Muddy Waters

Japan is a society structured around conservatism and a universal refusal to break from the collective mold. Group exercise and regimented parallel parking is the norm and dining requires a legal almanac all of its own.

Serving up individual meal components in separate vessels, those who dare to mix are ostracised from society, doomed to spend eternity in solitary exile.

And using the wrong sauce is punishable by death. Gyoza poised in Ramen Family, the Oriental equivalent of a Blackpool seafront pre-smoking ban greasy spoon, the waitress scurried over to remove the pot of sauce I had just poured. Handing me a clean dish she pointed frantically at another bottle of an identical looking condiment at the end of the table. I was left with no alternative other than to do as instructed.

Putting anything in your rice bowl is more taboo than showing a video of anal-prolapse porn to a class of four-year-olds. After a year I have plucked up enough courage to sneak other food-stuffs into my rice when no one is looking but the guilt I feel burns me to the core, outweighing any level of satisfaction.

While sauce etiquette can be a very risky business, it is perfectly acceptable to make more noise than a pig suffocating on its own swill when eating your noodles.

The maths teacher in my Junior High School, who has taken the country's infamous 'noodle slurp' to a whole new level. Defying the laws of science, he manages to slurp cake, crackers and sticky rice with the same wet desperation of an attention seeking St Bernard.

I digress.

Despite all this, and much much more, the Japanese do have a childish streak and burning desire to find an excuse to celebrate pretty much everything.

Cherry blossoms trees blossom, they sit beneath the branches and get drunk off Sake.

Fireflies hatch, they sit by the river and get drunk off sake.

Spring “Setsubun”, they make sushi and get drunk of sake.

Rainy season comes, it’s time to plant the rice, they climb into a water-filled muddy paddy field to play ‘Mud Olympics,’ and get drunk off sake.

There seems to be a running theme here.

Returning to the mud athletics which, nine months down the line, still ranks as one of my favourite events on the Japanese calendar.

From the second I could focus my one passion has been mud. This led to a tirelessly angry mother, who spent too many years ordering her grotty swamp monster to strip at the doorstep, before hosing it down and ushering it into the bathroom.

With no disapproving mother on the horizon I took full advantage of the annual mud event in a rice paddy just outside of Tsuyama.

Events at what transpired to be a more vicious version of Takeshi’s Castle included wheelbarrow races, flag dashes and a three legged-race with granny stockings yanked over the flour doused heads of the losers, inevitably the less able foreigners.

Other events, including the hop, skip and jump and an ultimate cycling challenge, resulted in the disappearance of countless contestants, claimed by the paddy field swamp monster as they landed in the shin-deep slime.

As the Croc was sucked from the foot of one friend, a manual dredge ensued. It was I who unearthed the missing footwear, holding it high for all to see as the crowd cheered in awe and admiration. For some reason saving such an abhorrent article is cause for celebration, and excuse to drink even more sake.

In a grande finale we were handed water pistols, paper targets strapped to our heads, and set lose in the muddy waters, engaged in an every-man-for-himself battle to the death.

The fire brigade was on hand to power-hose down the mud-drenched survivors, and the sausage a colleague from California had salvaged from a puddle of mud, reinforcing the commonly known fact, among the Japanese massive, that all westerners are idiots.

Being the only female Western participant, the event commentator took great joy in referring to me as “Shexy Ellie" throughout the course of the day.

With marginal male attention in weeks, flour coated, muddy and bite-riddled knees, which had swollen up to the size of very old trees, I felt as far removed from “shexy” as someone who has turned up to a fancy dress party dressed as Myra Hindley.

What’s wrong with these people?