KID ETHNIC IS WRITTEN BY:
saleem
who is currently moving around East Asia.
kidethnic@gmail.com
ALSO BY KID ETHNIC:
100JapaneseThings
A collaborative site to help folks (and each other) find Japanese stuff.
SEAWEED BREAKFAST
A weekly column about Japan that I wrote for Glimpse.org.
The Alpaca Song
I wrote and recorded this for you. Because you <em>need</em> a song about alpacas, don’t you?
The Whiteboard Videos
Music+Whiteboard Markers+Friends=Good ways to spend weekends
Twitter
I twitter infrequently. But hope we can stay friends.
The Annual Kid Ethnic Valentine
Because I love you so much.
Fish Heads and Public Nudity · 29 July 04
When we touched down in Kumamoto, we were met with a sign-waving mass, like a mashed up pit of sports fans and limo-drivers.
My sign was held up by one of my students-to-be.
Kids here flash the peace sign like back in ‘69.
We joined Nathan (my predecessor here in Kumamoto) and a teacher from my highschool for lunch. I ate a local variety of slimey potato mixed with noodles. Which rocked.
My jet-lag buzzkilled me, though, and as soon as I got to my new apartment, all I wanted was sleep. It was three in the afternoon.
“What are your feelings on public nudity?” asked my predecessor, and a short nap later, we chilled with a crew of old Japanese men at the local onsen, a public bath with hot water supplied from a hot spring. You buy a ticket, strip down, take a shower, and then just boil yourself for a half hour in little swimming pools of various degrees of hot.
At night, my new coworkers arranged a dinner party for me. I don’t remember much about it, except for the fact that I was served fish heads.
Fish heads taste like a dense, slippery, version of chicken Teriyaki. They look at you while you eat them.
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Tilting Towards Kumamoto | Halfie the Half-blood falls off his bike