Language Barriers

The American Peanut Council's Japanese Tour is in it's third day today.

We boarded a tour bus yesterday morning at 8am sharp and drove two hours north from Dallas to Madill, Okla., to visit the Clint Williams Shelling Facility. The facility is the only facility of its kind in Oklahoma.

In my opinion, once you've seen one shelling facility, you've seen them all. I've been through the plants in West Texas several times, so I'm certain I've reached my quota for the year...or the next five. They're very loud and there's lots of peanuts moving around.

When you get inside of the facilities, you have to wear hair nets and remove all of your jewelry. We don't want people choking on diamonds while they're trying to enjoy a salty peanut.

It's hard to make a normal face while wearing the lunch lady net.

We've had translators with us every day. I have no earthly idea what these people are saying. Japanese sounds like someone talking in their sleep. One of our translators did, however, write down a cheat sheet for me so I could at least say, "thank you" or "good morning". She also wrote down a few four-letter curse words in Japanese, and I'm certain she did this on purpose to confuse me. I've been scared to death I am going to say one to someone on accident and then provoke the Japanese to start World War III in a similar way they started World War II.

The best part about our bus ride yesterday was our driver, Marcia. Marcia was a very vocal participant in our tour. We invited her to come in and eat with us at the BBQ joint in Madill.

Marcia was a lot of fun.

Let me mention here that I've eaten BBQ every meal since I got here. Apparently, we were trying to give the Japanese some sort of "real Texas experience with all the BBQ they could eat. As a Texan, I can assure everyone we do not eat BBQ for every meal. I'm certain I ate every cut of beef that was humanly possible yesterday. In addition, every BBQ place we've gone to has claimed to be "the best BBQ in Texas"...

So, back to Marcia. Marcia comes in and eats BBQ with us and provided me with a belly busting laugh as I stuffed sausage, brisket, rolls and pickles in my face. Apparently, Marcia was a school bus driver in her former years. When I asked her how she learned how to drive a big bus, she went into a lengthy story that ended with, "Honey, I can drive anything with four or more wheels."

We then made the two hour trip back to Dallas, where we then reloaded and headed to Fort Worth for a Stockyards experience. By the time we got finished with another BBQ dinner, the Japanese delegation was so tired, we skipped out on Billy Bob's Texas. No two stepping for them.

Meanwhile, I was dressed like a stinkin' rodeo clown in preparation for Billy Bob's.

Oh well.

We started today at 7:30am and drove another two hours west to Stephenville and Dublin for more shelling facility action.

I'll tell you more about that later. As of right now, I have two hours to snooze before we take the Japanese to the Galleria for authentic American shopping...and hopefully NO MORE BBQ!