Japanese Science

Last Friday in class I mentioned something about tomatoes being a fruit. The class went nuts and yelled at me. One boy said, "Well, what about cucumbers!?!" When I said that tomatoes have seeds inside them. I told him to look into it himself and said that if tomatoes were really a vegetable I would jump off the roof of the school. Forgetting that a student in Kobe recently killed himself that way. I kind of meant it in the sense of 'pigs can fly' or something. Bad job me. Wednesday in the office I was trying to explain to Nakajima-sensei, the teacher of that class, why tomatoes are a fruit. Her response was, "Maybe in foreign countries it is." Okay. Okay. It isn't a big deal. I am sure in America people would argue with you about tomatoes being a fruit. But, you know that in Japan this is going to be the default excuse. The laws of science in Japan are not the laws of science in the rest of the universe. This used to be the joke at Kansai Gaidai when I first moved here. Even among educated people they believe crazy things, like Japanese people have shorter intestines. Or the famous reasoning in the Alex Kerr book stating that Japan can't put power lines underground because the soil in Japan is unique. Of course, people all over the world have stupid beliefs not based in science, it is just astonishing how close tot he surface the essential Japanese belief that they are a different people in a country set aside from the rest of the world. This belief is so strong it offsets the laws of science. I got the science teacher involved. All the teachers gathered around as she searched the internet and pronounced me right. They were still reluctant to accept it. I kept saying "Vegetable is a culinary term, fruit is also a scientific term. Vegetables don't exist in science. They are unsweet edible plant products." They gradually believed me. Reluctantly. We agreed that maybe peanut butter and celery could be tasty.