Aside from occasional trips to border towns in Mexico, I've never been outside of the USA. I've trekked all over the USA from the Continental Divide to the West, but never really out of the country. So for my first international jaunt I'm going to Japan. Wow! For me, a Texan, it's like going to Middle Earth where the cultural focus is totally different; where the language will be truly alien to my tongue. I can't wait to be a stranger in a strange land!

The other day I had lunch with a friend & we went to Helotes, Texas just NW from my house by about 25 miles. We ate at a Mexican Restaurant called El Chaparel. I'd been there over 20 years ago, so I couldn't remember whether it was good or bad; but it was out of town and a spontaneous distraction that was much needed. To give you an idea of the true focus of the restaurant's owners, the fries on the American menu were called Freedom Fries! Wow, we had stumbled deeper into Bush Country.

After a fun lunch with my friend I noticed she had taken a little cookie out of her husband's take-out lunch. It is called a TALKO and is a little taco shaped cinnamon cookie with a 'fortune' inside. And yes the fortune was in Spanish and English. The hint of Asian culinary fusion with a fortune taco cookie is very likely peculiar only to the Southwest USA. Sorry I didn't keep the fortune but this did remind me of a story another artist told me years ago about her adventure in Japan:

In a restaurant she ordered a TAKO (having heard the word in another person's order) thinking she would receive the familiar flour tortilla with a surprise filling. She was served octopus which sounds like "taco" in Japanese.

(Sometimes I think how strangely fun it would be to serve USA Southwest style TACOs at a little road side stand in Japan. I can see it now; a flour tortilla(grande), with eggs, tentacles and pico de gallo rolled up tight so the tentacles won't fall out. Taco de Tako! Oh and let's not forget a prize Talko cookie with a Japanese, Spanish & English fortune.)

It's a very short story(with a little day dream thrown in) but illustrates quite well a level of language anxiety I may find myself in once I arrive in Japan. It's OK I like noodle soup a lot. :-)