Zooming with a woman this morning I noticed that just behind her was a Buddhist family altar. I told her that I had always wondered what her family’s religion was. I have known her mother for decades now and she always struck me as Protestant because of her interests and the things she had said over the years.

She explained that her mother was from a Shinto family and that the butsudan behind her was for her paternal grandparents. When her father went to Oxford to continue with his studies in physics, he brought the family, too. There they were exposed to Christianity for the first time. She herself would go on to ICU, a prominent Christian university in Tokyo, and later earned a master’s degree from an American university, during which time she lived with an Evangelical family. Over her years in America she attended service with them and grew to appreciate the warm, inviting mood of their religion, but was never interested in converting. It was the same with her mother.

In Japan you can’t really ask people about religion. I mean you can, but why open up a can of worms? Those who are willing to talk about it tend not to be religious. Those who are religious tend not to talk about it because, well, frankly a lot of the so-called “new religions” are secretive and cultish.

And so we went off on a long tangent about Christianity. She was still confused about all the different denominations.

Think of them as different brands of hamburger joints, I suggested. Roman Catholicism is the biggest, most established brand. No matter where you go in the world, you can buy a Big Mac or a McDonald’s burger that is made in the exact same way. Go to Sunday Mass in America, the Congo, or Japan and they will be doing the same thing, reading the same passages from the Bible, doing the same sacraments, and so on. Local dioceses will have a local menu, so to speak. In Japan they have the teriyaki burger, tsukimi burger, etc., but the Value Menu will be the same. The corporate headquarters in the Vatican decides it all, but gives some room to maneuver in the local market.

America is a free market of different franchises of burger joints, er, denominations, and do things their own way, but still serve hamburgers.

In the UK, they have a knock-off version of MickeyDee’s, and also sell the same versions of hamburgers, but the guy manning the griddle flipping burgers is sometimes a woman, and they can get married. They also haven’t adopted some of the corporate policy changes that were decided upon in the various Vatican Councils.

In the US, the Church of England is Burger King, but they now call themselves Anglicans or more often Episcopalians, which nobody really understands means, except that after the Revolutionary War being associated with England was a no-no.

She asked if I still went to McDonald’s.

I said that I had grown up on those burgers but lost my taste for them a long while ago. I still crave the familiarity of a Big Mac every now and then, and think my sons should at least try it to know what it’s all about, but every time I have a Big Mac, I think, why, God, did I do that to myself. That said, it’s part of the package, the identity of being “Irish Catholic”.

But then that’s the thing about growing up, becoming an adult: you have to unlearn the things your parents taught you and find new joints to dine in.

So, where do you go now, she asked.

Yoshinoya sometimes. Sometimes I pick up a rice ball at the local combini, and it’s soooo good.

The Baptists are like independently run burger joints, I continue, and just make shit up. Blue cheese on a hamburger? You gotta be kidding me. Yes, I like blue cheese, but never on a hamburger. That’s blasphemy.