Shio No Kami, the God of Salt.

Squiggle, squiggle, fish hook, toe, one armed prostitute; the associations I’ve made for Japanese scripts are often times too distracting for me to focus long enough to sound out the actual words. I’m about 86 sounds deep and the only constant I’ve found in my sickly slow study of katakana and hiragana, is that the funnier my association, the easier it is to remember. I possess a veritable mental wasteland of snake charmers, hookers, and angry parents shaking their children. I’ve even got the “don’t taze me bro” worked in.

I sometimes find myself having to suppress a laugh at how unconventionally wrong these connections are for the situation I’m in. The drunken salary men on the trains probably don’t give two shits about the crude and sometimes pornographic plays that are unfolding in my head as I search for my stop, but the mother of two sitting in front of him might be concerned (if she wasn’t focused on making sure her first-born’s head stays well clear of said drunkard’s swinging elbows.) Speaking of…

Yes, you guessed it, they’re letting me instruct children. God only knows what the last batch of teachers must have been like for this to happen. I had my first kid’s class on Tuesday, they didn’t learn a thing, but they sure got their entertainment’s worth. It was about fifty seven and a half minutes of huge gaijin sweatily hopping around like a circus clown in a sauna. They say you leave your dignity at the door on those ones, I understand why.

However, I digress from my shooyu. I’m currently posted up (yes I do actually feel like an NBA player crowding out old ladies, though minus the sweat this time) at one of my favorite hangouts; the sauce aisle in the supermarket. Check that, the salty sauce section. Alliteration aside, the selection is massive! I haven’t the words in Japanese to describe how much a visit to this place brightens up my day. Maybe genki raised to the 7^th. In English I’d liken it to a college student who’s smashed his brains against many a bag of Franzia, taking a trip to the south of France and discovering that he has a violent passion for good wine. So, much in the same way that the aforementioned student pokes his liver with those iridescent green bottles, I’ve made it a personal mission (against my blood pressure) to sample all available options. Momma always told you not to put all your eggs in one basket. Today’s choice: Okonomiyaki sauce. Here are some saucy results; a tofu mushroom curry and that delicious Japanese pancake, okonomiyaki.