Bean Knowledge

This week I'll be taking part in a jointly run JETAADC-JASWDC Izakaya Pub Quiz event. The way I put our team together, we're lacking in the J-person department (just 3 white guys and 1 half-J guy), so I think we'll be at a disadvantage there. Normally wouldn't be a problem, but the questions are being billed as half English and half Japanese, and I'm not sure we're up to snuff on our Japanese pop culture. Still, we do possess some kernels of knowledge. Or beans of knowledge.

Yes, that is the sorry lead-in to today's Japanese nubbin. The word is 豆知識 (まめちしき), which literally means "bean knowledge." ALC defines it as "bits of knowledge," so I imagine you're supposed to visualize little scattered knowledge beans. Rikai-kun also offers "trivia" as a possible definition.

I know there are other (perhaps more ubiquitous) terms for "trivia," so I just did a cursory couple of searches.

「トリビア」turns up almost 4 million results.

「豆知識」, meanwhile, comes up with 28 million. Judge for yourself.

Playing with food

Yesterday I attended a Japan America Society of Washington DC event on bento making. More specifically, the focus was on trying to make キャラ弁 , which are bentos in which people shape and design food into popular characters or designs. More art than cooking, I guess.

Anyway, there was a table full of food, some arts and crafts-style supplies, and two helpful J-women to guide us (one of them is actually from near Itami). 

First I had this idea to make an Abraham Lincoln rice ball, but it just turned out looking like some kind of spook.  After that I was pretty much out of ideas, so I just started putting food in my boxes without any kind of plan or pattern.

A food riff. 

Then a Pac Man-like thing happened. 

The class was small; there were maybe 8 or 9 people. There was only one other dude aside from me. Cooking can be pretty masculine, but in retrospect, making bento food into cute little characters and designs can only be so manly. After I finished, I had to go outside and do 200 push-ups and then eat 5 lbs of steak to rejuvenate my testosterone levels.