Them’s Good Eats! (馬刺しと鯨)

After walking around for a good twenty minutes, my co-worker Izumi and I finally settled on a small eating and drinking place (I say this because the cuisine can best be described as eclectic).

I was able to scratch one of two rare items off my “must eat” list tonight - “Basashi" or raw horse meat sashimi. The other item I am trying to ingest before leaving Japan is “fugu” or the famous poisonous blowfish (refer to The Simpsons episode if you are rusty on the subject).

Basashi appeared as a thinly sliced red meat with spirals of fat, placed on a bed of daikon radish and served with a pinch of spicy garlic and onion mash on top of each piece. You dunked it in soy sauce and down the hatch it went.

The meat didn’t look or taste particularly horse-like, which helped me to not internalize the fact that I was happily gnawing off bits of Black Beauty. While I found the basashi to be very delicious, I doubt that I could successfully isolate the award winning taste and texture if it were placed next to elegantly prepared squirrel or possum meat.

Izumi and I also resurrected an old favorite - whale meat sashimi. This time the two of us ordered the “Outback Steakhouse Moby Dick Sampler Platter,” featuring four different types of whale meat. There were two sashimi varieties; one was flat and red and tasted like maguro (tuna), while the other appeared to be the ground up pulp of whale guts. The third variety was merely jiggly slabs of whale blubber, and the final type was a firm piece of oily whale meat with a tiny strip of crunchy skin on the top. All in all, the whale was a very interesting and yummy culinary experience.

Izumi felt bad about eating the whale (but not bad enough to stop putting blowhole to face with chopsticks), and would ask me every now and then if I felt bad too between bites. Occasionally she would clasp her hands together and bow her head at the ceramic plate of sashimi in apology. I think this act was more the beer’s doing than an actual expression of her remorse over Willy’s new home in our stomachs.

Happy adventurous eating to all and to all a good night!

B.E.W.

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