals, the control cooking gives me over what, exactly, goes into each dish.

What I didn't realize was how much I actually enjoy cooking. I didn't realize it was something I would look forward to at the end of the day. It should be a chore; a bother; an impediment that comes between me and food. It isn't, though. It's fun. I keep my meals pretty simple, so they don't take too long and they aren't complicated to make, but still, I'm surprised at how the magic of food-making makes me so happy.

At first, I tried to make meals that seemed Japanese. It was hard to think of recipes, though. Then I realized I had everything I was used to at the grocery store: meat, veggies, fruit, spices, bread, rice, noodles... with a few slight differences, such as the abundance of tofu and daikon radishes (which are as enormous in person as they appear on anime!). Rice, also, comes in medium-to-enormous bags, some of which probably weigh as much as I do. Finally, the baking section is considerably more limited than an American one, although that likely owes to the fact that Japanese homes don't usually have room for an oven.

Despite these differences, though, the fundamentals are the same. Raw foods are available for purchase, and can then be taken home and cooked however the buyer pleases. I know how to cook. I know how to boil vegetables and saute meat. I know how to simmer sauces and slow-cook stovetop rice. I know how to chop onions, mince garlic, carve up chicken, dice peppers. I've got tons of kitchen know-how that hasn't changed just because my space is smaller and the foods available are a bit different.

When I stopped trying to make Japanese foods and started making Western foods with the available ingredients, cooking got easy. I found the stewed tomatoes by accident, and I still don't know if what I've been buying is ground pork or ground beef (I think it's pork, though, based on my dictionary). That doesn't change the fact that I can make pasta and tomato meat sauce in my sleep. The more I cook here, the more I realize that my brain doesn't have to think about the mechanics. I may be ponderously studying Japanese, but I am fluent in Making Food.

So now that I'm not worried about making perfect Japanese dishes anymore, just cooking something tasty and edible, making dinner has become a lot more fun. I've made tomato sauce three times now, but I'm branching into an adventure I call 101 Ways to Make Rice Interesting, and Japan seems pretty good at that. There are a ton of rice mixes full of spices and herbs that you can add to your regular rice to make it exciting. I've already made tomato rice and herb rice. I'm planning on mixing rice with some of the spice mix, plus beans and lightly cooked diced peppers for a bit of a veggie-and-protein kick.

Planning this kind of thing is fun. I never thought it would be. I never thought I'd start a routine of putting on some music and just making dinner, whatever I feel like that night. I try to plan meals a bit and buy ingredients for them, but with a grocery store literally five minutes from my house, I don't worry about running out of food, so I don't plan too far in the future. I'm still working out what my "staple" foods are, although bread and milk are definitely two things I can't live without. I'm about halfway through my 2kg bag of rice I bought in my first week here. I'll probably buy more when it's used up.

I really like cooking. I like how it's like a dance, and everything has to be timed correctly so nothing gets burned or undercooked. I like the rhythm of chopping vegetables, and seeing how thinly I can slice garlic and onions. I like the slide of a knife through a chicken breast, and carving out the perfect pieces to fry. I like orchestrating a perfectly balanced meal, and then placing it on a plate and savoring that moment of, "Behold what I have made." And then, after all that, I get to eat what I made.

When I'm cooking, I'm in my own little world. It's methodical, purposeful, and calming. It's whatever I decide it should be, whether that's creative or easy and simple.

Cooking is definitely one of my favorite parts of my life in Japan. I'm so glad I have a place to cook!

Itadakimasu!