My friend

This story is about my friend in the U.S., who is Mexican. His personality is not as I wrote on my story, but I could speak Spanish and get through with him more, he would be actually like I wrote. This is about one of my favorite friends.

Miger

That day I was heading for the Chinese study club as usual. There was nothing different. On the way to the room 6993 of an academic building, I could feel summer was flying away and fall stock its head from the west sky; fall always comes from west. You can tell when you see the sun set.
I opened the room 6993’s door and slammed as I went in. Miger was always sleeping this time around 6 o’clock. He is my club mate; he is from Mexico as a transfer student. He came back from dozing as usual when I made a rocket.
“Mexico, Mexico!!” Miger started singing. With a guy like Miger, Mexican is liable to sing abruptly without reason. I ignored him and asked him to have dinner at the Chinese buffet which just opened last week in front of the Musashisakai-station. It cost us only 6 bucks.
“Si? But everybody says the taste was not good. How come they don’t start Mexican food, anyways?” Miger grumbled. Miger was always complaining that Japan does not want Mexican restaurant. Every time I told him the reason why we did not have Mexican food was because of ten gallons hat. I told him the had would really irritate customer at a restaurant, we can’t ignore the big had when we come and go. Miger insisted on that hat was called Sombrera de charro. Yet it does not matter. The image of ten gallons hat makes us keep away from Mexican food. I was totally kidding him. But he sort of believed it. Miger researched at our school how Japanese think about Mexican. According to the result, most Japanese associated Mexico with that big round hat. That night Miger had drunk one bottle of tequila by himself. What made he even more depressing, the liquor shop had only bad tequila. He cried and said “Don’t mock Mexico!!” Ever since, he started wearing ten gallon hat everyday. He thought people would get bored of ten gallon hat and then finally would start get interested in Mexico. This idea backfired perfectly; he just emphasized ten gallon hat.
Anyway, we left room 6993. I saw lots of empty seats when we got to the restaurant. That time around 6:30 any restaurant was supposed to be busy. We were sorry we had come. We could tell the food was bad.
“I will never come again,” I whispered. “Are curry and California rolls Chinese food? What made them say these were Chinese food?” I put my spoon down. Miger grined and said “Mexican food is better.” “Ten gallon hat, and real Chinese food is good” I replied right back. When we would leave there, I heard people roaring each other right behind us. There were some greens between us. I started listing with all my ears. I could tell with their intonation that they were not Japanese. I listened carefully and after that knew that they talked about Chinese food. I wondered why they were using Japanese. All of a sudden they started throwing plates, cup and everything at each other. People, who were there, did not understand what was going on at all. We stood up and ran away from the restaurant. We forgot to pay, but we did not mean it
.
The next day, Miger and I were having early lunch at room 6993; Miger brought tacos. The phone suddenly started ringing. We did not know anybody who called this room, because only Miger and I belong to this Chinese study club and we study about Chinese popular music. That is why Asia University did not budget for us at all except utilities. Miger picked up the phone “Bueno?” this is the way Mexican start talking on the phone. He knew nobody understood, but he does all the time. He looked puzzled as he listened; and he passed the phone to me.
“Hello?” I said. “How can I help you?”
“Are you Mr. Taro Hayashi?” the guy on the phone said. “Ah… this is Tamura from University’s office. I have something to talk you over.” He started in serious voice.

