The Price of Chicken Meat
LAST NIGHT as I was drifting off to sleep, my wife, in the darkness of our bedroom, suddenly asked me for my thoughts on the relative price of chicken meat in America compared with prices here in our seaside Japanese village.
Did I not think the price of chicken meat was significantly lower here in Japan than in California, and didn't that seem somewhat odd to me, the wife wanted to know, since the common wisdom is that the cost of living in Japan is generally higher all the way around, and America is supposed to be famous for low cost -- which is not to say cheap -- consumer goods?
I gave my wife's concern a few moments of consideration, and then I speculated that perhaps if American consumers took their business to a neighborhood butcher shop, and bought only a specified -- that is to say, smaller -- poundage of certain chicken parts, perhaps the American consumer might be given the same price advantage as the Japanese consumer, and with less volume actually consumed, might also enjoy an important caloric break as well, leading to an overall general health improvement and longer life: certainly a significant benefit.
I told my wife how much I loved her, and I felt the arms of slumber pulling me down into a warm and comfortable and altogether peaceful place.
Moments later, however, my wife began singing the refrain from a currently popular song, "Tsunami" by the Southern All-Stars, who are not southerners at all, but come from Yokohama, a city in a north central region of the archipelago. I do not mean to say that she sang the song in a loud or obnoxious tone, for that would not be her style. No, she sang in a thoughtful and clear voice the words of the song, and for a moment I thought I must have been dreaming.
My wife asked me to say a few words about the song. Did I not think it was an admirable and worthy creation of the pop genre, a tune that fully deserved the accolades it received as the best-selling record in the long and honorable career of that before mentioned misnamed musical aggregation, the Southern All-Stars?
Yes, I allowed, "Tsunami" is quite a fine addition to the popular canon, and if she so wished, I would go in the morning to the music shop and purchase the single for her, and add it to our collection. My wife said, oh yes, she would be very pleased if I did, as she very much admired the artistry of the Southern All-Stars.
There followed a few moments of blessed silence in our house, and once again I felt the tendrils of sleep wispily entwining my consciousness.
It was then my wife remembered that as a child, in the local commuter train she took each evening home from the cram school she attended in the city, a woman would walk up and down the aisle, trying to sell the dead fish she had stuffed into her backpack. Occasionally, she would be successful, and would take a fish from the backpack, wrap it in newspaper, and exchange it for a few coins with a passenger on the train, all the while maintaining her precarious balance as the train jostled through rice fields and bamboo groves from the city to my wife's home town.
My wife further remembered that as, at the time, she was a tender-hearted child, she felt sorry for the fish woman's daily efforts and how powerfully the dead fish in the woman's backpack infused the train coach with their briny -- which is not to say putrid -- essence, especially during the humid summer months.
Late one afternoon, when my wife and the fish woman both exited the train at the same station stop in my wife's home town, my wife invited the fish woman to walk up the hill to where my wife then lived with her mother and stepfather.
My wife's mother agreed with my wife that the woman worked hard for her living, and felt the same sympathy for her that my wife felt.
My wife's mother then went into her kitchen and reached into a kitchen cabinet above the sink, retrieved some coins from a small ceramic jar, and purchased a fish from the woman, who was grateful, and went on her way.
My wife and her mother were none too broken up to see the back of the fish woman as the stench of her backpack -- or rather, the contents of her backpack -- was becoming quite overpowering in the entryway of the house.
My wife and her family ate the fish for their dinner. They agreed that the fish was delicious, even though my wife's mother had originally planned to serve a completely different dish that night.