Culture Shock Report and Freaking Out Mom

My latest culture shock things is only a one-banger:

I used a rice cooker.

I don't really use rice cookers back in the states. Once I graduated college, I didn't think my independence would mean much as someone who could cook for himself if he couldn't cook rice – a basis of many dishes that's easy as hell to cook – on a stove top with a pan. I never saw any reason to turn back. When I moved in, along with the dirt and disarray, one of the very useful thing I inherited was a rice cooker. I used it for the first time this morning and all went well, despite the fact that I couldn't read any of the buttons. Since I was in the room and wasn't going to be walking away from it any time soon, I just started it up and watched it, which was completely unnecessary as it turned out. No matter. It was success and it was still pretty.

Last night I went out with my friend and work partner Kelly to meet with her and a local friend to celebrate her birthday. This marked the first time that I've eaten sukiyaki and it was good. One of the staple parts of sukiyaki is that the beef and other ingredients that you cook in the skillet are served in a bowl with raw egg in it. So there you go – coming from the United States where the very idea of eating raw egg is enough to give anyone a conniption – raw egg down the hatch with no pause, and it was delicious and I'm still standing the next day, feeling fine. That will go on the list with eating chicken sashimi a few years ago (yes – raw chicken) and an entire fugu dinner.

My mom was watching "CSI" or one of those other cookie cutter crime shows that there are too many spinoffs for (I'm personally fond of "NCSI" and not just because of Abby), and fugu was mentioned as part of the plot development and they said what it was of course. My mom asked me since I've been to Japan a few times if I'd ever eaten fugu. When I told her that I had, she had a heart attack. I could see her playing the fugu-gone-bad scenario in her head, trying to imagine the horror of me having died four years ago in Japan, imagining life without me around. She does that.

But I'm fine! I'm open-minded, but not stupid or hapless, although some conservative elements of American society would have you believe that the two go hand-in-hand.