InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I want u around 4 a long time."

slipthroughyou (slipthroughyou) wrote in tensor,
@ 2011-02-25 11:07:00

Entry tags:

callisto_leandros, open, shinobi_shaw

OPEN
Afternoon

Shinobi had no classes after his morning Chinese history and had been feeling a little pent up, a little needy for human contact. It was past school hours, so he was dressed in a plain dark blue kimono with the sleeves tied back, short jika tabi, and a pair of close-fitting shorts in case any wise guys decided they had to see if he was wearing pants.

He stood in the common area of the first floor of Castle Hall at a table, wearing plastic gloves, making hand molded onigiri. Already there were several long plates of them, some with plain rice, some sprinkled with sesame seeds or shredded toasted seaweed. They were for everyone. Shin thought his fellow students might like an afternoon snack that wasn't chips or candy bars, and if not, he would wrap them and fry them up later for himself. The fillings were mostly tuned to the American palate, with tuna salad or salted salmon, but there were a few with a mix of Japanese pickled vegetables (with just a touch of umeboshi) or salmon roe.

Since he was not a Japanese housewife making a bento, he didn't cut the seaweed into little shapes or make faces on his onigiri (though he remembered fondly how his own mother had often done so), but took pleasure from making the rice balls as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

The three rectangular plates in front of him had many gaps from students taking one or two and Shin's red rice cooker stood ready to make more. Another student turned the corner, and he said in his quiet voice, "Have an onigiri."

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slipthroughyou
2011-02-27 07:50 am UTC (link)

"Yes," he said. "You have one with tuna salad filling. These have salted salmon, those have Japanese pickles, and those have salmon roe."

Shin helpfully pointed each grouping out on their long plates. Near him was one he'd made for himself with a mix of the salmon, roe, and pickles, and a bite out of it showed the mix of fillings.

He smiled at Callisto. He'd seen her a lot at the gym. "I thought I ought to get out. And then I thought I might spread a little culture to the masses."

With his hands he scooped out a small handful of rice and dug a little nest in its center, filling it with salted salmon. He tucked it in with a bit more rice over the top and began to turn it in his hands to make a triangle shape.

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	hent_eye 2011-02-27 08:04 pm UTC (link)
	"Tuna salad's good with me," Callisto said, trying a bite, then another. Then it was half gone she nodded in approval and watched him make more. "Culture is always more appreciated by the masses when it comes in the guise of good food," she pointed out. "So, mission accomplished, I'd say." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

slipthroughyou
2011-03-01 08:43 am UTC (link)

Shin had started out making triangular onigiri, but then made a few square ones just for variety, and then had made a bunch of round ones with a little square of seaweed on top. Now he was back to triangles.

"Have another," he encouraged. And he smiled. "I didn't think I was on a mission, but I considered it fulfilled then."

Sprinkling sesame seeds on his current onigiri, he set it down. Some other kids came through and each took a rice ball, calling their thanks as they bit down. Shin smiled. "I don't have the urge to feed people like some chefs do, but I like seeing people enjoy my work."

And then he stopped for the time being and took up his own and finished it. It was his third. Onigiri were surprisingly filling, but if one spread them out a little Shin at least could eat half a dozen or so. "In Japan, in combini... convenience stores... there's whole shelves full of them, and people who come in to restock them every hour during the lunch rush."

If Shinobi's face was a little dreamy, one couldn't blame him. It was a thing of beauty, those walls of rice balls.

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hent_eye
2011-03-01 04:37 pm UTC (link)

"Never got to Japan," Callisto said before taking another bite. A few more and it was gone and she was looking over the varied selections on the table for her next. Something a little more adventuresome, perhaps. She picked up one she was pretty sure had salmon roe in it.

"Always meant to," she continued. "I was supposed to go for a job once, but then I ended up with the tentacles and yeah, they photograph well but they're a bitch to direct."

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slipthroughyou
2011-03-02 10:27 pm UTC (link)

"I know a few sushi chefs who would agree with you," he said thoughtfully. Shin thought of the times he'd had freshly killed but still wiggling octopus and squid in Korea. One had to be very careful, as the suckers could stick to the throat and choke a person, but Shin could go intangible at the neck and stop it. Not that he had. It would've been incredibly rude to do so in public. Go intangible at the throat, not choke.

"Japan is difficult for Westerners if they don't have an interpretor. Some don't realize how lonely or isolated it can get when you don't speak the langauge and can't read anything. A lot of Japanese know a word or two in English, but very few are fluent, or even conversational. The gestures are different too, so trying to act things out is hard as well." Shinobi knew he'd been lucky to be bilingual in English and Japanese, and that his mother helped him keep up.

Smiling, he looked down at his ever dwindling supply of onigiri. "Tomorrow I'll fry up what doesn't go and make fried rice of it. I don't know which I like better, onigiri or the fried rice the day after."

"I wanted to make some with tako, octopus, but it wouldn't go over well," he admitted.

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hent_eye
2011-03-03 04:32 am UTC (link)

Callisto nodded, thinking over what few trips she'd taken during her modeling years. She'd gotten to Paris and London, but London was easy and she'd taken enough French to get by in Paris and besides, she'd only been there for a week and most of it had been spent on a runway. You didn't have to talk on a runway.

"I speak Greek," she said after a moment. "Not fluently, much to my parents' disappointment, but enough to get by. No Japanese though. I'd probably end up offending everyone I met."

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slipthroughyou
2011-03-06 12:34 am UTC (link)

"They do appreciate the effort, even if it's wrong," he said thoughtfully.

Shin finished his own onigiri and took one from the plate of salmon roe. They didn't go very fast once people knew what was in them and Shin would rather fry them up later than have a wastebasket filled with onigiri with one bite out of them.

"Are your parents Greek then? Do they have a place there?"

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