Twizzlers, oh so good for you~

Happy (belated) Halloween!

I love Halloween. I do. It's so much fun and not religious, so I don't even have to feel guilty about enjoying it.
Thus, it was a little disheartening to see such a lack of proper enthusiasm from my fellow residents! My neighbor, Yuki, who speaks English, invited me to a Halloween party at a nearby English school. She told me not to dress up though... so I just wore a colorful tie in effort to be a little different. Walking around Ota, you'd never guess there was anything unusual about this Saturday, that it was a Saturday like any other. It drove me crazy! I wanted to yell to the people on the street, "It's Halloween! Why aren't you dressed up?!" Yuki just laughed at me.

The English school was really small and yet the amount of people at the party could not have filled even one room. It was a little awkward, to say the least. There was a mix of ALTs from all over and Japanese people interested in English. The absolute best part of the party was... one of the Japanese women there had been given Twizzlers as a gift from an ALT, but hated them. When she discovered that I liked licorice, she perked up and immediately said, "Wait here, I'll go home and get them for you!" We all just sort of stared as she ran out the door... she was really eager to get rid of those Twizzlers!

When she came back and gave them to me, I was feeling a bit mischievous and looking for something to cut the boredom. So, naturally, I offered some "great American candy" to the Japanese people around me. I cannot even tell you.. how amusing it was to watch their reaction, from the moment they pulled a single strip from the package and watched it sort of flop in their grasp. 'Seriously skeptical' would be an understatement. However, good manners won out over suspicion, and they all gamely took that first bite. Gods, their expression! After chewing for just a moment, they looked over at each other and asked, in Japanese, "What is this?" over and over, like they simply couldn't understand. "This is plastic./Is this plastic?" or "is this really edible?" was the standard response, accompanied by a pain expression as they chewed. Yet, even as they have this look on their face like they are eating poison, they look over and me and nod, "Oh yes, very good. Delicious." I was laughing my ass off. Even for the sake of being polite and maintaining harmony, they simply could not contain their disgust for this so called "candy." One woman even suggested that it might be a candle. lol. They asked me if it was really candy. I told them it was actually quite popular in America, and they didn't believe me!

Thus, for every unsuspecting Japanese person I saw that night, I would innocently offer them some "very popular American candy," to which they would eagerly respond until they actually tried it. Then the response was universally the same as I described above. A few people actually said they didn't mind it, but I was not sure at all if they were just better at maintaining harmony in the face of great odds. lol.

I am SO buying Twizzlers to bring to the office. Mwahaha.

Cheers,

evil Baer