Different? Not So Much.

As usual, I was the first person awake yesterday---mostly because someone had to be the one to get the recycling out to the pick up spot before 8am. So why not me?

I gathered up the clanking cans into the regulation clear bag with green writing, and toted them past yellow-capped students heading out to elementary school. As I saw the children passing with their red and black randoseru (leather book satchels required for all elementary school kids), their kiroo boshi (yellow hats all elementary students are required to wear for safety as they walk to and from school), and dangling water bottles, I was taken back in my mind to 5 years ago, when it was Patrick and Aya shrugging on their own randoseru, their own kiroo boshi perched on their heads. I remembered their two blonde haired heads bobbing in a sea of dark hair as they walked with their neighborhood group to school.

Then I snapped back to the here and now, the plastic bag heavy in my hand.

I deposited the bag neatly atop the small mountain of other plastic bags, and turned to walk back to our house. Neighbors coming out their doors to spray water on sidewalks or deposit their own recycling bowed their heads at me with slight smiles on their faces.

It was reassuring to no longer be on the receiving end of stares and whispers. Not that I wasn't used to it by now, this being my 3rd time living in Japan. But it is always nice to move past that stage of being a curiosity, and instead just be a neighbor about whom others are simply curious.

There is a difference.

Once back inside our genkan (the cement entry way just inside the door where one removes their shoes), I went into the kitchen to make myself breakfast.

I opened our terribly tall refrigerator and took out the plastic containers of leftover bimbimbap ingredients from the previous night's dinner.

Seasoned beef. Salted cucumber slices. Lightly simmered and seasoned bean sprouts and carrots. Two brown eggs.

I stepped sideways to lift the lid of the rice cooker...yes, there was even leftover rice. I got a dark brown ceramic bowl, layered in rice and beef, and slid the bowl into the microwave.

Then I turned to the stove and lit the gas burner under my favorite frying pan. As I poured a bit of oil into the pan, Bob came loping down the stairs. He glanced at me, bleary eyed, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

I cracked an egg into the pan.

I did a double take.

"Bob, come over here".

I could hear and feel his footfalls as he stepped behind me and said "Whoa".

The egg had 2 yolks.

Granted one of the yolks had broken a bit as it made its escape from the shell. But there they were. Two yolks. One egg.

Now I know eggs can have 2 yolks. But this was the first time one had ever graced my frying pan. I was tempted to stand and admire it for awhile, but there was another whole egg to break and fry, so I cracked the other egg into the pan while Bob hunted down his iphone to snap a picture of what he affectionately called the "twin egg".

With the "twin egg" captured in picture form, I retrieved my rice and beef from the microwave, topped it with cucumbers, bean sprouts and carrots, and slid the eggs onto the top.

A sprinkle of soy sauce, a dab of bimbimbap sauce.

Breakfast.

And you know, for all it's difference from other eggs, that twin egg tasted just as an egg should taste. Eggy.

Which just goes to show you....what we perceive as odd, strange or weird, might not be all that different after all.