Gaijins on Japanese TV

As announced below, me and a couple of other GenkiJACS students signed up to be on a Japanese cooking show on tv. The idea was to do "cooking olympics" where people from several countries would be competing against each other. Holland, France, the US, Turkey, China, Japan and Switzerland were represented.

The whole thing was filmed in a tiny apartment near the school. It was really small, crammed with stuff (but not chairs...) and very hot. It started off really good, because the fire alarm went off in the building. It was obviously just a test to see that the inhabitants would react the right way. We just went on the terrace and waved down to the guard, which was probably not appreciated.

The guys from tv didn't speak English (of course) and we were glad that Kim-sensei, the culture teacher was there with us. We were expected to first strike a couple of silly "fighting" poses and scream "ganbarimasu" = "I will do my best".

Lucas from Holland was the first to cook his dish. He did a pretty complicated dish with meat and asparagus which looked delicious. Next on were Lucille and Axelle who made a French desert called Clafoutis, a pie with cherries inside. Then Atilla prepared Turkish mezze which looked delicious and watching him you could tell he was used to cooking, looked very professional.

In between the candidates had to answer a couple of question on who you were, how long you stayed in Japan and why, what your favourite dish was and which dish you like least and so on. Luckily Kim-sensei was there to assist... We had prepared some cooking related phrases however to be able to comment a bit. We were not really asked to do that however. Lucille and Lucas were the most advanced students, they are both majoring in Japanese back home. The rest of us was a bit lost.

Then it was Chris' turn. He's a 17-year old American who has never ever cooked before in his life. We all thought it's slightly stupid to get your very first cooking experience on tv, but it's also kind of brave. It turned out to be the most hilarious performance ever... It was sooo obvious that he had no clue what he was doing - and despite the fact that hamburgers are not that hard to prepare. First task was to prepare the meat. We had instructed him to mix it with eggs and enough flour to keep it together (he had no idea what to mix the meat with). He put everything in a bowl and started stiring it with a tiny tea spoon. That looked really ridiculous, even more his scared expression. The two women commenting already started to laugh very hard. We tried to tell him with sign language that he should start using his hands to mix and form the meat. Then he put the meat into the pan and at the same time the buns into the toaster. He supervised the meat closely, but forgot about the buns - which of course resulted in completely burnt buns. This and his shocked expression when he took them out made the tv team crack up completely. More troubles followed - he had taken the cheese out of the fridge too early and it had started to melt in the heat. So he had to scratch it off the plastic with a knife and used a big butcher knife to do it and then paste it onto the meat. Everybody was laughing so hard and the team filmed me and Axelle laughing - they will probably cut that together somehow...

Chris was just THE perfect candidate for the show. We really assumed that they were not only looking for foreign recipes, but more so for gaijin behaving stupidly. And Chris met the brief perfectly and was being so funny. And guess what, today, only one day later they called the school to ask whether Chris wanted to appear on another tv show. He could be really "big in Japan", Japanese tv seems so silly and he would be perfect for a funny show.

I was next and way more boring. I concentrated on the dish "Älplermagrone" (thanks to my sister for the idea and recipe). I think it turned out quite nicely, although the potatoes were cooked a bit too long and therefore crumbling apart. But overall it tasted really good.

Japan and China were last to prepare their dishes. The Japanese dish contained Natto (fermented beans) which most foreigners really hate. It's sticky, smells and tastes rather disgusting and is immensely popular with the Japanese, but probably no one else. The Chinese dish was simple, but looked good. The woman works in a Chinese restaurant after all.

The winners were Holland (1st), Turkey (2nd) and China (3rd). They didn't specify further, so I can still believe I was 4th :-) We then tasted all the dishes and chatted with the tv team as far as our Japanese language skills allowed it. In the end they wanted us to march in again to have a nice beginning sequence.

That was a fun day and really worthwhile doing. Even if we looked stupid no one back home will get to see it anyway...