Amazingly, I am actually headed back to Japan after three months spent in San Diego doing various important family and house related stuff. In the nearly two decades I’ve lived in Japan, I’ve flitted back and forth between my two homes dozens of times, but I’ve never dallied for so long in the States. I know from experience that I’ll have a lot of culture shock to get over when I arrive, as my brain wonders how I could have ever have been used to narrow houses and streets, ridiculously tiny “large” drinks in restaurants, social situations in which I’m the only gaijin in sight, and vending machines that thank you politely when you insert the equivalent of a $100 bill to buy some canned coffee. For some strange reason, my clothes have an odd tendency to get tighter when I’ve been in the U.S. for too long, and I know Mrs. J-List will be putting me on a strict diet when I get home.
As I prepare for my return to Japan, I’m laden with various products that are available in the U.S. but difficult to find over there, like that “Butter Lite” syrup that I prefer to the honey-derived stuff they eat in Japan, and proper American peanut butter, which is far superior to the local “peanuts butter.” I’m bringing a large American coffee pot that makes 12 cups of coffee at a time, since all they have in Japan are tiny pansy coffee makers that make maybe one American-sized cup. I’ve also got a generous supply of Taco Bell “Run for the Border®” sauce packets — if you put it on the Chicken Wraps they sell at Japanese KFCs, you can almost pretend you’re eating Mexican food. For the record, I do know that Taco Bell is not a good measure of Mexican food (or of food in general), but in having a few dozen of these packets in my glove box I feel I’m maintaining an important cultural link to my home country.
Yes, I’m loaded with Taco Bell sauce.
