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Happy B-Day!

Another month has passed and what does that mean to Oak House Nishi Tokyo?  Much to the dismay of our grumpy neighbor, that means another monthly birthday party!  Every month, we have a party for whomever may be living here and celebrating a b-day.

Occasionally, there is a month when no one was born but never fear(!), we here at Oak House are on top of the game!  So in instead of a birthday party we always have some sort of party planned, for example, in May we had a Mother’s day party despite the lack of mothers (love you, mom!) and last month was substituted with a Halloween party.  Fun was had by all.

The best part of these parties is the food.  It’s a potluck kind of thing so everyone makes something and brings it along.  Considering there are people from all over living here, it’s always an exciting and delicious way to enjoy each other’s company!  It’s definitely one of my favorite things about living here.

party food

Food on the… floor?

I mentioned before that living in a guest house with many people is like sharing your days and night with your second family.  However, like any family we don’t always see eye to eye on all topics.  One of these occasions is the amount of time allotted to dropped food before it is rendered inedible.  If you were to ask me what the rule is and I were to answer you without really thinking about it I would say, “Ten seconds!”… is that too long?

I decided to do a bit of research on good ol’ Wikipedia, it seems as though 5 seconds is the more common rule with Americans.  Also on Wikipedia, it says that in Russia a similar rule of thumb is:  “Promptly picked up is not considered fallen”.

So, while eating with some house mates I decided to do a little research of my own.  Here are some of the other time limits I found out from different people around the house:

Japan and Taiwan = 3 seconds
Sweden = 5 seconds
French = never heard about such a rule
Denmark = 3 seconds but wanted to make sure I knew it also depended on how clean the floor was (well, duh!)
New Zealand = any amount is okay

But there was one general consensus in the house:

Oak House = 0 seconds.

What can I say, we may be family but we aren’t the best cleaners!  Bon Appetite!