Sushi

I was not an adventurous eater as a child, but at least I wasn't picky. Unfortunately some of the things that are my favorite now, I didn't like when I was a child. I'm sure my parents would have liked it if I had. It will probably shock the people that know me now to know, I didn't really like fish, pasta, or oriental food when I was a child. I would eat them when my Mom made them, but didn't really enjoy most of them. Now days, I've done a complete 180. These are some of my favorite things to eat, especially anything with rice or an oriental flavor to it. This was one of the things I was most looking forward to in coming to Japan.

However, one of the things that I've never really been able to get the courage to try was sushi. Many years ago I was introduced to it for the first time by a good friend of mine. It was one of his favorite things to eat and he wanted to share that with me. I have to admit, I didn't really appreciate it to the level it deserved. About all I remember is being surprised that it didn't taste like any fish I had eaten before. By this time, I had developed a taste and really liked fish. I think the main problem was getting past the point of eating raw meat. My entire life I was told that was a bad thing. Even though logically, I knew this was different and completely harmless, emotionally I couldn't quite get into it.

Since then, I have really developed a liking for simplified sushi, for example things like California rolls. Barely counts, I know. When we were planning on coming to Japna, I told Tom that we had to try sushi here. Another thing that always concerned me back home was if the place we ate the sushi at actually knew how to prepare and take care of raw fish so it stayed at healthy as it started. I knew if there was one place I could count on that happening it was here. Another thing I always wanted was someone to come with Tom and me and tell us what to order. Neither of us would have the slightest idea what to order. 2 1/2 weeks into our Japan experience I was beginning to wonder if it would happen. There's no way Tom would go after I went hom since I was the one that really wanted to try it. Luckily for me, I have a couple of friends here that I had lunch with about a weeks ago. Shari offered to take me to a 100 yen sushi place she knew about. There are a lot of sushi "go-around" places here. Basically the sushi makers make up plates of various sushi dishes. These go around a conveyor belt and everybody takes off of the moving belt the plates that they want to eat. At the end of your time there, they just charge you for the number of plates you've eaten. Most of these places charge around 300-500 yen a plate. Every dollar is worth 90 yen. I usually round $1 for every 100 yen. Because the place we went to was on 100 yen per plate, that enabled us to try multiple dishes we would have never tried. It was absolutely delicious and I loved every minute.The next day I took Tom back to experience it. He admitted afterwards that he wasn't all that excited about it. He went because I was so excited about it. But afterwards he was really glad we had gone. He also really enjoyed it. The only thing we had that we regretted was squid. Can I say yuck! I bit into it and it squished and spewed. It was very salty. I've been told the little ones taste much different than the big ones and I should try the big ones. I don't think that will ever happen. Everything else we tried though was absolutely delicious! I definitely want to go back again in the next week to have more...just not the squid. I also loved some of the dessert they had. There were some tasty sweet potatoes fried in a sugary substance that I could have eaten all night. And some sticky rice that was wrapped in a sugary won-ton type wrapper. Sooooo good! Plus sushi has to be about the most beautiful food that exists!

We've since hear that there is a tasty sushi place in Port Orchard. Definitely going to be trying that! I think I've become an addict! If you're interested in Tom's spin to this subject, check out his blog by clicking here.