Ken Seeroi, Author at Japanese Rule of 7

September 13, 2019September 13, 2019

What I’ve Learned About Japanese Customs

It rained last week. And as I walked into the lobby of my Japanese office building, there was my coworker in front of me, the strawberry-blonde gal who speaks pretty good Japanese. And perhaps because she’d mostly mastered the language, it was surprising to note she’d failed to successfully navigate the entire minefield of Japanese customs: she hadn’t wrapped up her umbrella. You know that little strap you wind around to hold the umbrella closed? Yeah, she hadn’t done that. This is the Japanese equivalent of not zipping up your fly.

August 18, 2019August 19, 2019

How to Make Japanese Food

Making Japanese food’s like making love. Doesn’t have to take a long time if you know what you’re doing. And when people ask why Ken Seeroi does it so well, hey, it’s all those kitchen hours spent with Japanese women bent over the stove. Sure, you can make it a lengthy, hard endeavor, or you can get busy and get done. So let’s take that route. Seeroi Sensei ain’t trying to put in overtime. And if your average salarywoman calls that laziness, fine. I say it’s efficiency. Semantics.

But What is Japanese Food?

Right from the start, even defining Japanese food presents a challenge. As with everything in this damn nation, what’s blindingly obvious to Japanese folks is utterly baffling to outsiders.

July 6, 2019July 7, 2019

Cheating in Japan

“Hi Ken,
What do you think of cheating as a subject in Japan? I recently watched this video and it says over 80% of women here cheat. How true is that?”

Okay, so several years ago I met a dude in Osaka, who’d just moved there for work. We were standing in an empty shell of a building, drinking shochu and eating dried daikon with bits of cream cheese. Who says Japanese bars aren’t the best?

Me? Oh, right. Well, anyway, he mentioned a wife and daughter back in Chiba, so I replied, “Must be hard being away.”

“Nah,” he answered, “my wife said I can have a girlfriend.”

And I was like, “Whaaa? She said whaaa?” Probably should work on sounding out my consonants a bit more.

Cheating in Japan

Then fast-forward a couple of years, when I told my girlfriend at the time I was moving out of Tokyo.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. Really thought she’d take it a bit harder, to be honest.

“I don’t mind if you have another girlfriend,” she added.

“Will you have another boyfriend?” I asked.

“No guarantees,” she replied.

May 11, 2019May 12, 2019

Permanent Residency in Japan

The Monday after submitting my application for Permanent Residency in Japan, I started checking the mailbox.

Yeah, I knew it was a bit soon. The woman at the Immigration Office with the mismatched eyes said it’d take months, and I believed her. Still, I couldn’t resist the pull; every evening checking for a postcard from Immigration, walking past my dear friend Ato-san dying of lymphoma and the weird kid who shot me with the pellet gun. Ah, Japanese neighbors, you are my new countrymen. But of course the mailbox was always empty and somehow I was always disappointed. Such is the pitfall of my perpetual optimism.

And then one day out of the blue, I got a phone call. It was almost three months from the day I submitted my application.

March 3, 2019May 12, 2019

Getting Japanese Permanent Residency

After Japan’s lukewarm reception to my halfhearted proposal of becoming a Japanese citizen, I decided to re-think the whole strange project. Would citizenship even change anything? Certainly not as much as a quick trip to Korea for plastic surgery and coming back looking like a Japanese 18 year-old. Would it help to invest another ten years improving my already awesome Japanese? Or should I just scotch the whole thing and hang out with topless ladies on the beach in Polynesia like Paul Gauguin? Wow, so many good options.