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I've been experimenting with cooking. Yes yes, I'm trying to overcome my fear of supermarkets. It's a slow process.

Anyway, some friends have recommended I start out with these premade packets called "Cook Do." One company sells these spice/sauce packets with instructions (in Japanese) on how to cook several popular Chinese dishes. As I understand it they've recently started a Korean line as well. I figured I'd take a crack at it. Considering the intended audience (people who have no idea how to make their own sauces), you'd figure the company would make it as easy as possible for a complete idiot at cooking to figure it out. Right?

Right?

Okay, ingredients, ingredients.... Well we've got a list here... some bell peppers, some sliced (I think?) pork. And, 1/4 of a cabbage. A quarter. So what the hell am I supposed to do with the other 3/4 of the cabbage? Whatever. Off to the aisles. Okay, pork, that looks about right, sliced, 200 yen. Bell peppers. 30 yen for the pair. Head of GOOD LORD what the hell kind of mutated beast is this thing? It's enormous! 88 yen. And then a hundred for the sauce. Money spent: about 400 yen. Time spent: about 20 minutes, probably 15 now that I know where everything is.

Slog home through the snow, and start reading the directions. Start trying to read the directions. Apparently some clever guy at Ajinomoto thought it would be a really great idea to use nonstandard characters that aren't in my dictionary. Thanks a lot, asshole. Piece together enough to realize that I'm just gonna have to wing it and follow the pictures for most of the directions. Time spent: about 30 minutes.

Oil in a pan. Rinse all the veggies. I realize my kitchen is FREEZING along with the rest of my house. Cleave the giant sucker of a vegetable into quarters. Fail miserably because your piece of crap knife isn't sharp. Sharpen knife (3 minutes), draw and quarter the cabbage and then slice it up, stick it in the pan "until it gets soft". Sharpen the damn knife again. Slice up the bell peppers while the cabbage is cooking (thankfully I learned somewhere how to do this properly, damn the instructions). Throw in the peppers and the meat. Nowhere on the package does it say how long I'm supposed to cook the meat, so I just leave it in until it looks done and hopefully it won't give me ebola or stomach cancer or something. Open the sauce, pour in, and again wait for an indeterminate amount of time until it's done, or smells good or something. Time spent: about 25 minutes, all on a cold hardwood floor in a frigid kitchen.

The package says it's designed for splitting among 3 to 4 Japanese people. In reality this turns out to be just enough food for one starving American, assuming you don't eat rice with it. If you do eat rice with it, you have enough food for two starving Americans, which means-- joy of joys-- leftovers. In my book, eating leftovers means eating day old food and having to wash more dishes. Whee. So I didn't cook rice this time, but if I had it would add maybe 50 yen and 5 minutes preparation. The taste? Okay, but a bit mediocre.

And of course, cleanup! Wash dishes, wash cutlery, wash dishes, wash pan, wash dishes. Throw away inedible vegetable portions in the trash where they will emit strange odors for a couple days because homes here don't have a garbage disposal. Time spent cleaning up: about 15 to 20 minutes.

So in the end, I spent an hour and a half and 400 yen (about four bucks) when I could have just gone to the damn restaurant down the street and eaten a practially gourmet meal for around 800 yen and 30 minutes (in a warm building, to boot). I've gotten too used to the typical Japanese meal of 3 or 4 smaller dishes. If I wanted to cook that myself it would be another half hour and even more expensive-- 50 yen here for the pickled vegetables, 150 yen there for the miso soup (and extra time to cook it, and another pot to clean). And it would taste about half as good as real Japanese food, and stink up my whole apartment.

And this is why I don't cook much. I think it's a conspiracy.