Coco's Curry Challenge
...written on 12.23.01, @ 4:12 p.m.
Sun December 23, 2001
"Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, swallow! Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, swallow!", intoned John as if he were chanting time to a team of oarsmen in a boat race. But it was a mere team of one he was goading on to glory, as Brian dutifully masticated curried grains of rice to the sonorous beat.
Brian's face, which 15 minutes earlier had been laughing with glittering eyes, scoffing that he could finish the Coco's Curry Challenge with no problem, was now strained and gray, his dulled orbs cast down over cheeks stuffed with white rice and mushroom curry. He raggedly scraped his spoon through the large yellowish brown gravy on his plate, scooping any straggling rice together in a heaping mound in the center.
"Pick up that spoon, Soldier!" barked John in his best drill instructor imitation. Brian feebly brought another spoonful to his mouth and added it to the food already pouched in his chipmunk like cheeks and then covered his mouth to hold back the involuntary gag that would signal doom for his quest if he gave in to it.
"Ok, thirty seconds left. You're the man! You've got plenty of time." said John encouragingly, while Hide and I looked at the two big tablespoons of rice and curry left and doubted that Brian would be able to finish, after having already loosened his belt and the top button of his pants.
"Three . . . two . . . one!" chimed John as Brian stuffed the last bite into his full mouth. The timers on our table and in the kitchen signaled the end to the twenty minutes allotted for the task. Hide alerted the restaurant staff that we had a winner, and a waiter came to inspect the plate, assuring that every grain and morsel of the 1300 gram (three pounds!) curry and rice entree had been eaten, and then rushed off to get the polaroid camera to record the miserable, but victorious, glutton.
We clapped as Brian bowed and weakly grasped his spoon over the upheld empty plate, faking a smile for the picture that would make its way on to the corkboard. Brian admitted that he was in too much agony to feel any glee about being the only foreigner in the Coco's Curry Challenge Hall of Fame.
We went to check out and all of us paid for our meals except Brian, who because he was able to finish the humongous offering in the time specified, got his free. I bought him a stuffed Coco's Curry mascot, which only seemed fitting to commemorate the occasion.
On the way back in Hide's car, Brian moaned and groaned in the back seat as John sat with his camera ready and waiting to capture Brian spewing his hard earned dinner. It didn't happen.
I am amazed at the things the Japanese (and some Americans, apparently) will do in the name of "challenges". At last year's graduation party for the ninth graders, I watched the students mix concoctions of coca-cola, wasabi, soy sauce and other vile ingredients into a cup and then drink it as their fellow classmates cheered them on. I saw more than one student lunge retching for the bathroom. On TV as well, men usually are asked to eat flaming red peppers while the cameras capture every instant of their water-denied agony.
Perhaps this is the modern day version of seppuku, a ritual suicide, where the samurai was supposed to kill him or herself without screaming in pain and thus die with dignity. Though I must say these modern gauntlets lack the purported eloquence of harikiri.
I am re-reading James Clavell's SHOGUN. It is a 1,210 page entertaining epic on Japan in the days of the samurai and early trade with foreign "barbarians" and on every page I am reminded of the power of culture. The Japanese and European concepts of death, honor, obedience and love differed then and they differ now. Living here is fascinating, complex, and lonely.