Feb or March, I can't remember 2004 | Gumrant 2: Marukawa's revenge

Fads rise quickly and oft implode like black stars in the mercurial universe of tiny dog, but some things remain. Bob Dylan, for one (Nupper, you're just right about this one.) The other? Japanese gum.

I have ranted at length about this subject already, which is required reading before you go on. See, something about this Japanese gum issue has a Boa-like grip on my very soul, to the point where I have contacts who import Xylitol in jumbo-asprin-sized tankers straight from Tokyo every few months. I chew two to three pieces a day, thinking always of that not so distant day when the last apple-green rectangle of gum rattles in the bottom of the inscrutably labeled Xylitol canister, and there is no other canister there in the desk drawer to replace it.

I no longer travel to Japan to sit in Westernized business hotels, Bill Murraylike, and tetris Japanese food products into my suitcase on business trips, and so I am in a precarious situation indeed. Allow me to bring Bob Dylan back into the picture here as you imagine tiny dog on the last day of her Xylitol gum supply, bereft after some random work lunch, the nearest replacement gum far across the sea: Knockin On Heaven's Door is playing from some unidentifiable source (no, not the G&R version, try to focus people), while the screen saver dances a mocking dance, and I fall dead to the floor. This day will come. Until then, I chew the gum, three pieces a day.

However, an unbidden, rival gum reared its artificially flavored head over the Christmas holidays, in my Christmas stocking, purchased at an incongruous Asian grocery store in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, and shipped to me here in Washington state. It was Marukawa sugar gum, in tiny paper boxes, eight to a tray. In very short order, my mother was impelled to follow this incidental shipment of random yuletide happenstance gum with six deliberate packs, equal to forty eight boxes, and in fact, 192 pieces of Marukawa gum. Thus my own mother became my latest connection in the spiraling sickness of this gum addiction.

Unlike Xylitol, Marukawa is a sugar-based gum, losing its flavor even more quickly than

The O.C. went from an awesome to a terrible TV show this season, requiring a rapid succession of chewings and discardings, chain-gumming if you will, to maintain a consistent high of gum goodness, resulting in jaw pain and headaches.

I welcome it to the Japanese gum hall of fame here today, with you as my witness.

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