The Onion on an Unfortunate Japanese Exchange Student

Check out this article in The Onion about a host family in Iowa treating a Japanese exchange student to a night out at a Japanese restaurant.

This is funny on so many levels.

And better yet, I’m from Iowa! I could see my parents subjecting a hapless exchange student to this kind of hospitality. I’ve also been taken out for hamburgers a few times in Japan when a host was trying to find something I would probably like, so I know how it feels. Hard RockCafe anyone?

By the way, a few supplementary tidbits related to the article.

While youngest son Derrick, 14, steered clear of “anything raw” at the restaurant, ordering the chicken-teriyaki platter, the other Tuckers were fairly adventurous. In addition to sushi and sashimi, they sampled miso soup, edamame, and seaweed salad.

Miso soup as you all know goes along with rice as a basic side dish in most any full Japanese meal. Edamame are the salted green bean snacks most commonly eaten as a side dish with a nice cold beer, and seaweed salad, well… Anyway, it’s all cheap-o stuff.

Miyazawa was equally patient when Bobbie suggested he call her “youbo.”

“I didn’t understand what she was saying at first,” Miyazawa said. “But after she said it four or five times, I realized she was saying ‘mother’ in Japanese. That was nice.

“youbo” 養母 does mean mother, as in a foster mother, but it’s so uncommonly used that it would likely be super hard for a native Japanese speaker to catch in a flat Iowan accent. And, even a Japanese kid with a foster parent wouldn’t call their mother youbo, they would just say okaasan, the usual word for mother. Poor Miyazawa-san!

Though when/if I finally settle down, I’m going to be a host parent! My host family days in Nagoya were great fun… Love that stuff.

- Harvey