ATAMA SAKANA ???..

Hallo everybody, hopefully you still have time for reading my posting. This is just a light reading for PARE student to refresh from our routine activities. 

Food sometimes becomes a big problem if someone goes to abroad. For foreigner student, cooking ability is needed. Some dormitory in Hokkaido like Kita 8 east (the place that I stay now) provide a communal kitchen for tenant, so if you cannot enjoy the Japanese food, you can cook by yourself. Saturday and Sunday usually is cooking time for some Indonesian student in the dorm. In this posting, I will tell you about our cooking experience in the dormitory. 

Indonesia is a country that consists of more than 300 ethnic groups; therefore we can find too many kind of cuisine. Fish head curry (Bahasa: Gulai kepala ikan) is a famous one.  That was why I and my Indonesian friends really want to cook it. It was started from hunting “fish head” in fresh mart shop. Actually it is little bit difficult for getting fish head in Japan. The fresh shop usually sells fish in a whole form or fillet form. That was the challenge for us how to get fish head, I tried to say to the sales person that we wanted to buy some fish head. Oh my God, the second problem occurred he cannot speak English. I tried and tried to explain many times, even had to use the body language, “my right hand held my head and my left hand appointed the fish”. It was difficult instead, fortunately I remembered that I have smart phone with Nihonggo application. I typed “head” the translation become “ATAMA” and “SAKANA” for fish. I said “ATAMA SAKANA” the sales person have nod his head with a smile (I did not understand what was the meaning of his smile). He accompanied us to the kitchen and showed the thing that we find and “hurray” finally we got it.

Fish head curry Ala Kita 8 east dorm
No need a long time for cooking the curry; all seasoning easily can be got in Indonesian food shop near Kita 14.  Around 8 pm it already finished and the curry ready to be eaten, eehhhmmm yummy. Even though the taste not like my wife’s cooking but at least it could cure our homesickness. However I was still curious about sales person’s smile. In the next day I asked to my Japanese friend in my laboratory, how to say “fish head” in Nihonggo, he said “SAKANA NO ATAMA”….aaahhhh I know what was the meaning of his (sales person) smile…

Thank you for reading my posting …CU    

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