Astroboy in Asia: My Sushi Story.

This story isn't very funny. Tucker Max has a much more hilarious sushi story. Read his instead.

I went last weekend, with my mum, to her parents’ place in Emo for my grandmother's birthday. During the weekend, I managed to wander over to Fort Frances (30 km away) to get to the one decent club in the area with my friend Neal. It is a former single-movie theatre, converted into a bar. It's called Warp 9. The one thing that makes it worth going to is the American college kids that frequent there. The town of Fort Frances lies on one side of the river separating the two countries, while International Falls is on the other side. There is a state college in International Falls. Since the drinking age in Minnesota is 21, while it is 19 in Ontario, the college kids all cross the border to party at Warp 9 in Fort Frances. It makes for a good time, expect that this specific bar experience wasn’t much different than any other bar experience. So this post isn’t about a night out clubbing. It’s about what I did for my grandmother’s birthday.

Being the high-spending guy that I am, I made grandma dinner for her birthday and signed a card that my mother bought. For this special occasion, I made the most intelligent meal that I could think of. I made sushi.

For anyone to appreciate the significance of myself serving sushi for my grandparents, a little bit of background information is needed:

For the majority of their life, my grandparents have lived on a farm. For just about every meal of their lives, they have feasted on such Canadian farming staples as beef, chicken, turkey, or freshwater fish. Potatoes were served on the side. Always potatoes. A knife and fork were always the utensils used. There are no exceptions, unless corn of the cob is the lucky vegetable of the week.

Now imagine such people looking for the first time ever upon a couple of plates filled with sushi rolls, with green wasabi on the side, a pair of chopsticks on their plates, and more soy sauce then they previously thought was legally allowed during a meal.

I think they were happy that I am about to go to Asia.

Also present at this dinner, along with my grandparents, my mother, and myself, was my sister from Winnipeg and her boyfriend, Jordan (the two people in the picture below). Out of the six of us, my mum, my sister and myself had seen (and eaten) sushi before. That’s a 50% rate of previous sushi consumption.

My grandmother wasn’t sure what to do with the chopsticks. At first, she just stabbed the sushi rolls with them and stuck them in her mouth. At this point, I thought that it was a good idea to demonstrate the best (ie. least messy) way to eat the stuff. I showed everyone how to pick up the food with chopsticks (around the food instead of in the food, so that it doesn’t fall apart on your plate) and how to mix in wasabi and ginger with the soy sauce.

My grandparents are getting very “wise” in their ages and are getting a bit hard-of-hearing. I observed this fact of life when I watched my grandfather, right after I explained how to mix the wasabi with soy sauce, put a good chuck of wasabi onto one of his chopsticks and eat it. If you’ve never had wasabi before, you have no idea how hot this stuff is. It’s like a paste version of Dave’s Insanity Sauce. That stuff is so hot, that it “strips wax floors and removes driveway grease stains”. Okay, so wasabi isn’t quite that hot… but it’s still pretty hot when eaten by itself. About this same time, my grandmother gave up on the chopsticks and started using a knife and fork to eat with; cutting up the sushi into small pieces. It’d never seen anyone do that before. It was interesting.

Back on my grandfather’s end of the table, I’m pretty sure that I was witnessing tears coming from his eyes. Wasabi is hot stuff. A confused look formed on his face, as he noticed that I was happily gobbling up my sushi. I guess he really didn’t see my earlier demonstration, nor did he see how I was currently eating my sushi, as he AGAIN picked up some wasabi with a chopstick and ate it! Did he just really like this stuff? Apparently not. His face was turning a dark shade of red and more tears where coming from his eyes. I was afraid that he was going to have a heart attack. I again showed him how to mix it with soy sauce, instead of eating it like a side dish. He looked at me funny and said that he didn’t want to do that because it was too hot… How could I argue with that logic? He did seem to enjoy the sushi though… after following grandma’s example and using a knife and fork.

It was around this time that I notice that Jordan’s face was contorting in strange ways; reminiscent of the face that someone makes when they find something unpleasurable. So what did he do? He got some ranch salad dressing to dip the sushi in. HE WAS DIPPING HIS SUSHI IN RANCH SALAD DRESSING! I’m not sure which was funnier: grandma and her cutting up the sushi with the fork and knife, grandpa’s wasabi experience, or Jordan’s sushi and ranch.

Not sure what to think of this, because thought of someone not enjoying sushi did not register with me, I asked him what was wrong. He told me that he thought sushi was gross. I asked him what was gross about it. He told me that the dark green stuff around the rice was disgusting and he wanted to know what it was. I told him that it was a Japanese vegetable, called “nori”. My mum cut in and told him that it was actually seaweed; that nori was just the Japanese word for it. Jordan’s expression went from a strange contortion of disgust, to a look of “about to vomit”. I was a good thing that there was also regular shrimp on the table, along with my failed experiment at making shrimp tempura. He just ate that.