Yesterday Nam and I set out in the morning for a day in Osaka. My little brother has been studying capoeira with a group that practices in Shinsaibashi, and they were holding a west Japan tournament in Minatomachi. (My photos will hopefully be posted tonight.)
So we got to Osaka by utilizing the cheapest method available to individuals or small groups of people living on Awaji island for day trips to the mainland – the recently established one-day return ticket on the hydrofoil to KIX (2500 yen, including free parking).
We had lunch at Bombay Kitchen in Shinsaibashi (after all, God forgives sinners on the Sabbath as long as they eat at least two kinds of curry), and went to the capoeira tourney. I will leave my description of it to the photos I plan to post later, but overall it was pretty cool. There was a guy who was pulling flips and twists I would not have thought possible without using a wire. Anyways, that stuff comes later.
What I really want to get to is a conversation I had with my pal T, recently returned from Uzbekistan via Bangkok via Hong Kong. T has recently become bored with his incense importation/wholesaling and is curious to see how other people live. So he signed up with a temp agency and does temporary shit jobs just for kicks, even though he doesn’t need the minimum wage paychecks. Very inverse-punk. Or something.
So the job he’s doing today is at a kimchi factory near Tennoji. When I heard that, I told him it was his sacred duty to steal a vanful of rejected product from their dumpsters, but he declined. I guess middle age does that to you. So I settled for an employee discount that he mailed me about and will soon be the literal consumer of 1.2 kilos of kimchi for 1,000 yen (ten bucks). Awesome.
The best thing, though is the e-mail he just sent me to my cellphone. We had been ribbing him all yesterday about how much he was going to smell, how the garlicky tang of fresh kimchi is like Brut to Korean chicks, and how he should go to try hooking up in Tsuruhashi after work, etc. As it turns out, his biggest challenge is lunch in the factory cafeteria:
“I AM IN THE KIMCHI WORLD NOW、 A FUCKINGGOOD OBACHAN PUT A HUGE AMOUNT OF KIMCHI ON MY RICE. I CAN’T EAT ALL THIS SHIT BUT I SAID THANK YOU ANYWAY”.
Fucking priceless, I tell you.
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
What I love about Taro is that he is a real-live hippy in all ways that I, a product of those bygone years of old, remember. Taro is the real deal. He explores with the detached curiosity of a Constant Learner, wanting to know stuff just because. It may not be hip or cool or in Style to others, but he is true to himself and remains open to feeling great delight as well as great disappointment. Way to go, Kimchee Boy!