Changes at Flock Hall

The most recent round of graduations has hit Flock Hall pretty hard. Of the four current inmates, three have graduated and are soon headed on to greener pastures. This left your beloved Pontifex Niger with no roommates for the next semester, so a strenuous application process was initiated to fill the extra cells.

From the pool of worthy and devout applicants, we have selected the cream of the crop (that is, those who look most likely to pay rent on time) and we will be slowly introducing them to you, one by one.

Today we bring you the first of these introductions. This is Muneyuki Kato, known to his friends as Shinze. Shinze is a grad student, working on a Master's degree in Sociology, and he shares an office on campus with the Black Pope. He is a statistics whiz, and he's currently working on his thesis - a treatise on suicide.

That's not a halloween costume, folks - those are his pajamas. Apparently, it's an anime character named "Surgeon Frog." His American girlfriend loves this outfit. Hey, to each his own. At least they aren't furries.

Shinze is Japanese, and as such, he is obliged by custom to eat bizare foods. He is also obliged to offer said bizare foods to his squeamish white housemates. I am not squeamish about foreign foods, and I will try just about anything, but you have to grow up eating some ethnic foods. Shinze's dinner last night was a good example of that - rice with natto and takuan.

A takuan is basically a huge, salty, pickled daikon radish. They were invented in the late 1500s by a Zen master named Takuan Soho, hence the name. They are a staple of temple diets even today, as they are cheap, keep well, and are quite nutritious. It's very crisp, and has a nice crunchy texture that is actually quite pleasant. It tastes very little like Western radishes, and nothing like something I'd want to eat. In fact, it has a taste that never lets you forget that it's been fermenting for a good long while. Also, it has a color rarely occuring in natural foods, and it smells slightly like rotting vegetables. While I find it mildly distasteful, it is a veritable delicacy compared to natto.

Natto is fermented soybeans. By fermented, I mean to say "rotting." When you open the package, they look like they are covered in snot or spider webs, or both. The smell is basically that of feet - sweaty, unwashed feet, after a day of hiking in a swamp in leather boots. To this pungent mess you add hot mustard and soy sauce, then you mix it up until it's frothy. Apparently, the froth is part of the goodness [shudder]. As you eat it, the key is to keep the stringy slime off your face - the picture to the right gives you some idea of how difficult that can be. The taste is precisely what you'd expect from rotting beans - but with mustard and soy sauce. I know of no one who is not a native of Japan who finds natto palatable. Natto is supposedly very nutritious, and full of things which your body needs, particlularly if you are a vegan. I will just have to risk malnutrition.

Shinze loves this stuff. To be fair, he also ate most of a box of Strawberry Milkshake Oreos, which I also found completely unpalatable. Maybe it's just me...

It's going to be an interesting year. Everyone say hello to Shinze in the comments, ok?