Eat it!

This is a repeat blog from October 1, 2009. Still valid today.

The sub-title for this blog entry is Eating Out in Japan, which might disappoint some of you as you learn that it is only about food.

At this time, I'm merely going to briefly describe some of the weird foods I ate while in Japan - without going into the story of how it came to be. In many cases, those stories are part of future blogs.
When people think of Japanese food, they think of Benihana or sushi. Sushi is sushi. I love it in all of its forms. Sashimi is actually raw fish, and I love it. Sushi utilizes rice., Sashimi is thinly sliced seafood.. But now, here are foods you may never have heard of:

• Hachi-no-ko (baby bees aka bee larvae) cooked in brown sugar;
• Inago (grasshoppers) are also cooked in brown sugar. Lemme just say this: Never tell anybody that you really like anything in Japan, lest they ply you with presents. I was pooping bugs for weeks;
• Natto (rotting, fermented soy beans). Literally, half the Japanese openly detest it, and the other half pretend they like it. Only one gaijin ever ate it when he didn't have to;
• Shiokara (squid guts) served cold;
• Tamago gohan (not related to Lindsay Lohan), is essentially a raw egg spilled atop cold rice, and is served for breakfast--only served to me on retreats or at Japanese home stays, which leads me to believe that this is a staple of Japanese breakfasts. Ugh;
• Takoyaki... a baby octopus covered in dough and deep-fried (like Chinese chicken balls). It's skewered and you eat it like an octopus on a stick. Crunchy, and despite the presence of an octopus beak, I liked it;
• soup eaten with chopsticks - see the photo above. Is there anything on those chopsticks? No. Because its soup I'm trying to eat!;
• Japanese pizza: it doesn't matter what variety you order, or if you purchase it an an American pizzareia, it always came with corn on it. And not merely sprinkled atop it - no, it was a can of corn that was unceremoniously dumped on the very centre of it in a pile;
• Mos burger: Click on the coloured word and you can see what it looks like. It features from the top: a bun, tomato, meat sauce, onions, mayonnaise, mustard, hamburger patty, and bun. It was strangely delicious;
• Teriyaki McBurger, Green Tea Shake, French Fries with Seaweed from McDonald's;
• sea turtle phlegm at a Japanese French restaurant, it was served in a tall glass filled with a chilled tomato consomme, with the phlegm sitting all nice and frothy on top. It tastes you as you eat it. Yes, that is written correctly;
• two Matthew favorites are Kamameshi in the autumn and Nabemono in the winter--not sure what he would eat the rest of the year; 
• Basashi, which is an equine version of sashimi. Tangy. But mine still had marks where the jockey was whipping it;
• Gyu riba - cow liver in a sashimi style. Blech.
• Umeboshi- is what we called a Japanese plum that is so sour it will make you pucker. It's a staple in every Japanese bento box (prepackaged food boxes), with the red plum sitting atop a bed of white rice. It's to make it look like a Japanese flag. Quite ingenious, I think;
• Shimotsukare... click on the word for a description. Matthew really didn't like it, but, while not a food I would search out, it wasn't anything I would go out of my way to avoid if presented;
• And last but not least, fugu, featuring selected areas of the fugu fish. It may or may not contain a deadly toxin that could paralyze you or at the worst, kill you. Having tasted it, I think the thrill comes from thinking there's a chance you could die. Taste-wise? No big whoop.
  

Oh... I suppose you want a link for the fugu. Okay... try this one HERE. While it's all very informative and true-to-life, the actual fugu stuff starts at 2:30.

Somewhere with natto breath,
Andrew Joseph
PS - Title accordioned by Weird Al Yankovic.