Desperately Seeking Salem

5:59 p.m.

Emily: “I bet we don’t even get any Halloweeners. Seriously, if we don’t get any Halloweeners I’m going to feel like a Halloweenie.”

Adam: “I’m sure we’ll get a few.”

Emily: “If we don’t get any I’m going to be devastated. And then I’m going to eat all of this candy myself.”

6:02 p.m.

Emily: “Did you see that little fat, kid, he took like three at a time! Next year, I’m handing out dried apricots. I had better go get some more Skittles.”

And so it went for about an hour, in which we treated:

1 wolf man
1 Michael Myers
1 bloody surgeon (he looked like he was from the band Clinic)
1 Superman
1 Supergirl
2 Dark Knights
2 skeletons
1 Iron Man (kid probably got last year’s hand-me-down)
1 puppy
1 Ninja turtle,  Michelangelo (orange headband)
2 samurais
1 zombie bride (an 8-yr-old girl in the best costume of the evening)
3 princesses (yawn)
3 high school theatre nerds who said they were getting a lot of nasty door openers
7 ambiguously dressed kids who parents don’t know how to put together  a costume or who forgot what night it was

Of all the massive failures in my life, my attempt to learn Japanese is probably the most egregious.

I had this idea in the summer of 2002 that I needed to learn another foreign language and I was intent on acquiring one that had a different alphabet. I was drawn to the graphic look of the Japanese kanji and imagined that I would pick it up in no time.

Within two weeks, I had dropped out of my Japanese course. For one, I was living in Germany at the time and trying to learn a foreign language through a foreign language: Just plain impossible.

Also, it struck me that in choosing Japanese, I had unintentionally aligned myself with the Axis Powers — I already spoke German fluently and had reached intermediate Italian.

But the final sign that Japanese and I were on the outs was this: What I really had a fetish for was Japanese food.

Salem has its share of acceptable sushi joints. I’m kind of partial to Fuji Ricetime.

But to find the real Japanese in Salem, you need to head to Willamette’s Tokyo University location on the east side of campus. There it is possible to feel like Scarlett Johansson wandering thoughtfully around Tokyo in the university’s cafeteria, in its Kaneko Commons.

Like that other Willamette University cafeteria, Goudy Commons, which is open to the public and which attracts a more varied crowd of state workers and local people in addition to students, Kaneko Commons is something of an insider’s secret. It’s got a fresh salad bar to rival your favorite Roth’s, and serves traditional Japanese noodle dishes that are both cheap, delicious and authentic.

My hungry man husband and I both got the special, a bean noodle dish smothered in green curry peanut sauce yesterday ($5.50) — and we should have shared it because it was too mammoth a portion for even this mighty eater and a mom-to-be.

We parked ourselves in the corner and spent lunch watching all of the Japanese exchange students hang out in the commons.

Lucky for me, you don’t need kanji to eat noodles. Though chopsticks can help.

Wordstock 2009. Enter onto the Powell’s stage James Ellroy, the demon dog of American literature, the White Knight of the Far Right. After reading three excerpts from his new book Blood’s a Rover, he stops to take questions.

James Ellroy: So now I am ready to answer your most intimate questions into my person.

First Fan: So, um, Mr. Ellroy? I love your books, but I’ve felt kind of personally insulted since watching a documentary on you several years ago which talked about your right wing conservative views. I was wondering how you rectify having so many liberal readers when your views are so right-wing?

James Ellroy (pointing): You can take that question and shove it up your ass! That question is rude and insulting. I am not here to justify my political views to anybody! (shaking his fist).