No Reservations

During another party thrown by my English teaching colleagues, I was subjected to having to eat an entirely authentic Japanese meal. This means that everything we ate either came from the sea or was a derivative of the rice grain.


I ate "Odorigui" which is roughly translated into English as 'dancing fish'. The waitress brought a small white bowl and inside were these 2 inch long, translucent fish that were swimming around completely oblivious to what was about to happen to them. You scoop these poor little creatures with a strainer-like device into a little bowl with special sauce, and while they are still alive you grab as many as you can with your chopsticks and put them inside of your mouth. I sat with my cheeks puffed while these guys flopped this way and that inside of my mouth, and then I began to chew. I'm still unsure as to whether or not this constitutes animal cruelty, but once you work all the little guys into a nice pasty texture, it tastes exactly like sashimi. I've heard that some Japanese people like to put them in their beer just before downing a glass.

Apart from eating creatures while they are still alive, I ate several different variations of dishes that were made of fugu. If not cut properly by licensed chefs, one could die from the toxins that these fish secrete from their liver. Since I am able to write this account, the expertise of our sushi chef has been once again thoroughly exemplified.


In this photo you see the head sticking directly up, with several slices of meat artistically layered onto a wooden board. The teacher sitting next to me, Tsukuda-sensei, jokingly tells me in Japanese, "Atama ga oishii yo" (the head is delcious!). For the split second before everyone else started laughing, I actually believed him.

The last dish was cooked in a nabe pot, and this is where I had one of my many 'only in Japan' moments. I picked up a strange looking piece of something that looked like fish meat and ate it. I should've known it was a mistake because the other teachers had already split the same looking piece of meat into several pieces, and I immediately understood because its flavor was absoltely potent! An explosion of flavor took place inside of my mouth that I am still unable to describe in words, and it was until I asked what the hell I just ate that I finally understood. Fukuda-sensei sitting across from me uttered something unintelligible in Japanese, and when Isotani-sensei who was sitting next to me said, "it's where the sperm comes from," I realized I had just eaten an entire sackful of fish sperm. Often times I wonder how many opportunities like this I have left in the remaining 4 months.