Journal lingqi's Journal: Oct 25, 2002 - gasping fish 3
October 25,2002 (12:17pm)
Yeah I am skipping lunch. I counted how many calories I took in yesterday, it was in the neighborhood of 3200.
on japanese food!
which had to be some kind of miracle, because I am hungry every 3 hours or so.
(for the curious: 550 breakfast, 850 lunch, 800 dinner, 350 snack (ice cream), and at least 7-800 for "really-late-dinner")
And I thought I was going to get thin in japan. hah.
On the other hand, Had some interesting food; two in particular that most americans will probabbly balk at:
1) "gasping" fish
2) shirako
the gasping fish goes like this: Take a live medium (~10 inch) mackereal, put it on a stick, peel skin, carve flesh, make (the carved flesh) into sashimi, and eat while fish is still gasping while on the stick (on display, as a testiment to the freshness of the sushi). while the practice may be objectionable to senstive people, it definitely made excellent food (very fresh).
shirako is a tad more difficult to explain. "shira" translates roughly to "white;" and "ko" to "child / eggs" etc... However it refers to something very specific. But let's veer off for a second on the "egg" part. particularly, "ko" would refert to not eggs as in chicken eggs etc, but rather eggs of fish, shrimp, etc. Actually it would probabbly be better translated as "roe".
as we all know, actually roe is usually not white; but rather yellow / orange / red in color (salmon roe has a funny color to it that I can't name. goto any sushi restaurant and ask for "ikura" and you will see what i mean; (make sure they understand you are ordering food, though, "ikura" also means "how much / how" in japanese.
anyways -- so as far as the "white roe" is concerned, (in this case it came from salmon) -- what do you think it might be?
I will give a hint: females have roe and males have
yeah. and if you still don't get it, "shirako" is by definition "commonly used name for fish testis". it's quite amusing that fishes has testis, but eating it is another story.
for the record it didn't have any taste, but the texture is kinda like uni (sea urchin). but if you dip it in any kind of sauce, it will (of course) taste like the sauce.
but it's weird to think that fish even had them? i mean, it must be internal, so it doesn't hang out or nothing... anyways enough on the subject.
On the other hand, any person who, being from out of the country, goes out to dinner in japan, will probabbly be presented with such culinary challenges. be prepared. there are more on the list, but i don't know them all wouldn't have enough space to list all of them anyway. have an open mind and try all of them, though, you might like something!
Actually there was also the item of live soft-red-seashell sashimi thing. It wasn't moving when we got it, but since they grabbed it from the tank when we ordered it, the unfortunate seashell probabbly did not enjoy a peaceful death.
Okay.
Another thing I noticed as I was going to work this morning. I sat next to a highschool student (girl, in this case), and she was preening herself the whole 21 minutes of the train-ride. besides the regular brush hair put on makeup (a LOT of makeup), she did the following:
actually, before I start, you all know what Japanese highschool female uniforms look like, right? it's adapted from british sailor suits, girls usually gets skirts (I hear they are generally knee-long but all the girls trim them shorter to be trendy -- a silly idea considering how chilly it is nowadays outside) They also wear either REALLY long white cotton socks (pushed to the bottom - also considered fashionable) or as some schools now dictate, tight-fitting black / blue socks. the black / blue ones are about calf-high. They looks polyester-ish. I don't really know.
at any rate. the girl next to me had on black socks - the tight kind.
she rolled her socks down an inch (fold down, to be precise), took out a gluestick (i kid you not), applied a ring of glue on her leg, and promptly rolled the sock back up over the glue-applied area. she did this for both legs.
(the gluestick let out a distinct pungent smell - a cross between white-out fluid and alcohol.)
I could not help but find this amusing and had to share it here: I am sure it is a ritual no more rediculous than shaving, body-pierecing, or tatooing, but interesting nontheless. Now every time I see schoolgirls (and for christs' sake they are EVERYWHERE) I cannot but chuckle to myself that they glue on part of their apperal. Of course, there is the inevitable curiocity about the amount of glue consumed yearly for this purpose... considering that an average (I assume american) woman accidentally swallow 4 POUNDS of lipstick in her lifetime (yuck), I would not be surprised if the statistics for glue use runs into some interesting and unbelieveable figures.
I also saw another high school student who stood out. In this case, he stood out literally. Like I said before, I am 5'11 or so, (about 180cm?) and I can get on and off the train with ease, there being still several tens of cm of clearance above my head when I go through the train's doors. This guy was half a head taller than the doors, while he stand slouched!
a rare find in japan indeed. When we got out of the train he towered over his peers. like one of those trees than grew too tall and are out of proportion with the rest of the forest, and you can just imagine how many times he has hit his head on various, whatevers. worse yet, his entire outfit hung on him two or three sizes too small, or rather, short. considering that every other male highschool student gets jackets that's at least a size and half too big (side note: Japan's youth seem to be going through the "wear pants halfway down your ass" phase), I really feel bad for this guy is his past and future ability to find proper fitting clothes. I do wish him the best for the future.
Not much else immediately interesting. Today is friday, and yesterday since I excursioned (is that a proper word?) to the "really-late-dinner," I havn't had a chance to go to the post office yet (waking up an hour early to go there in the morning before work is a rediculous concept that will not be entertained). I will do that tonight and make small updates over the weekend.
Since I still don't have internet / phone at my place, anything after this will be delayed until at least monday. living without immediate access to information is a real drag; I will try to keep myself occupied at the mean time.
There's a first for everything (Score:1)
This has to be the first time we've ever heard Ling complain (comment) about a girl's skirt being too short. And it's also the first time (but I'm sure not the last) that we get to see Ling spend multiple lines talking about the fact that he was sitting on the bus, infatuated with an underage girl.
Hahaha...
Re:There's a first for everything (Score:2)
train, andrew, TRAIN... get it straight, yo. but seriously - no infatuations - just rather amused.
Hello.. (Score:2)
-molo