Submitted by: D. Hintz - Akita City, Akita
In the early 70’s I was living in Akita with a several other gaijins. Akita is known as the bijin (hotties) capital of Japan, though they must have all been living on the other side of town when I lived there. We were on a very meager budget and ate cheaply.
We bought 10 kilo bags of bread heels (bread crumbs — pan no mimi), mugi (a wheat and oatmeal mush), and other assorted bulk items from a local farm supplier. Most Japanese will not eat such food feeling it is barely fit for their pigs and cattle.
During breakfast one morning, our supplier came by. He had just made a delivery the day before, so we were surprised to see him. He asked if everything was okay and we said, “Yes, thank you.” He then asked if we had eaten any of the margarine from the big tin he delivered the day before. We said, “Yes, in fact we were eating it just now in our mugi.” We put globs of it in our oatmeal to cream it up some because it was barely edible without some oil to let it slide down. That day’s mugi was particularly good. His face showed us that he was obviously concerned. He asked if he could trade the old tin with a brand new tin of butter. Now we were confused. We asked why, and he finally admitted that he had accidently delivered floor polish to us the day before in a tin that looked ever so much like the tin that butter comes in. Not being able to read kanji, we were none the wiser.
We went upstairs to get the floor polish, but before we returned it, we plopped a huge glob of it on a plate and used it to clean the floors after we finished our mugi breakfasts later that morning.
To this day, I don’t believe there is a significant chemical difference between Japanese margarine and Japanese floor wax–I know they taste the same!
