半分の私があるのが常であった人 (Half the Man I Used to Be)
This is me two days after I arrived in Japan.
This is me a year and a half later.
Much has been made about my 45 lb. weight loss over the past year and a half. MaryAnn and more than a handful of my friends back home joke that I look like an anorexic crackhead. My dad sent me a care package the other day with a shitload of snacks in it, and I think the snack overkill might have been in response to a picture I attached in the same email asking for the snacks in the first place. I have a feeling he thinks I'm not being fed. Meanwhile, I get nothing but compliments from Japanese people about my current pseudo skinny appearance. One of MaryAnn's former student's boyfriend actually exclaimed, "handsome boy!" upon seeing me for the first time before even saying hello. A bunch of my former adult students used to comment on how much better I look now than I did before I came here whenever I whip out my driver's license. Even an old lady once said I looked more handsome now than in a picture she saw of me from two years ago. I wonder if the reactions are because of a) my friends being so used to me with some amount of chub that now I just look odd without it and b) Japanese really value rail thinness as even the size 0 chicks are concerned about taking diet supplements before meals.
Speaking of diets, I haven't really altered what I eat since I came here but I sure have altered the portion sizes and not by choice. I can usually be found eating either McDonalds, fried rice, yakiniku, izakaya food (generally fried), sushi, and now random ass school lunches. All of these are things I would eat in the States for the most part. The major differences are that I do a lot of my cooking at home (fried rice is comparatively more healthier I would imagine with less oil and zero MSG) and outside food portions are like a third of what I would normally eat. Peeps these two pictures of McDonalds for example:
LARGE Big Mac meal from McD's Japan...
MEDIUM Big Mac meal from McD's USA...
So a large in Japan is like a medium in the States, only the drink size has been significantly reduced. If everything is bigger in Texas than the exact opposite holds true for everything in Japan...except for the bugs, but I haven't figured out why that is yet.