Three Little Pigs in Japan

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Monday night, a bunch of us tried to go out to dinner together, but ended up splitting up into a few small groups & going to different places. This is normal for us and actually works out rather well considering that most Japanese eateries are pretty small (some have only 5 stools around a counter!).

My group consisted of PL, Sunghee, my friend Paweł (a Polish man who used to work for our agency & was our guide the first year we came to Japan & who has remained in touch with us all these years), and me. After looking around at a few restaurants, we decided we wanted shabu shabu.

For those unfamiliar with shabu shabu, it is often called "Japanese fondue". You either get a small camp stove type of thing or the table has one built in to it. You get a big pot of water which boils on the stove & you get a plate of meat and veggies which you put into the water to cook & eat. The words "shabu shabu" apparently refer to the "swish swish" of the chopsticks in the water.

There's a shabu shabu place in Mountain View (where I've lived for the past 5 years) and I often go there with my husband and/or friends. It's yummy!

Anyway, this place here in Shinjuku specializes in pork - or "prok" as the sign outside said, but I'll let Patti blog about the Engrish - and was named "Inton" which apparently means "Hidden Pork". The place had little piggies on signs everywhere about the place and pig "footprints" on the floor & walls in a few places. It was all very cute, but what did it all mean?

And so it was we were very confused when the chopstick wrappers looked like this:



The menu also had several items marked with "Boo!". When we asked the waiter what that meant he said that they were recommended items. OK, that's cool, but still - what does "Boo Foo Woo" mean?!?

I have my personal Twitter feed set up to post to my Facebook status, so when I tweeted the picture of the chopstick wrapper, my friend Nahomi (a classmate from Foothill College who grew up in Japan but now lives in the US) saw it & offered an explanation. She wrote:

Long time ago, there was a very popular TV puppet show for small kids. The main characters were three little pigs, and their names were Bu-, Fu-, and Wu-. (I don't know how to spell it in English, though)

Now we only have the way to watch the show by archive films, but their nostalgic name is still popular among Japanese people.

Mystery solved! Thanks so much for the explanation, Nahomi!!

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