Seems like I had only just written a page when a week has gone by already! And only four weeks left in Japan now, suddenly the
end of the four months is coming up very quickly - February always seemed like such a long time in the future, but now it is
almost upon us.
Akaiwa again tonight - it was quite good fun last week, nice to socialise with some other people, with the big advantage
that they come here to speak English, so I can understand! Plus they bring goodies - we had kitkats, peanuts and calcium wafer bars
last week. The latter, snappily named CA-200 had some amusing English on the packet, proclaiming: 'Please enjoy every day taking
good CA-200 Wafers handily.'
On Saturday we had really grotty weather - started grey and progressed through snow, sleet, hail and rain throughout the day. We were
both in need of a rest anyway, so we had a vegging day inside. It is starting to be lighter longer in the evenings, which is a great
improvement - up to about 5:40 so far, soon Kimberly will be able to ride after work, which will make her a lot happier.
Otherwise life continues much the same. Great excitment today when I found half decent looking cheese in the supermarket! Actually
called cheddar and even tastes remarkably cheddar-like - I had cheese on toast with marmite today and it was bliss! And they had mozzarella
and parmasan too, so I might have to go back for more tomorrow. Practically out of Marmite now though, which is rather a shame.
Speaking of which, this rather amusing article was passed on to me, and I think it is worth a read. From NYTimes.com:
Long Live Marmite! Only the British Could Love It
January 24, 2002
By WARREN HOGE
BURTON-ON-TRENT, England, Jan. 19 - Ceremonial Britain
marks 2002 as the jubilee of the 50 years since Queen
Elizabeth II began her reign, but everyday Britain is
commemorating the centennial of the country's coming under
the rule of an even stranger British institution: Marmite. Marmite is a brownish vegetable extract with a toxic odor,
saline taste and an axle grease consistency that has
somehow captivated the British. They slather it on buttered toast, put it in gravies, mix
it with cheddar cheese and beans and boil it into
catarrh-chasing broths. They buy it at a 24
million-jar-per-year clip that has enshrined it as a
national symbol right up there with the royal family and
the Sunday roast. That no foreigner has ever been known to like it simply
adds to its domestic allure and its iconic status as an
emblem of enduring British insularity and
bloody-mindedness. Were Hogarth to paint a still life in a
21st century British pantry, a jar of Marmite would have to
figure in it. Marmite is exported to 30 countries, but all of it is aimed
at expatriates, and there are no plans to try to acquaint
the non-British world with its delights. "Our research
shows that if you haven't been exposed to it by the time
you're 3, it's unlikely you'll like it," said Mark Wearing,
Marmite's plant manager in this Midlands brewery town where
the product was first created 100 years ago in an abandoned
malt house using spent yeast from the nearby Bass Pale Ale
factory.
Marmite is genuinely good for you. Though the recipe itself
is a secret, the ingredients include yeast and vegetable
extracts, salt, niacin, spices, folic acid and vitamins B1,
B2 and B12. It is used to wean infants, and it has been
sent to troops in the Persian Gulf and Kosovo and
dispatched with mountaineers and polar explorers because of
its abundance of B vitamins and its capacity to ward off
deficiency diseases like beriberi that once afflicted
British troops and travelers. Utilitarian it may be, but there are problems. Kiss someone
who has just eaten Marmite, and you'll think you were
licking paint. Most Britons ate their first Marmite dressed in pajamas,
cutting their freshly spread toast into strips called
soldiers to be dipped into soft boiled eggs. The most
common theory of its siren song appeal is that a mouthful
decades into adulthood provides a headlong rush back to the
comforts of the nursery. Hayley Feureisen, the Welsh-born manager of Myers of
Keswick, a grocery in Lower Mannattan that caters to
expatriate Britons, said that Marmite was the product that
her customers requested most. As for Americans, she said,
"they think it tastes like a cross between cheese and shoe
polish." The store's English owner, Peter Myers, said, "In all
honesty, I like Marmite on toast, especially with eggs, but
I sometimes stand back and smell the Marmite, and I think
to myself, `Boy, you'd have to be brought up on this stuff
to form any appreciation for it in midlife.' " The experiences of two North Americans long resident in
Britain testify to a hands-across-the-sea experiment that
never got a grip. "In September 1961, I was on the deck of the Queen Mary one
afternoon when they came around with Marmite sandwiches,"
recalled Ed Victor, an American who is a leading London
literary agent. "I literally gagged on it, and I think I
even threw it overboard." Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University,
had his first Marmite experience at Oxford a week after
landing here from his native Canada in 1956. "I was invited
to tea at one of the women's colleges and they served
Marmite," he said. "I found it disgusting. I have never
recovered from the shock."
Asked if the natives' addiction to Marmite wasn't proof
that the British don't care what they put in their mouths,
Nigella Lawson, an English food writer and broadcaster,
protested: "Not at all. The British have always had a taste
for the intense and the savory, and if it is not a refined
palate, it is at least a strident one. People forget that a
salt tooth is just as frequent as a sweet one." Normal British reticence takes a holiday when the subject
is Marmite, and Ms. Lawson launched into a conversation
that began with a historical citation of Romans eating
fermented anchovies and landed in modern times with her
recipe for own children's party sandwiches: "I put butter
in the mixer and cream it and mix it with Marmite and put
it on bread with the crusts cut off." Marmite may be snack food, but its consumers consider
themselves connoisseurs, and you tamper with the formula at
peril. Two years ago, Mr. Wearing said, the company was flooded
with complaints about Marmite bought from one supermarket
chain. "What the hell are you doing with our Marmite?" one
letter read, a hint of the offended sensibilities and
feelings of possessiveness that disrespect to Marmite can
rouse hereabouts. Investigators discovered that the shelves had been stocked
with a version of the product made in South Africa. "It was
only slightly different, but they found us out," Mr.
Wearing said. The only changes the company has countenanced have been
substituting the original earthenware with glass in the
1920's, abandoning metal lids for plastic ones in 1984 and
refining the type face over the picture of the stewpot - la
marmite in French - that gives the product its name. Being British, the company has had an appreciation of the
ironic possibilities of the public's divided loyalties
between those who find Marmite revolting and those who
think it sublime. One campaign, a television ad exploiting the product's
notoriety for producing bad breath, showed a woman excusing
herself from a sofa clutch with her boyfriend and running
into the kitchen to have a quick bite of Marmite. She
returns, they kiss, and the final scene shows the woman
alone while the man is heard throwing up in the toilet.