Japanese BBQ

Last night I went to a fellow teacher's house for a BBQ. He had a bunch of friends over who used to teach at Maenishi as well as one who still does. It was nice to be invited so I'm glad that I have decided to relax my vegetarian ways while I'm here, otherwise I would have had to pass.
I was the first guest to arrive so I helped wrap potatoes in tinfoil and played a few video games withe the kids. I think I was super scary for them because they had to speak English to me but once they figured out that the universal language was Playstation everything was chill.

The actual BBQ itself was really good. I loved the fact that no matter where you go around the world and how little you understand the language, you will find a group of men standing around an open flame with giant slabs of meat. It was oddly comforting. Food kept appearing on my plate and didn't know how to say "I'm full!" so I had to keep eating. It was really good but there was SO much food. Everytime I thought the meal was done our gracious host would pop back inside for another package of meat. The main course was a bag of guts. He produced this bag and came up to me with a big grin and said "GUTS! Main course!" Yippee! So on the grill they went. Thankfully I know the word chotto (a little bit) and I was able to scarf it down and keep it down. Although I was a little worried at one point that I would pull a Bush Sr. and be sick on my gracious Japanese hosts.

Oh and the beer! Once he knew I liked beer, and his favourite beer Kirin, the lager kept on coming. This was a bad thing because I was starting to feel it and no one else there seemed to be drinking much. I needed to figure out how to graciously say no. About 5 beers later I mashed a sentence together and the beer stopped coming but my host then said that he likes screwdrivers, did I like screwdrivers? Well, yes, yes I do. Damn it! He sends his wife inside and out come 3 screwdrivers for me >.<'

The evening rounded out with sparklers, cake with whipped cream and fruit and cockroaches and caterpillars. Cockroaches in Japan are a fact of life. It doesn't mean that a place is filthy or gross. There are just everywhere. We were sitting outside on his patio when we see one of the little buggers come around for any scraps that might be lying around. Up jumps our host and he chases the cockroach around with a can of roach killer, man those things can move. Then a gianormous caterpillar comes along. He just picks it up and flings it back into the trees. I kept my composure but he asked me if I liked caterpillars anyway. I replied,"Iie, kowaii desu." (no, they are scary) He looks at me and then corrects me with "kawaii desu" (they are cute). We go back and forth like this until I act out being afraid. Then everyone laughed at me. Oh well, whatever, it was big!