Adventures in Dining

Last night Kat, Cheryl, and I wandered around the neighborhood surrounding our hotel to see what sort of restaurant we could find for dinner.

After stepping into several places and leaving because it either didn't smell appetizing, or they seemed to specialize in a type of food we weren't in the mood for, we found one that looked ok. We settled in around a low table in a back room, next to a table of 2 women and 1 man who were just finishing their dinner.

The waiter spoke almost no English and there was no English on the menu, nor were there many pictures. There were enough pictures for us to know that they served udon so that's what we ordered - at least we *hoped* that was what we ordered.

The table next to us had a small gas burner on their table with a pot on it. We asked the waiter what it was, but he didn't know the English word, nor did the diners at that table. One of the patrons at the counter did however - it was WHALE.

Yes, whale.

We decided to stick with the udon.

After bringing us water to drink, the waiter came back to ask us if we wanted ... something. He gestured at a cooking pot in the corner. We said ok & he fished out 3 morsels from the pot, put them into a bowl and put it on our table.

We stared at it, not quite sure what it was. There was something that looked sort of like a dark hot dog, then something tube-like with funny "blisters" on its sides, then a skewer with some type of thinly cut meat. (We were a little squicked when the tube-like thing jiggled ominously when we poked it.)

The table next to us saw our quizzical expressions and giggled. We asked them what the items were, but their English wasn't up to the task. Kat got out a pen and a piece of paper and we started drawing pictures.

We pointed at the blistered tube-like thing. Was it octopus? No. Squid? No.

One of the ladies said it was fish - it certainly didn't look like any fish we'd ever seen before! The gentleman at the table gestured and said mikusu, mikusu. We finally figured out that it was fish meat, pressed together, and rolled into the shape of a tube and boiled.

The skewered meat turned out to be beef, but we never did figure out if it was tongue or tripe.

The other thing that looked like a dark hot dog? Still not certain, but we think it was probably fish, too, as they said it was definitely NOT sausage.

We didn't eat any of that, so the waiter asked us if we would eat chicken or egg & after we figured out that that's what he was asking us, we said yes and he again fished in the hot pot and brought us some boiled chicken and a hard-boiled egg that had been simmering in the pot, both of which we ate.

Then came our dinners -- udon, as expected. We each got a bowl of noodles, with a raw egg, green onions, some seaweed, and some fried meat (chicken, we think), plus a carafe of some sort of broth.

The waiter gave us a demonstration for what to do -- pour the broth over the contents of the bowl & mix it all up. (When we've had udon in the past, it has come pre-mixed, thus our confusion.)

The udon was delicious!



We were obviously the entertainment for the evening as everyone in the place - including us - laughed and laughed at the language barriers plus our puzzlement over the unidentifiable bits of food!

I'll post more later about the language barrier thing, as I've had some neat experiences with language this trip.

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