The Dishes

10/1/07

Today, Day 9, I finally learned the last rule of How To Clean The Dishes.

"You see this?!" Mr. Ito gently infoms, "How you are rinsing the dishes?" He demonstrates for me, with a miso bowl, a pefectly reaonable way to rinse a dish free of soap.
"This is terrible!" He informs me, "Use your head! You see! You see this?!", he goes on in a resonable tone of voice for eight in the morning. "Like this, scrub with you hand after you rinse to make sure there are no, how do you say... Bubbles."
He pauses for a moment to make serious and silent eye contact. He is pretty put out.
"You know soap? It's terrible stuff. If you eat it, its terrible for your body."
Learning new things of which I had no inkling is one of the many positive aspects of this job.
"Okay," I say, staying patient.
"Right. So scrub it with your hand - like this."

This is definitely the first time I've ever been told to just rub my hands all over the dishes right after they've been cleaned. I try to explain the unfamiliarity of the idea to him and it seems to buy me a little slack. What I don't mention, though I am on the poin of boling over, is that in the last week he has never mentioned or demonstrated any of this at any point. Accordingly, it seems sort of unfair to losing you shit over it now.