Free Meals Have a Catch

Free meals have a catch

Sometimes bigger than others

I think I've come to the right place!

When my girlfriend told me one of her students owned a sushi restaurant and invited us to come for dinner I was excited.

Little did I know what I was in for.

I thought, perhaps she’d give us a few pieces of few sushi or sashimi for free, but once we arrived her husband (the chef), had prepared a feast for us. How could I say no? Maybe I should have. There's always a catch isn't there?

It started off with crab brain, which is not really my style, but thanks (in this case I hoped you are what you eat became true. Smart as a .....crab?). Salmon, tuna, crab, and then…… I noticed my shrimp was twitching. Perhaps it’s a reaction to the soy sauce I thought; it’s rather salty after all. Didn’t I learn that in my molecular biology class (that’s a joke. I’m an idiot and didn’t take that).

But it seemed like my food was still alive. I had never heard of that before, but different strokes for different folks as they say. I wasn’t sure what to do. It seemed like my shrimp was dancing on the plate and about to jump off.

I then saw a fish head that seemed to be talking to me, “Don’t eat me, I’m still alive”. It didn’t say that but I hallucinated it did. Maybe I inhaled too much soy sauce or my dream came true that my brain was transforming into mushy crab brain.

I looked again at the shrimp. I wasn’t sure what to do. The head was on and the tail but the middle part of the shell had been removed. I reached forward. I was a little hesitant to have a live shrimp bouncing around my innards so I grabbed the head and was about to twist it off. “Don’t waste it!”, said the sushi chef angrily. "Ummm…. dude it’s like alive", I thought about saying.

I thought the chef might be crazy mad. I wasn't sure if I could ask him to redo it, so its not alive would be good.

He looked at me like I was some sort of monster, wasting the Holy Grail. In reality I was thinking he was the monster, keeping animals alive whilst eating them. It could been worse and been dog I guess (which I think I might have almost eaten in Korea. Not alive though).

I removed the shell off the tail as it jerked around in my mouth. Yum, tastes like parasites I thought. Perhaps I should have added more salty soy sauce to clean it. The chef seemed to be watching my reaction. 

“Dancing Shrimp”, he told me. Oh……aaah… great?

I was thinking more like “Soon to be thrown up shrimp”. You see raw shrimp tastes like licking a toe, not that I’ve ever done that (or at least consciously that I can remember). I think my brain is turning into crab brain.

After dinner they asked what I thought, “absolutely delicious”, I lied through my teeth.

Would you like to come again sometime they asked?

Absolutely NOT I was thinking. 

“Of course!”, I answered with a sigh.

Perhaps I should have just gone with "I found out I'm allergic to shrimp".

If you are interested here is my live shrimp video. Click below. Its 9 seconds of your life wasted.

Incidentally, (I like that word, makes me feel smart) I uploaded it and it become a viral video on youtube.

If you read through the comments they are rather rude but some are funny. I didn't enjoy the ones where the odd person told me they planned to skin me alive and eat me (aside from the pain, it sounds perverted).

Click on the picture or this link to see my live shrimp video. Waste of 9 seconds of your life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgPE-o4n3dk


Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva

You Never Know What You're Gonna Get

You Never Know What You're Gonna Get
Surprise meat for lunch today, Come get it!

Sometimes its normal, sometimes its not. Life is like a box of chocolates. Just make sure its very sugary please.

As Forrest Gump says “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”. However in my case I’d have to rephrase that for the box lunch at school “You never know what you’re going to get”. I prayed I wouldn’t eat anything too extreme like barnacles. Hard on the teeth, like the ultimate rock candy.
At each school a lunch (called kyushoku) is prepared for you each day. Usually it consisted of a soup (corn or enoki mushroom), a carbohydrate (like bread or rice) and a dessert (yoghurt or jello called zeri "ZEH RII"). It usually had one meat as a main that rotated. It was hit and miss with vegetables. At least no asparagus! Score. I think I'm still a kid at heart.
All the books that prepare the JET English Teachers say “While we can’t force you, we suggest you eat the school lunch provided. This gives you a chance to interact with teachers, students and eat some foods that are an important part of Japanese culture”. As far as I could recall, Japanese foods don't contain cat or dog meat so I thought I’d probably be OK.
After a while I started to recognize some lunch foods repeating. My least favorite was bread and a condiment package. The package was made so that if you push it together both sides would squirt out. The problem was it was jam in one package and a kind of mayonnaise ish butter in the other side. I hated it. I usually spent a few minutes trying to carefully squirt only the jam while the white sauce would spray me in the face or all over my desk. Oh the joy of eating at your own desk. On days when school lunch wasn’t available in the summer, we would bring our own lunches. My desk would get stained with sushi, soy sauce, pasta sauce. You name it I probably had streaks of it on my desk. A dog would have loved my desk. The ultimate rainbow of flavours and smells.
I don’t consider myself a big eater by any means, but by my third year I sat across from this gigantic Judo teacher. He probably weighed about 300 pounds approx 140 KG. He was one big dude! His friend which happened to be his size would later break my ribs in Judo by falling on me (let’s keep that for another blogpost). You are a jerk by the way if you are reading this.

The guy ate two of these a day. Talk about carbo loading.

Anyways, he always ate a lot for lunch as you can imagine. How else can you maintain that kind of weight. When I would looked around I’d see all the other teachers eat half as much as him. He’d always go back for second helpings of anything that was left. I even once saw him just eat the jam package without any bread. He just squeezed it into his mouth, gross! Jam mixing with that terrible white cream of mayo butter. It was obesity to the extreme.

He was a big boy. We should have eaten him instead of what we ate.

I usually got a big helping as well. I’m not sure if they thought I was a big eater (and weighed only 130 pounds) or if they thought I was supplementing my other meals by making my lunch my biggest meal since it was free. That part was somewhat true. Always trying to save money.
One time we had some sort of beef looking meat, kind of black. I asked what it was. “Kujira”, they answered. I thought haha funny, we are really going to eat whale for lunch. As if there is enough whale to supply every school in this prefecture with whale. That would be a lot of whale. Half the world’s oceans would be depleted of whale. Wait, that has already happened.
I sat down and started to eat. The beef tasted a bit off I thought. Its beefy but with a little bit more rubbery taste. I washed it down with some milk (probably not a good idea. That’s usually a recipe for diarrhea).
Afterwards I was on our Gaijin (Foreign) community forum that I saw that some people had written “Be careful with lunch today, its whale. Don’t eat it”. Oh crap, maybe it really was I thought. Maybe it wasn’t a joke? Come to think of it, I had never tasted beef so rubbery and the colour of the meat was kind of dark. I looked on the food calendar that was on the wall. Naturally there was a cute child’s drawn picture of a whale on that day. That’s nice, make the whale all cute then eat it. That’s like saying it's Easter and giving out eggs, oh and just so you know we ate the rabbit that made those chocolate goodies.
I ate crab brains a few times too. I thought it just happened to be crab that they had put back into the topshell. Later one of the teachers said to me “How’s the brain? Most foreigners that have been at the school don’t eat that”. Crap! I had been eating brain for two years.
Oh well, I hoped that motto “You are what you eat” might come true.
I hoped I hadn’t been eating any feces and didn’t know it.

Oh boy. No comment.

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future.

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva