My Radioactive Diet

I’ve been in Japan now for  six months now , seen the cherry blossom, experienced an earthquake or ten, climbed more stairs than I’d done in the previous two decades, and read everything there is to know about radioactive mushrooms. All this from the person who never touched a magic mushroom in his life despite frequent visits to Amsterdam. It used to be you went to the local supermarket, picked up a carton of fresh milk took it home, poured some over your cornflakes and then tried to read the Kanji on the milk carton that told you you had just bought black been flavored soya milk. You’ve fried your eggs with vinegar, eaten lettuce flavored ice-cream and ignored the gooeey stuff in the carton that you thought was cheese (trust me it wasn’t). Now things are so so different. Not only do you have to make sure the eggs you’ve just picked up are from chickens, you also have to verify which prefecture they came from. And now you’ve got me going on the subject, where did they get the  word prefecture. Can you imagine telling somebody that you’re from the Bronx Prefecture, or Middlesex Prefecture for that matter.
“Excuse me mam but could you tell me where the prefecture offices are?” People in New York have been shot for less, I assure you.

So anyway back to the food. Every day someone discovers some food type that has escaped the Fukashima Prefecture and found itself in a restaurant in downtown Asakasa. It was hard enough trying to order something in a Tokyo restaurant before Fukashima (see I can’t always get what I want). Now it’s pure murder:

Me in restaurant: Sumimasen (which is about all the Japanese I know at this stage), can I have a menu Onegaishemas (O.K that too, every Brit knows how to say please)?

The waiter plods down a sixteen page full color menu with beautiful pictures of dishes that could easily have made it as exhibits in the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. After I have determined that the dish in the picture is actually food and not some new art piece,  I continue.

“Sumimasen Fukashima no?”

“No chicken rice.”

“Hai, but no Fukashima?”

“You want beef?”

Lets face it, this is not going to work.

So you try a more scientific approach. Salmon comes from the North Sea so that means it’s fine tight?. Ah but sushi? Where does the Nori come from? So lets forget about Sushi, I can always fry an egg. Now the eggs come from Chiba which is far away from Fukashima but wasn’t there a radiation scare there a while ago?  I seem to remember reading that vegetables that grow close to the ground are more likely to absorb radiation than say tomatoes. O.K. maybe I’ve just settle for a beer. There’s no way that can do me any harm. How come no-ones created an Iphone app for all this. Hello! people! How do I contact that guy who wrote IBeer. Maybe he can help me. Please, i somebody out there is listening, I’m starving!

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