More Sushi

Last night Elena and I went to the house of a guy named Stefane. He invited about 20 people over to his place for homemade sushi. It was a fun and interesting night. Stefane is about to head off to Japan for a vacation, so I guess it was a sort of Bon Voyage party. Elena and I brought wasabi peas and Japanese sembei thingies as a snack. It was fun watching the guests try the wasabi peas--none of them knew what they were in for. Ha Ha!!

The interesting thing is that French people know next to nothing about sushi. When the dinner was served, everyone gathered around it and proceeded to commit every sin in the book. I saw people passing food from chopstick to chopstick (a practice reserved for bones of the dead), people biting the sushi in half (faux pas), people not knowing how to use the wasabi. People not knowing the purpose of ginger (to freshen and cleanse the palate). At one point, one of the dishes of wasabi got empty enough that I could pour some soy sauce into it and mix the remaining wasabi a bit. It was humorous to me. I think more Japanese people need to come to France. It is interesting that there is really a difference between Atlantic migration and Pacific migration. Since Elena and I live on the Pacific rim, we have been exposed to much more Asian culture on a far more regular basis. Anyway, I give the host an A for effort and the cojones to invite OVSians to his place for sushi.

After sushi, the party started. Drinking, chatting, performing kept us occupied. I watched one guy take a bunch of pictures of one particularly attractive woman (he showed them to her later). They were excellent pictures--I'm not sure if it's because he's good at taking pictures or because she just looks so good. Mystery...

We left the party a bit early as our North American bodies aren't equipped to handle the Mediterranean late night party lifestyle. Whew! Those guys can party. And it was a Thursday, no less! The last thing before we left was a woman doing a couple of performance pieces. She did them with sign language as well since one of the partiers is hard of hearing. I wonder how different French sign language is from American Sign Language. I know the Japanese sign language is quite different. Anyway, she did two performances, neither of which I understood very well. I understood enough of the story, but I didn't understand enough to know why the punchlines were funny. Elena tried to explain the second story to me, but even with her explanation I didn't get it.

The first story was about 3 boys each who walks a different way. They went to the beach where they saw a voluptuous woman on the beach. But the sand was too hot for them to walk except for the third guy.

The second story was about a drunk guy who urinated behind a door. An old woman came out but he couldn't stop. She asked if she could hold his balls. He finally agreed. Then she squeezed them and knocked them together and told him not to urinate into her door.

As you can tell from my retelling, I must have missed something. Oh well. I guess the more important part was her telling of the stories rather than the punchline. Maybe it's like the Facebook movie reviews of many a French movie where the Americans say the movie is bad and the French say that you have to be French to understand the movie.