Tasteless in Fukuoka.
The other day I was just telling a friend, that all my life, I have not lost any luggage while traveling. Just like how I told another friend that I have not contracted COVID for the last three years.
Cut to us being greeted by a VIP sign upon disembarking the flight, stating that our luggage did not make the transit, still stuck in Singapore.
My first reaction was to quickly check if the airtags were working.
You know, if I were to spend money on some gimmick, I want to make sure it works when it counts.
Like travel insurance.
My second reaction is to check how much we're covered by insurance.
Losing your luggage in your 20s is a pain. The world is unfair, inefficient, shit.
Losing luggage as a grown-up is reading through the fine print and confirming that we have $500 allowance per person to buy essentials.
I was the cool dad, telling Hana *points at the whole store* to pick whatever she wants, in Uniqlo.
In fact, this is a very good social experiment.
It shows that, technically, we can just get on the plane without packing.
In 2019 I wrote a Fukuoka travel guide, and suggested travelers to purchase a SIM card pack at the vending machine in the airport, or electrical store.
It’s 2023, your Australia provider should have a travel pack add-on option for $30-40. You get to keep your number for two-step verifications and save carrying an extra phone.
Already a week in Fukuoka? I must’ve been busy.
Yes, busy getting sodomised by COVID, or whatever that’s left of it.
COVID is actually that auntie during reunion dinner who makes unnecessary comments, digs up some old scars, steals food by wrapping them in tissue paper, and says k thx bye Harold is waiting in the car he doesn’t have time to say hi. By the way, all of you should lose some weight.
What rhymes with bitch? Yes, snitch.
COVID exposes your most vulnerable weaknesses, fears, and past trauma to other viruses, and leaves your weakened body and white blood cells to deal with it.
I’ve always wanted to be a ‘normal’ person.
Being normal is to wake up, cough all the phelgms away.
Cough, cough again.
Make coffee for the family. Try my best to smell the beans I brough all the way from Melbourne to no success. Listen to them praise the coffee I can’t smell.
Hana eats candies, while I take antibiotics, ibuprofen, sudafed, paracetamol, and some traditional Chinese medicine recommended by family-in-law to fight sinusitis.
At 2pm, without fail, my sinus will get blocked, inducing a migraine, which means I need to lie down for a couple of hours and wait for dinner time, which I also can’t taste. By 8pm I gotta lie down again.
It’s pretty shit.
Speaking of shit, is it the water, or the air?
Despite my low health bar, my stool sample is like the ladies in the Japanese commericial: radiant, with no dark spots, wrinkle-free.
Like a yoga warrior pose: solid, one piece, unbroken.
Don't curse me, it's a question from my child.
Why is unko easier in Japan, she asked.
I don't know, maybe it's a gut thing.
The microbes just link up with the environment, and if we're lucky there's a giant biomechanical humanoid mecha out there waiting for us to pilot it with 100% synchronisation.
Your body knows when you're home.
If you didn’t get the reference, don’t worry, that means you’re not suffering from crippling depression.
I mean, they are not that different, are they?
Not being able to taste, is akin to erectile dysfunction for a food person.
Remember that Chef’s Table episode, the chef with throat cancer, saying he lost all sense of smell, only to recover little by little, with different layers, and how amazing it was?
Bullshit, he was scared shitless.
I’ve also told another friend that if I can’t taste what I eat, I might as well die.
Well, I’m still here.
Turns out, we make a lot of promises we can’t keep.
The promise in compromise.
But, that doesn’t mean I can’t cook.
I had an idea to go around my reader’s home with a tamagoyaki pan, making omelets, documenting our short conversations, like Seinfeld with his cars and comedians getting coffee.
In reality, the dish that I’ve been making at people’s homes the most is my spring onion oil and hand-pulled noodles.
First for my nephew, then for Hana’s play date, and now my family-in-law.
That’s right, life is shit, but I’m still McGuyver-ing in the kitchen.
I made Japanese salt bread (shio pan), my honeypot pasta for eight people, I steamed snapper.
I’m gonna try pizza this week.
Hana likes to stare at those UFO catcher machines in Melbourne, and I don’t mind it because it’s another social experiment.
We would look at kids feeding the machines gold coin after gold coin with no success.
Because the game is rigged, I told her.
The staff can adjust the strength of the claws, when the claw releases, and how fast the claw ascends. All to cause the toys to drop, mimicking the descent from excitement to despair on the child’s face.
It’s the ‘almost got it’ sensation that makes you want to return.
Introduction to slot machines 101.
It’s almost impossible to win on the first go.
But that’s the Asian talking.
The game never specified that you should win on the first try. When you think about it, it’s not bad to win a soft toy for $5.
If you change your mindset to think ‘ok, let’s get it within 5 tries’, the game changes dramatically. Like investment.
The key is to use the claws as chopsticks, to slowly scoop, dig, push the toys to the hole.
The only way to win on the first try, I told her, is when the toy is almost falling into the hole. Then you just ‘push’ the toy with the claws.
In theory, anyway. We never actually tried, because the Australian machines are really sad, I said.
She half-believed me.
We walked past a Taito Station yesterday, the mother of all arcades.
Dad, these are the real machines in Japan, they’re not sad, she said.
I sighed and we walked around until we stood in front of a machine with bracelets, a pink one almost hanging out.
This is it, Hana. I said.
We’re going to get one of the claws to go through the bracelet, and let the claw do its job. You ready?
Yaaaay, she said.
The claw did not go through the bracelet.
However, it caught on the yellow bracelet behind the pink one, and we won.
We won a bracelet on the first try.
Sometimes, we just win in life because of dumb luck.
Do you hear me, Hana?
She’s gone, showing off her new bracelet to her aunt and grandmother.
During our second visit, we won a bag full of tiny soft toys and snacks.
I’m recovering at a rate of 5% per day, currently at 50%.
Knowing how life works, I should fully recover on the plane back to Melbourne, taking in the stench of aluminum foil and rancid meat pies.
Yet, rather than ‘shit I’m in Fukuoka but I can’t taste anything’, I’d much prefer to adopt the mentality of ‘at least I get to rest and recover in Fukuoka.’
Winter is my favourite season after all.
I mean, have you seen the poo they make here?
There are definitely worse places to be.
If you squint hard enough there’s always a silver lining.
To end the post, here are some local food that I couldn’t taste.
Remember, you’re only looking at this; I had to live through the torture.
To be honest, if I have to choose, I’d choose eating great food and not being to taste, rather than being a supertaster surrounded by crappy food.
The next time we meet, I should be 30% better.
I hope.