The Charbonneau Villager Newspaper 2019 Mar issue Villager newspaper | Page 2
2 THE CHARBONNEAU VILLAGER
March 2019
Beyond the Village: Fish out of water
My mantra in
Japan was simple:
try everything
By PATRICK MALEE
PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP
EDITOR'S NOTE: WE'RE ASKING CHARBONNEAU
RESIDENTS TO SHARE THEIR TRAVEL TIPS/
EXPERIENCES WITH THE VILLAGER IN THIS
FEATURE WE CALL "BEYOND THE VILLAGE." THIS
MONTH, VILLAGER ASSISTANT EDITOR PATRICK
MALEE SHARES HIS CULINARY ADVENTURES ON A
TRIP TO JAPAN. SEND YOUR STORIES AND TIPS TO
[email protected].
Y
ears ago, when I was a child who
took the meat off of his McDonald's
hamburgers and generally ate like
someone allergic to flavor, I'd have
never believed that I would one
day eat fish and prawn heads.
But there I was, packed like a
sardine around a restaurant table in
Japan that was far too small for our
party of nine (they don't really do big
dinner parties in Japan), staring at the
black, beady eyes of a hefty prawn. I
don't recall how the prawn got to our
table — we may have ordered it by
accident amid the confusion of working
with waiters who didn't speak English
— but no one was particularly
interested in it. No one, that is, except
me and one of my uncles.
But let's backtrack for a moment.
When I flew across the Pacific to Japan
this past October, eating fish heads
wasn't anywhere on my list of
priorities. The two-week trip was a
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
Biting the head off a prawn was not something I expected to do in Japan, but it fi t with my goal of never saying
“no” to new experiences.
blend between vacation, family reunion
and self-discovery for me and others
from the Japanese side of my family,
most of whom had never been to their
ancestral country before. We started in
Tokyo, then moved on to Takayama,
Kanazawa, Kyoto and Wakayama (the
last of which being where my ancestors
hailed from).
Heading into the trip, my goal was to
eliminate the word "no" from my
vocabulary. I wanted to push myself to
try new things whenever possible, and
really experience the country without
the weight of fear or inhibition.
And for the most part, I succeeded.
When we rented cars for a segment
of the trip, I volunteered to drive and
got to learn what life is like on the
left side of the road ("confusing"
would be a charitable way of putting
it). I bathed publicly for the first time
in my life when we stayed at hot
springs. I walked tens of thousands of
steps almost every day, quite literally
pounding holes into my shoes. My
one regret is that I never found time
to do a go-kart ride through the
streets of Tokyo.
Perhaps that was for the best.
Avoiding "no" was toughest,
however, when it came to food. To be
clear, much of the Japanese food we
ate was delightful and plain enough
for any taste palate: endless
variations of noodles and rice, tuna
and salmon cuts that melted in your
mouth, meat skewers you could eat
until you dropped.
Yet almost every meal also
included something that tested my
squeamishness. Those skewers I
mentioned? Sometimes they held
liver or (gulp) pig intestines. There
was the raw snail that came as part
of a many-course meal at one of our
hotels. And sushi was also an
adventure — there were salmon eggs
(weird texture, no taste), eel (tasty!)
and what I believe was sea urchin (I
... don't recommend this).
But, while this might sound a bit
barbaric, I'm proudest of the fish heads.
The first came as part of a meal in
Tokyo that was made almost entirely
with tempura batter. That familiar gold
coating was comforting when I bit
headfirst into a small swimmer, which
was very salty with an odd, chewy
texture but otherwise didn't have much
taste. The same could be said for the
aforementioned prawn, which came
later in the trip, although I'll admit I
was glad to have a hulking mug of beer
to wash it down.
That's the irony of it all: the
strangest things I ate in Japan often
had the least amount of flavor. If you
could get past the look, feel and sound
of what you were eating — no easy task
at times — the experience itself was
oddly tame.
It was a good lesson for travelling in
general: try everything. You never
know exactly what you're going to get,
but you can bet on the experience being
worthwhile. ■
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