I have been in Japan for about 10 days now, living in a small mountain town in Kagoshima-Ken (prefecture, state or what have you). My town, Kihoku-cho, is about the same size as Columbia and has many similarities. The people are exceptionally nice, and interested in the new person.

My first taste of culture shock came this week when I attempted to make my grandmother's famous Peanut Butter BonBons. These are my favorite candy, and I thought they might make a nice present for my new neighbors. Presents, or Omiyage, are common in Japan, and it is traditional to give them to your neighbors upon moving to a new place.

The key ingredients in Peanut Butter BonBons are peanut butter, butter, confectioner's sugar, chocolate chips, a dash of vanilla and some paraffin. I decided that the paraffin and vanilla were expendable, because neither is in my Japanese/English dictionary.

After some deliberation with my supervisor Matsuyama-san, who speaks decent English and has been a savior to me, we decided that it would be best if he picked up the peanut butter from Kanoya City. Actually, he advised this and I nodded my head as usual.

Now I only needed the rest of the ingredients. The "A Mart" is a convenience store like JR Foods, except that anywhere you would find ice cream or hot dogs in a JR's, you find rice and pickled vegetables in the A Mart. In the sugar isle, I found two bags. One was definitely sugar, though not powdered, and other looked like powdered sugar and had pink bunnies on it. I erred on the side of caution and bought both. The chocolate selection at the A Mart was poor so I pressed on.

The next store was Sakihama, which reminds me of the old Ben Franklin, mixed with the country store in Sulfur Well where I used to buy sodas and Beanie Weenies. Based on those similarities I assumed it would have everything else I needed.

In the chocolate aisle I found a wonderfully decorated box with a samurai fighting a chocolate crab. I was striking out on the butter so I panicked and bought a small yellow tube with a fat baby on it. I thought maybe it was some squeezable butter--the Japanese are all about convenience. As I paid, the shop lady pointed at the chocolate crab, laughed, and said "oishii nai." Oishii means delicious, and nai means no. I knew I had messed up, but did not let on. When I arrived home, I dumped all of the expensive and hard-to-get Skippy into a bowl and then squeezed in the contents of the mystery butter-type stuff. The smell was subtle and obviously un-buttery. The pink bunny package contained, of course, flour. The other package contained normal white grain sugar. I dumped the sugar in without thinking. I must note that I was doing very little measuring. Since the ingredients were mostly wrong, I was hoping some Zen force would intervene and magically make it right. I put the bowl and its contents into the fridge and tried not to think about what I had done to me dear grandmother's fabulous recipe. After an hour, the consistency was that of muddy sand. It tasted somewhat like peanut butter fudge, but it had a twinge of bitter soy (which I assume came from the butter-like substance). I am going to postpone this gift until I can get to a larger grocery store and purchase more suitable ingredients. My neighbors will just have to wait. The chocolate crab was oishii nai indeed. Inside the box were 6 small boxes, and in each of those boxes were 6 tiny individually wrapped green gummy things. Normally I love a nice gummy sweet, but upon biting into one, I realized why the samurai was fighting the crab on the box. Apparently samurai kill crabs and use them to make the most vile and heinous of snack foods. Not to worry though, six lucky Americans will be receiving a small box as a gift from Japan. I'm sure they will be more than happy to share.