Summer 2001
I had first arrived in Japan only a couple of weeks before, and was still really nervous about interacting with the people I had meet. When I moved to Japan it was basically the first time I had been out of Canada, except for a brief stint to Seattle which doesn't count. People had told me all sorts of crap about Japanese people, how I had to be careful about everything, and how I could be rude by saying just about anything, which had be worried all the time. Basically, I found out that these people are full of shit, people are people no matter where you go, and while there are cultural differences, people are usually willing to forgive any transgression you make until you learn the ropes. My point is, I had no idea what I was doing, and neither did any of the people who told me anything about Japan.
So during this time, I had made friends with fellow local foreigner who was well connected in the area. She gave English lessons all over the area, and seemed to be pretty well liked. She brought me to a place near where we lived, to a small home farm that grew a number of fruits and vegetables indigenous to the region, or Japan in general. The family ushered me in, having never had a foreigner in their house before, and offered me some of their produce. The first thing they offered me was, a violent construction zone orange mixed with a bloody red coloured plum, about 2 inches across, which is called umeboshi in Japanese. They all looked at me, waiting for me to take a bite of this fruit, which looked a little poisonous to me, causing me to hesitate a little. The father of the family saw this, and took one and plopped it into his mouth, sucked off all the flesh, and spat out the pit in almost one fluid motion, grinning all the while. I figured that it couldn't be that bad, so I took one and popped it on my mouth as well.
I cannot describe how it tasted in any other words than to say it tasted like bile. I was eating a violent construction zone orange mixed with a bloody red coloured ball of bile tasting poison, with the whole family watching me, and considering the head state I was in (mentioned above) I was freaking out. I wanted nothing more than to spit this vile piece of demon-spawn out, run to the nearest town and come back with pitchforks, torches and big jugs of kerosene to torch the whole residence so the fruit could spawn no more. But since everyone was watching me I swirled the ball of puke in my mouth until they lost interest and continued to make dinner (which I guess there were in the middle of when we arrived.) They were less than pleased, as you well could imagine, and I felt like I had just stuck a knife in the heart of this family.
They stood up and went to the kitchen, the family of four and my friend, and I continued to work on my puke-ball. I decided to make a break for the bathroom, the family seemed to be heartbroken as it was, so I figured that even if they caught me, it couldn't get any worse. As I started to make my break for it, the son came up to me, and out of nowhere, punched me right in the balls, and then just looked at me, as if he was curious to see what the reaction was. Most likely he had never seen someone who wasn't Japanese before, and may not have even thought I was human. So there I was, a mouth full of two kinds of vomit, with a kid looking at me curiously, the family kind of disgusted, and I was motioning to them "Your son just punched me in the balls", (which never works, because many Japanese people freeze up when they think that they may have to communicate in another language) and trying to grab the kid who did it. I swallowed the ball, spit out the pit, went to the bathroom and drowned in my sorrows until it was time for dinner.
