for I want to reunite
parent and offspring
This
post could be made on a number of days, because it’s about a dish I’ve been
eating for lunch quite regularly. Oyakodon! Oyakodon is egg fried around
chicken, laid on top of rice. I have been eating it at the university cafeteria
and it is available lots of places. The best part for me is the name. I found
out about it on an interesting lunch break last week. I had decided to try
something different that day, instead of eating the same option I’d had twice
that week already. Having a late lunch though, almost everything was sold out
when I got to the machines where you select your meal and purchase a ticket. So
I ended up ordering the same thing anyway. When I got to the kitchen area and
presented my ticket though, the old woman working there began shouting
something. I figured from her body language that my item was sold out, but had
no way to really respond. Luckily, a guy next to me in line asked “Do you
understand what she said?” I told him I figured she said my item was sold out,
and he told me I was right, but that I could get another item on the list that
is the same price. Problem was, the list was all in Japanese and had no
pictures. I asked the guy now helping me what was good, and he ordered for me.
His two friends began to help suggesting things too. Their English was great. I
got my meal, which turned out to be exactly what I thought I had ordered
anyway. No idea what happened there. The first guy who helped me than asked me
if I wouldn’t mind joining them for lunch so they could speak English. I
obliged of course. After all, I wouldn’t have gotten lunch without their help.
Turns out the three guys were all PHD students or Post-docs in Ecology. They
specialized in different bird species. One, Masayoshi, gave me his business
card, which I tried to accept with both hands, read all of and keep in sight as
is the Japanese custom. His business card had his bird, a warbler, on it. The
other two guys studied cuckoo birds. They filled me in on the name of my meal, oyakodon.
It means “parent and child together” because of the combination of chicken and
egg. It was especially hilarious to me because my mom used to tell me it was
kind of gross that I ate chicken burgers with fried eggs on top of them after
going to the gym. She said you shouldn’t eat two kinds of the same animal
together. It being the day after Mother’s Day it was funny to think about.
Apparently the name for pork and egg translates to something along the lines of
“parent and stranger.”
The
title of this post is a Japanese saying that means something along the lines of
“bon appetit”.
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