3:20 p.m. - 2006-11-02
Dubuque
Actually, I should probably put off the whole Dubuque story until after I've described some of the Japan trip, for fear that I'll forget all about it if I don't hurry up and get it in this online diary. The thing is, where to start? It was two weeks and it was such a major experience and there's so much to talk about that it's exhausting just thinking about where to start, maybe I need a nap first, or a cup of tea or shock therapy or something. Or I could just get on with it. Okay, I'll try just getting on with it.
I'll start like any self-respecting self-centered lazy internet diary guy: with a couple of random, tossed-off lists. First, the easy one.
WHAT WE ATE IN JAPAN:
*The afore-mentioned sashimi;
*Rice, mostly plain but once fried, by Japan Mom. Don't think about putting anything on your rice, Jim. Just DON'T DO IT. It's not done, people will stare, rice is perfect the way it is, leave it alone;
*Lots and lots of miso soup, one bowl of clamshell soup;
*Two or three bowls of udon. I think one bowl had duck;
*A bowl or two of soba. I don't know how typical this is, but our udon bowls were always big and the soba bowls were always small;
*A couple of elementary school lunches, with elementary school kids. These were mainly networking opportunities, but still enjoyable. One of the lunches had soba and hot dog buns: SOBA SANDWICHES! Amazing! And the kids were pretty fun, with all their youthful hijinks and Hello Kitty crap and everything;
*Various rolls of sushi in diners where you sit in front of a conveyer belt and watch the plates of sushi go by and you grab the ones you want. Fun! Like having lunch in a factory but without all the layoffs and industrial accidents. They tally the bill by counting the pile of plates you've amassed by meal's end. At our second sushi factory we ordered three beers and along with the beers they brought out three clean beer-colored plates to count for billing. Ever since then I've been plagued by the question: Why don't they just count the empty bottles?
*A big bowl of rice covered in a myriad of foods, all of them slimy and weird. In Tokyo at some restaurant. It looked good in the the tiny picture on the menu. There were two pieces of raw tuna that were good. After that it was horror. Just horror. A textural abomination, and beyond bland. The substances covering the rice were: one egg, mostly raw; a quantity of nato, the infamous fermented soy breakfast food with the relentlessly slimy texture; and a bunch of bright green strands of seaweed or something, the strands held together by a clear mucous. There were condiments on the table, soy sauce and a peppery powder. I couldn't put enough in to make it edible; my bowl of slime would absorb all the flavor I threw at it. It was amazing, really, like some sort of powerful organism whose only purpose is to suck flavor and crispness out of the world and perpetuate bland. This would be by far my worst eating experience in Japan, but more than mitigated by getting to eat lots of delicious
*Tempura, on several occasions, several times in restaurants and once with Japan Mom and Dad. Tempura Night was the one time Kia and I decided we'd try to make ourselves useful and help with the arduous meal preparations, thinking it would bring us all closer together, which it did to a degree, but it also seemed to stress Japan Mom out a little, being accustomed to working alone as she is. I got to grate the giant radish that's used as a condiment and Kia lent a hand with the actual frying. Japan Mom was very, very, very particular about how to make tempura. I lost exact count, but I think Japan Mom corrected Kia about four hundred times per minute. I think that's the average, it could be a little low. Kia bore the whole thing with good grace and it was a scrumptious and fried meal. Later that night we resolved never to go in the kitchen again.
We also had restaurant tempura a couple times. On one such occasion I ordered calamari and Kia ordered something else and Melissa ordered what she thought was one thing but turned out to be another: big, fleshy mussels with the terrifying black parts and the diconcertingly gritty texture. She found this repulsive so I offered to trade. It turns out I have a higher tolerance for gross fishy things than Kia or Melissa, which is interesting because they've both travelled way more than me and presumably have encountered all manner of weird foods. One possible explanation: I smoked seriously for about fifteen years, which probably obliterated my sense of smell;
*Fish and chips, at the Pig and Whistle in Kyoto, on our last night there. We had planned on going to the Honky Tonk, one of Kyoto's more notable country music venues, but it was a Wednesday so it was closed. So we went to the British pub for happy hour. The inside was indeed a schlockfest, but they had actual Guinness on tap and they poured it in the prescribed manner. Plus, fish and chips! Which weren't really all that great, but it was just the thing at this point in the trip, the next to last night when all the travel fatigue was starting to set in and Melissa was missing Matt a lot and we were starting to get a little burnt out on Japanese food, great though it is. So we had a pretty okay time at the Pig and Whistle, after which we went for some
*Donuts! There are Mr Donuts all over Japan, and we were grateful. Except when Melissa accidentally picked out a filled curry donut. That was unfortunate. That time I didn't offer to trade.
If memory serves, we may have done things in Japan besides eat and drink. These I'll enumerate next time, after my nap, cup of tea and shock treatments.
