BIG IN JAPAN

It is so typically Canadian that in the nearby downtwn food court, where hoards of hungry office and service workers lunch every week day, there is a line 2 km long by the sushi bar by 11:50 am. The bar only accepts cash, no cards, if you please -a sure sign that they are raking it in- but the neighbouring bars which offer “traditional” Canadian-European fare remain killing flies (as we say).

I succeeded in dragging my colleague away from the sushi bar (“Look, it’s cold! and rainy! do we really want to eat raw cold fish, seaweed and  cold cucumbers wrapped in sticky cold rice?) and tempted her with a nice hot steak and kidney pud. She admitted that even in Japan, people only eat sushi on hot sunny days, so why people here are behaving as if sushi is the only thing which can stave off imminent death by starvation is something of a mystery.

Yes. Even as Iranians back home dream about the moment when the visa oficer will finally stamp their passport so they can rush over the ocean and join their homesick compatriots in Toronto, their couterparts from the native Canadian middle-class are attending seminars and applying for jobs  which will take them as far as possible from Canada.

Japan. Recently it seems that every non-immigrant Canadian I have met has either spent some years in Japan, or is trying to get there. Why? Noone knows. Can’t be the climate. Can’t be the sense of space and peaceful surroundings. Can’t be their politics and controversial attitudes towards women and foreigners (even worse than a woman). Not the currency either. That leaves the food (?) and the chance of immersion in a wholly different, pretty-looking culture while holding on to modern conveniences such as fast internet and designer brands.

Well, it has always been so. The pine dreams of the palm, and the palm of the pine, said some poet or other. And meanwhile, the sushi bars and immigration lawyers prosper.

Tags: Canadian food, Canadian society, daily life in Halifax, different cultures, eating at the office, life, random