Mirrored with permission from Outpost Nine and Azrael

The Cows Worst Enemy

I flew home to America for Christmas. Well, after Christmas technically because it's cheaper that way. But anyway, I went back during the holiday season. By this point, I'd been in Japan for almost 5 months.

At this point, I was starved for a good steak. Japan has beef, but not real beef. It's tiny little strips, a quarter of which is fat. And they barely cook it! I suffer at yakiniku, which is where they bring you the raw meat and you cook it yourself, because I like my meat WELL DONE, and most Japanese people eat their beef still slightly alive (no really, raw beef is actually considered a delicacy here. Yuck). So I wait for the meat to get really cooked, but before a piece can reach it's full taste apex someone else plucks it away. It's a goddamned shame.

So anyway, beef in Japan sucks. The "steak" they have is small, undercooked, and doesn't taste the same. Hamburg is more popular, which is just a hamburger pattie put on a plate and dressed up real nice, but it's still just a hamburger patty and that's not all that special. And I know some of you are thinking about Kobe Beef, which is apparently famous because the cows are massaged or what the fuck ever. I don't need my cow to be treated like a fairy princess. No! I want it American style. Kill it, soak it in sauces, then grill that sumbitch till THERE'S NO PINK LEFT. That's how you do steak. That's what I was missing.

Plus, at this time, there was that Mad Cow scare and Japan freaked, replacing many of their beef menu items with pork, or just taking them away alltogether. Jeez, one cow is a little sick and people spaz out. Anyway, so I was really looking forward to some good ol American steak. On the plane to California, I was sitting next to a nice Japanese guy, who actually lived somewhere out in San Jose, and spoke English. So we talked for a little while, and he asked me if I was looking forward to returing to America. I said I was very much; to see my family, eat steak, you know the stuff any person who's been away for a while wants to do. He noticed my steak answer and asked me if I was worried about Mad Cow. I told him I was too starved for good steak to let that slow me down. "Mad Cow? They'll be scared cows once I get off the plane" I think I said.

He got a chuckle out of that and said something that to date I have not yet forgotten. "Ah, so one might say you are the cows worst enemy."

I don't know why, but I just find that hilarious. Just the way he said it, the way it's phrased - "one might say". Since, I've been working that into my everday conversations on the regular. It's awesome.

And if you're wondering if I tore up some steak when I got back to America, one might say that I did.

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