February 13, 2002
It's all in the slurp

Tonight, Janet, Filip and I headed over to their favorite noodle shop for dinner, a hole-in-the-wall kind of place that has apparently been in business forever.
For those of you that haven't seen Tampopo, I highly recommend it, if only to see how everyone eats their ramen here. Ignoring what most Western mom's would consider good table manners, the Japanese slurp their noodles straight from the bowl. Chopsticks are used mostly for shoveling the noodles from bowl to mouth, where they are quickly slurped in.
Eating in a noodle shop is a bit of a disconcerting experience. The sound of everyone slurping away is rather cacophonous and it's pretty hard to concentrate or hold a conversation over the din. But, this is how it's done and I quickly joined the fray, proudly trying to slurp, but mostly sucking in air and watching as the noodles dangled from my mouth, not wanting to be eaten.
As the three of us were finishing, a few business men came in and were disappointed that all the seats were taken. Filip told them that we would be leaving soon and they should hold on. Apparently this was very encouraging news, as they slapped me on the back several times, between a few domo arigato's and some Japanese that Filip laughed about. As we left, they thanked us a few more times, laughed and sat down, no doubt ready to begin slurping.

Posted by jimray at February 13, 2002 11:33 PM
Comments

So, what you're saying is... there may be a place on Earth that I could eat like I want to and I would finally be normal.

Posted by: Darin on February 14, 2002 01:26 AM

Jim- I'm sure you responded to domo arigato with( this is spelled phonetically)...Doughy tosh mosh tay...for "your welcome" right? I learned that in Karate class when I was in high school. Aren't you proud ;)
Erin

Posted by: Erin on February 14, 2002 02:46 AM

just wanted to let you know everyone really know that jim 縺ッ蟆大・ウ縺ァ縺ゅk and if that doesn't work then jim は少女である

Posted by: honda on February 15, 2002 01:11 PM
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