#11: Homework's, Feb. 25

I enjoy life in Tokyo for a lot of reasons, ranging from the major, life-altering ones (unlike in D.C., no one has been fatally shot on the street in front of my house) to the extremely minor (wide availability of iced jasmine tea). Another one on the minor end of that scale: minimal chance of encountering American cheese.

I have to explain here that I LOATHE American cheese. Not merely in the way I dislike, say, cauliflower, which I don't eat but don't actively hate. No, my abhorrence of American cheese rises to the level that I can't think about it without feeling queasy. And I simply cannot take the chance that I might eat it by accident. I won't eat any dish that lists "cheese" as an ingredient unless the waitstaff can assure me it's not American. I once sent back an omelette because both cheddar and American were options, and I thought the cheese looked suspiciously shiny. I will not eat it in a box; I will not eat it with a fox.

Most Japanese cooks either feel the same way, or see no need to import slick, oily slices of plasticine "cheese product" when there's already so much good cheese available here. In nearly three years, I'd never come face to face with my culinary nemesis. And so I've let my guard down, ordering food without interrogating waiters and biting into sandwiches without first whipping out a jewelers' glass to examine the cheese for telltale sheen.

I didn't think I needed to exercise such caution at the Hiro-o branch of Homework's, a popular burger and sandwich chain, because American cheese wasn't even on the menu. But one bite into my bacon cheeseburger, I knew the awful truth: this cheddar wasn't cheddar. It was too pale, too slick, too reminiscent of the McDonald's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit I ate for breakfast every single day when I was 19. (My American cheese aversion didn't kick in until age 23, the same day my McDonald's aversion kicked in, both courtesy of a terrible Filet-O-Fish.)

And here we enter the Discourse On The Differences Between American And Japanese Culture.

In America, I would have rejected this burger on the spot. I hate sending food back, and I'd like to think I'm never a bitch about it, but I would have politely explained that the cheese wasn't what I'd ordered and asked for a new burger with a non-orange cheese, partly so there would be no chance of a second mixup and partly because even if cheese #2 WAS cheddar, my brain would nettle me with taunts of "It's American, it looks American" and I wouldn't be able to eat it without gagging.

But in Japan, I just don't feel right doing that. Part of it is the language barrier -- I can order food fine, but I don't speak well enough to engage in a lengthy argument over varieties of cheese. Part of it is that I already feel I'm causing hassle for the staff by my mere presence, with my first-grade-level reading skills and my general ineptitude at understanding spoken Japanese, and I'm loath to cause any more by sending back food.

And there are two bigger factors, that microcosmically represent my entire viewpoint on my life in Japan.

One: I don't want to be that gaijin. I'm grateful to Japan for allowing me to live here, because: they don't have to. America? Has to put up with me. I'm a citizen. I have a God-given birthright to live in America, no matter how horribly or even criminally I behave. (Not that I behave criminally, but I could.) Japan doesn't; they could deport me. Not for sending back a hamburger, obviously. But I feel a responsibility to my adopted home, to fit in as best I can, and to behave like a Japanese citizen, not like an obnoxious American throwing my weight around. It's part of the bargain, you know? You let me live here; I don't get into fistfights in fast-food restaurants.

Two: This is sort of Broken Windows Theory, but: Japan begets Japan-ness. My first time at a movie theater here, I tried a handful of caramel corn and had some leftover kernels, and I was stumped on what to do with them. In the States, I'd have thrown them on the floor along with the spilled sodas and Milk Duds and god knows what else was on the floor. But this theater was sparkling clean; I didn't feel right throwing them on the floor. So I put them in my pocket.

Similarly, service people here are unfailingly polite. They may be saying rude things about me behind my back (or even to my face, I wouldn't know) but -- always nice. I, in turn, am compelled to also be polite.

I was always dismayed, in the States, how quickly so many transactions went to hell. Sometimes it's purely bad customer service, but usually it's a chain reaction of things: the traffic is bad so customer #1 is a jerk so the waitress is upset and then rude to customer #2 who is then annoyed and therefore rude to the barista and so on. It's a roundabout way of saying that in the States, I often feel comfortable being confrontational because the entire transaction has been a confrontation. You ignored me for five minutes and threw my change at me, so I feel entitled to throw a fit about the cheese being wrong. But when I've been offered Ritz-Carlton-level service at a diner, I'd feel like a jerk making a scene over cheese.

So I scraped off the cheese with a fork. The burger wasn't bad. (Again with the tartar sauce.) I'll go back. Non-orange cheese next time.

http://www.homeworks-1.com/