マヨラー (MAYORAA)

There are so many bizarre things about Japan that just seem normal by this time. I wish that I could recognize more of them as bizarre so that I could share them with you. Remember the good ol days when I thought karate chopping a watermelon open was strange? I am slowly being transformed into a creature of my environment. Did I once drive on the right side of the road?! Even seeing it in an American film fills me with panic and a sense of something wrong. Did I once dare to dream of wearing my SHOES inside my house?! To do so here would be the end of life itself! I fight to retain some sense of what I once was... yes! there it is!...

I WILL NEVER EAT FRENCH FRIES WITH CHOPSTICKS!!!!!

There are some good Japanese words that I might start posting about. We shall begin with the world マヨラー (MAYORAA), which shall provide a tidbit of cultural insite for you.

マヨラー: a lover of mayonnaise

I stumbled upon this word during a lunch-time chat with some of my fellow senseis. They were commenting on how bizarre it was that I like to eat raw vegetables, such as carrot and celery sticks. One does not really eat raw vegetables here. One cooks them. I often bring carrot/celery sticks to school as a fourth-period snack to sate my appetite before lunch. Every time I crunch into one, the entire staff room turns in their seat and looks at me (whichever part of me they can manage to see, behind the pile of crap on my desk). Then someone inevitably comments,

`Joisu! You like eat carrots, HEH?!? You RABBIT!!!!!!!` (please imagine this being followed by hysterical laughter.)

Anyway, I decided to freak them out further by telling them that Americans enjoy dipping raw celery sticks in peanut butter and eating THAT. Or apples and PB. Or bananas and PB. Their jaws dropped further with every addition to the list. Beginning to enjoy myself, I described Ants on a Log (that kids snack where you put PB down the celery boat hole and stick raisins on top) and a PB, honey and banana sandwich. One of them looked slightly ill.

My good friend Shouko, however, had some cards up her own sleeve. Nodding enthusiastically at my story, she began her own:

`HEH, culture so different!` she cries. `Joisu, do you know, Japanese we like to eat celery with mayonnai-zu.`

Stop. Smile. Wait. I blink and venture a response:

`What, like just... dipping celery in a bowl of mayo?`

I say, watching Shouko`s hands in horror as they trace the shape of what I take to be a ginormous bowl of mayo and a celery sticks` descent into its yellow-tinged jiggly fat-filled depths.

`YES! Dip!`

She further explains that Japanese people as a whole love mayonnaise and eat it on everything; they dip all sorts of vegetables into it (the examples given were radishes and celery) or they smear it onto cooked vegetables (such as broccoli), or heap it all over a bowl of cabbage. Or a pizza. Or anything really. They like to slather a thick layer of mayo on slices of bread and toast it. As she continued to list mayo-appropriate items, a particularly horrific encounter of my friend Christina was recalled to my mind. At the time, I had envisioned the offending bun to have been a fluke of sorts, but I saw now that it was not!

Having bought a bun for the road at the Nago Jusco, and being of the mind that it was filled with sweet cream, Christina (behind the wheel of her car now) took a large and hungry bite. To her utter disgust, as her teeth broke the surface of the bun, the resulting pressure forced the ooze-ation of a giant blob of day-old mayo-filling into her mouth, gagging her and producing vomitation reflexes. Luckily she got these under control without vomiting on herself in her car. However, she was forced to swallow the mouthful of thick slimy mayo-gunk because she couldnt take her hands from the wheel.

The thing that had stuck with me about the story was swallowing this mouthful of thick slimy mayo-gunk. The very thought makes me shudder and feel the urge to shout (in the spirit of Roal Dahl) `bring us a basin! We`re going to be sick!`

I phased back into Shouko`s mayo-monologue just in time to hear her say,

`We even have word for people love mayonnai-zu so so much. They put on everything, like rice! (fyi: rice = LIFE here)! We call them MAYO-RAA.`

If you are unfamiliar with Japanese or Japanese writing, I will explain the immediately apparent origins of this word. The script in which it is written is Katakana: used mostly for writing foreign loan words, a very high percentage of which are English in origin. So when you see a word in Katakana, you immediately hope that it is a Japanified version of a word you already know, and try to sound it out. Give it a go...

Mayo-lover... mayo-laa... mayo-raa... やった！

Now, I walk the halls of school, haunted by stories of mayo. Who in my immediate circle is a mayoraa? Will I ever know? Do I dare to ask? Would the knowledge of such an icky habit cause me to act differently towards said mayo-lover? Anyone could be a mayoraa.. that first year boy, this second year girl. Is the Tea Lady a mayoraa? I glance suspiciously from side to side, and walk faster.