King of All Fruits

Bali travelogue, blog-exclusive postscript: One of the most doggedly frustrating dimensions of Japanese culture (ask any gaijin) is omiyage, which roughly translates as "souvenirs," though that falls pretty short of the full horror of the situation. Basically, anytime anyone goes out of time ever for any reason and any length of time, they are expected to bring back something representative of that place for everyone they know. Some gaijin have detailed spreadsheets covering what omiyage to get for whom in what size and/or flavor. Jenn and I, being less dedicated acquaintances and coworkers, picked up a bag of candy at the airport. Ordinary there wouldn't be anything too horrible about this (I understand the international airport in Tokyo has souvenirs from most East Asian cities for last-minute omiyage crises), but we made the poor decision to get candy that tastes like durian fruit.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

For those of you who don't know, durian fruit is the end result of the evolutionary attempt to produce perfect catapult ammunition. It's a huge, clearly inedible, grenadelike object that looks like it should hatch into a cave troll or perhaps a Predator. Think of it as a Dire Pineapple, if it helps. For some reason, it has a reputation for being an exotic delicacy, though its secondary reputation is for stinking like a diaper in July. I should note that we had not tasted durian before bringing back a processed chemical version of this barfworthy fructodemon.

My coworkers at the kindergarten barely bothered for feign excitement for this horrific visitation. My supervisor smiled and went, "Oh...durian...um...king of fruits!" The candies have been sitting in a bowl, untouched, for days now. As far as I know, I'm the only sap clueless enough to try one; not only did it taste like ass with an aftertaste of onions and notes of old socks, but even opening the plastic released a cloud of semipermanent stink into the room, like unsealing a tiny magic lamp that, instead of a genie, contained farts. I did get some of the children to try some just before I left the room, though. I heard cries of "Dame! Dame!" ("Bad! Bad!") follow me down the hallway.

I did apologize to my follow teachers for bringing such a terrible, smelly curse on their heads. Mike, the senior gaijin at the kindergarten, said buoyantly, "Are you kidding? This is like the best thing you've ever done!' It's good to know that, no matter how well or badly I do my job, no matter what I accomplish at Harumidai Kindergarten, I will forever be known as The Guy Who Brought the Ass-Flavored Candy.

Jenn has reported that the bag of candies she brought to work mysteriously vanished after only one day. They work quickly at her school, I guess.