James bugged me to blog about this, so I’m time-bombing it to post on Saturday when I’m on the cruise, despite the fact that I’m writing it at 1:48 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning.

I was on my own for dinner tonight, but didn’t feel like spending a lot of money. James owed me $10 for when I spotted him at The Yard House last nite at dinner with Vanessa, so I called to see what he was planning for his own dinner. We agreed to meet up for Japanese so he could be my debit account. I’m paranoid about getting fatter lately (I seem to have grown somehow softer and wider in the past couple of weeks, even tho it’s not reflected in the body fat scale), so I ordered a sashimi plate. I’d gotten to the restaurant first, grabbed a seat at the sushi bar, chatted a bit with the two sushi chefs, before James got there. In spite of that, the two chefs revealed they were clearly first-generation immigrant Japanese men, which I would’ve known even without their accents or their use of Japanese when they spoke to each other. Here’s why.

Toward the end of dinner, the two chefs asked us, or more specifically, asked James, what race he was. Was he Chinese? James said he’s half. They then asked him where he worked. James gave the city, and the chefs exclaimed how far away that was. Then they asked him what he did for a living. James said he built speakers and sound cards for computers. They were impressed. I’m sitting there, totally ignored, wondering why they were asking him this and not also asking me. One of the chefs finally turned and nodded at me, and asked James, “Is this your wife?” They were lucky I had a mouthful of orange, so that James could reply, “No, we’re friends.” How patriarchal was that? Despite my being there first, having a rapport with the chefs first, sitting closer to the chefs than James, they ask the man about his career and personal information, like I didn’t have a job or something, and then only involve me insofar as I relate to the man, and then not even asking the question directly to me, but asking it as if I were some non-human possession, like “Is this your briefcase, sir?”

I would’ve demanded feminist retribution, but then James paid my entire bill, so I was happy to leave it at that. =P