Distinctive Taste

I gave students a recycling homework assignment. They had to write 1 sentence about how they hurt the environment, and 2 sentences about how they help. Some of them made me laugh out loud:

"I hurt the environment because I breathe air every day."
"I hurt the environment because I eat a lot of vegetables."
"I help the enviroment because one day my friend threw trash on the ground, and I told him to pick it up."

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I want to be an awesome cook. And I want to look good doing it. And to think, some people would call me a feminisit! :) Tsk, tsk.

Last night I cooked a really good dinner and brought the left-overs in for lunch. To my embarrassment everyone commented on how good my massala chicken smelled. I hope they were being honest.

The wafts from the microwave started a whole discussion of food. Did I like squid? (No.) Octupus? (No.) Sea urchin? (Haven't tried it yet.) Raw salmon eggs? (Yes.) Nato? (So-so.) What did nato taste like to me? (Fermented coffee or cacao beans.) Really? Japanese people don't think so; I do not have Japanese taste!

But, my supervisor understood why nato tastes like coffee -- it's all about the beans. Nato is fermented soy beans that are light brown. If you imagine chocolate or coffee when you eat them, that's exactly what they taste like. Ishii Sensei tried explaining my American sense of taste to everyone else, but I don't think they got it.

"My husband hates nato because it smells like dirty socks." Ishii Sensei said. I laughed.
"It does smell bad, but I'm okay with it because I like French cheese. They smell awful but they taste amazing."
Then Ishii told me how she had seen "Heidi," so when she had the chance, she was thrilled to taste European cheese. When someone offered her goat cheese, she expected it to be really good, so she accepted.
"But when the cheese was one foot away from my nose, I almost fainted! I couldn't taste it, it smelled so bad."
Ishii's re-enactment of her fainting made me crack up. She held a ruler in front of her face, slowly drawing it closer and closer to her nose, whining in mock apprehension. Then when it was a foot away, she fell over in her chair. I almost had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard.
"Goat cheese is my favorite cheese!" I said. It was true.
"Ohh no!!!" she cried. "But I almost fainted!"

Some tastes can cross borders, but many will remain distinctly Western, and distinctly Japanese.