Miger and I went to the office to see Mr. Tamura the guy called me on the phone. He was in charge of the international party which was coming two weeks later. At that party exchange students, from each countries were going to compete in cooking. This party is the biggest chance for everyone to show their country off. Mr. Tamura told us the problem that happened yesterday. Chinese students who were going to join the party as cooks had big fight yesterday and school could not allow them to join the party. China is big and each parts have own dish. Besides every Chinese exchange students wanted to cook own country meal. However, we call our university “Asia”; attendance would expect Chinese food. For school part, we can’t reverse our decision. Also to let another Chinese student to cook was also not allowed. We don’t want another racket. Then we decided to substitute China study club for real China team. “We don’t think you guys can cook Chinese well…but we had to prepare something substitute. Will you please be China team? We will make amends for the ingredients cost and all” Mr. Tamura said. He was asking us if we wanted to join, wanted to be victims. I started thinking about the yesterdays fight at the Chinese buffet. Now I understood why they spoke Japanese; they spoke sort of different languages. Anyway, I did not want to be involved by that kind of stuff.
“Of course,” Miger said. “Why not, we will be willing to do that.” Miger jerked my hand and got me up. “We have to get going now, but we are sure we will help you.” We walked out of the room.
“Hey hey, did you lose your mind? Or you ate too many chillies and numbed your tongue?” I asked.
“As you heard,” Miger grinned. “You don’t see? Time has come.”
Actually, I could tell what he was up to. “Hey you will cook Mexican won’t you?” Miger stopped and started looking around like as if he heard of my confession that I killed somebody. He swung the sombrera’s peek around to the back to clam himself down, but that ten gallon hat is round shape. He was upset.
“No, no. What in the world made you say so?” he said he had to do something and he left. I thought it was good idea for Miger. Why he belongs to this club is because I pulled him in to continue this club, so I felt indebted to him. I had been sort of wishing to do something for him. I let him go; and he asked me to stop by his room.

When I got his house that evening I smelled something spicy, Mexican spicy.
“Are you practicing?” I yelled from outside. I could feel the spicy air between us was frozen all of a sudden. He stuck his head from the door. “Yes I am practicing Chinese food.” I barged in on his house and saw a table. There were tons of tortilla and some kind of Mexican food for taco. “Taco and dumpling are almost same.” Miger murmured. I kept looking at piled tortilla and picked up one taco to eat. I picked something meat, which was floating on black liquid; it tasted like beef. But it looked really bad.
“Good,” I said. “You can start Mexican food restaurant. But if we join the competition, we have to cook something Chinese food…they don’t look like Chinese food at all.”
“We can call it dumpling” Miger was brim with confidence. I doubted very much if he ever ate Chinese food before; because they Mexicans hardly ever eat anything except Mexican food. I worried that if the attendances would regard his food Chinese. But on the other hand, not too many people know Mexican food; besides China is too big to be known everything. Miger thought what he would cook, he prepared really well; but those recipes were all Mexican food. I told him I would cook something real Chinese food. But you know, when I thought about Chinese food, all I could think of were typical dished which you can eat anywhere. Then I decided to make Chinese tea at the party; I thought everybody would have tea and the tea would make attendances to think Miger Mexican food is Chinese food.
Miger and I did good job. Previous day, I finished everything for the party. At room 6993 we were talking about the party. We showed him costumes that I got from Chinese friends; we would wear traditional Chinese clothe. We looked good in those clothes.
Next morning I got to the party place earlier. I was really nervous about the party, if people would enjoy our food. Miger did not show up till ten to five, just before the party started. I could not hold my mouth tight when I saw him. He was in perfect Mexican costume like as if he just came out from Mexican party. I was wearing, white snake peel boots, dark blue jeans, unnecessary big buckle on his belly, and cowboy shirt. Of course he was wearing Sombrera de charro. He went into the China team booth naturally and started cooking. I did not say anything then; did not blame him at all. It was really funny, in a way. I was sort of applauding his courage in my heart. I sort of worried that he would start cooking Mexican food. But he did not he cooked Mexicanized Chinese food. Many people came by to eat our food; of course Miger’s strange costume helped a lot. People looked they liked the taco dumpling and tea. Miger cooked something with noodle, only it was gross looking, the soup color was dark brown, and nobody wanted to eat. Even Miger said he did not know what he made…
Anyway we got third place of all other competitors. When Miger knew it he threw his hat in the sky and shouted something in Spanish. He was happy that the Mexican food was admitted. But I knew he had to eat that gross noodle for a while.

Afterwards, he established new club named La Mexico. But it is only him that is in that club. We went to the Chinese restaurant where we went before. Then we saw a strange dumpling. I said Miger “Is this Chinese food?”