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Letter from Boston

3rd Annual Birthday Bash

By MASAKO YAMADA


恒例のお誕生日会、第3弾

雅子さんの誕生日は4月16日で、友達のジェイソンの誕生日は14日。そこで2人は3年前から合同で誕生日パーティーを開いています。今年も雅子さんは料理の腕をふるい、大好評を博しました。

After throwing our second consecutive birthday party together last year, my friend Jason and I promised each other that we'd hold a joint party every year as long as we both lived in Boston. Although he's six years older than I am, and we have little in common in day-to-day life, the parties that we've thrown together have been a great deal of fun. We haven't seen much of each other in the past year, but I gave him a call a few weeks before our birthday weekend, and we started making plans. At first, we considered throwing a small party for our closest friends, but I felt like having a democratic party in which everybody could have a rowdy good time. It surely turned out that way.

These joint parties have always been a good way for my friends and Jason's friends to meet, but I realized this year that it was also one of the few opportunities in which many of MY friends could get together under one roof. Of course, not all of the people whom I invited were able to come, but many of my friends from Wellesley, Harvard, the BU physics department and home (i.e. my roommates) and their friends and lovers and roommates were meeting for the first time, and it made me very happy to see them eating, drinking and chatting together. I was initially afraid that they wouldn't have much to talk about, but my fears were completely unfounded. Many of them took the initiative to mingle with Jason and his friends, too, so my job as "party hostess" was quite effortless. I didn't have to constantly run around introducing people to each other.

The element in which I exerted the most effort was in the preparation of the food. I made enough goodies for about 40 people and instead of sticking to conventional Japanese and American food, I decided to add a pan-Asian twist. Thus I made Thai green curry, Singapore noodles, Chinese cold ginger noodles, pork with kimchi and tofu sauteed in Korean hot sauce in addition to "ohitashi," "chirashi-zushi," liver "tsukudani," chicken wings teriyaki-style and Italian pasta with meat sauce. I noticed that about one hour after people started, many of the dishes were looking empty. However, I must admit that I ate none of it myself because I was tired of looking at the food and the following morning I had muscle pains in my entire upper body from carrying those large pots and pans.

This party was certainly not as noisy as the Christmas party that my roommates and I threw last year, but it was obvious that everybody was having a great time. And . at around 11 p.m., we heard a loud knock, opened the door and found the cops at our door again. Jason is a very diplomatic guy, so he was able to get rid of them effortlessly. The cops came again, later on in the night, but this time, Jason had most of the people hide in an extra room. He then had a few "decoys" chat nonchalantly in the living room as if they were the only people left from the party. After the cops left, he made fun of them. My friend Mike replied, "Well, my dad's a cop in the NYPD." Jason looked a little bit sheepish then.

Some of my friends got along so well at the party that they made independent plans to meet the next day for the Boston Marathon. They invited me, too. These people "my" friends have become friends themselves. They have been learning things about each other that I haven't heard before. I think this is amazing and wonderful.

After I got home from the party the following day, my roommate told me: "Julian said that he thinks you're very different from the typical Japanese girl. He couldn't explain it in English, so he wrote it in Chinese and was trying to translate it." It turns out that he wanted to say that I was "graceful." I was happy that he told my roommate and I was happy that she told me. It's not the sort of thing that you'd suddenly go up to a person and say straight to their face but it's something that's wonderful to hear along the grapevine the delicate chain of people linked together.


Shukan ST: May 2, 1997

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